If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!

Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples."  So He said to them, "When you pray, say:

Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us day by day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins,
For we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
And do not lead us into temptation,
But deliver us from the evil one."

And He said to them, "Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; and he will answer from within and say, 'Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you'?  I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.  So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.  If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a  serpent instead of a fish?  Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!"

- Luke 11:1-13

Yesterday we read that it happened, as Jesus was alone praying, that His disciples joined Him, and He asked them, saying, "Who do the crowds say that I am?"  So they answered and said, "John the Baptist, but some say Elijah; and others say that one of the old prophets has risen again."  He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"  Peter answered and said, "The Christ of God."  And He strictly warned and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, "The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised the third day."  Then he said to them all, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me.  For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.  For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and is himself destroyed or lost?  For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words, of him the Son of Man will be ashamed when He comes in His own glory, and in His Father's, and of the holy angels.   But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the kingdom of God."  Today's reading, in preparation for Ascension Day on Thursday the 25th, skips over to chapter 11.


Now it came to pass, as He was praying in a certain place, when He ceased, that one of His disciples said to Him, "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples."   Teach us to pray is an expression of universal longing to be in communion with God, my study bible teaches us.

So He said to them, "When you pray, say:  Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name.  Your kingdom come.  Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  In yesterday’s reading, Jesus asked Peter, “But who do you say that I am?”  Everything about Jesus’ identity tells us something, also, about ourselves.  Here, the Father-Son relationship within the Trinity reveals our potential relationship with God. Christ, the Son of God, grants us the privilege of calling God Our Father by the grace of adoption (Galatians 4:4-7).  My study bible tells us that as a “son of God,” the Christian (male and female) is called to love, trust, and serve God as Christ does His Father.  We learn loyalty and love from His example.  My study bible notes that God is not our Father simply because He has created us.  He is only Father to those in a saving and personal relationship, a communion that only comes by the grace of adoption (see John 1:13; Romans 8:14-16).  This is the fullness of love possible with God, a fullness that extends so deeply in its love that it conveys and gives us identity.  In that identity, we become those who carry the Kingdom in the world; our most devout wish to bring the kingdom here, and that our Father’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

“Give us day by day our daily bread.”  Daily is a misleading translation of a Greek word that was coined specifically for this prayer.  It is found nowhere else in Greek literature.  That word is epiousios, which means quite literally, “above the essence,” or “supersubstantial."  Daily bread therefore is meant to mean not just bread for today, nor for purely earthly nourishment.  This speaks of the bread for the eternal day of the Kingdom of God, the holiness of life in the Kingdom with which we seek to nourish our immortal soul.  My study bible tells us that this living, supersubstantial bread is Christ Himself.  In the Lord’s Prayer we aren’t asking simply for material bread for physical health.  We ask for the spiritual bread of eternal life (John 6:27-58).  There can be little doubt about the eucharistic meanings of this daily bread.

“And forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who is indebted to us.”  We see the reciprocal action implied here, not for the first nor the last time in the Gospels that Jesus will convey such an idea.  The concept of sin as debt also figures repeatedly, to forgive is to let go, like taking something off the books.  This refers to spiritual indebtedness.  We no longer seek reciprocity for the debt, but rather for the forgiveness – and our negotiation is brokered by and through the Father.    It is the Father through whom every good and perfect gift comes.  We note this is in the plural; we are to pray always for the forgiveness of others, my study bible teaches us. 

"And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one."  Temptations come from the evil one, the devil – and not from God.  Temptations, says my study bible, are aimed at the soul’s giving in to the sinful passions of the flesh (Romans 7:5).  No one lives without encountering temptations, but we pray that great temptations – that is, tests beyond what we can bear (1 Corinthians 10:13), do not come to us.

And He said to them, "Which of you shall have a friend, and go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine has come to me on his journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; and he will answer from within and say, 'Do not trouble me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give to you'?  I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs."  Jesus gives us a parable after the prayer, in which He demonstrates God's faithfulness to those who are in need and who pray with persistence.  Tradition has interpreted midnight to be both the time of our death and also a time of great temptation.  The friend, says my study bible, is Christ, who, as our only source of grace, provides everything we need.

"So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.  For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.  If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone?  Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a  serpent instead of a fish?  Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion?  If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!"  Jesus is not content simply to give us a parable about persistent prayer, but He also indicates clearly here those things that a disciple prays for:  the gift of the Holy Spirit and all that may encompass in our lives.  In Greek the verbs that are translated as ask, seek, and knock imply a continuing action.  They could be more accurately be translated, “keep asking,” “keep seeking,” and “keep knocking.”  My study bible says that God responds when we persistently ask for things that are good.  Bread, fish, and an egg are all images of life.  They symbolize the gift of the Holy Spirit (see John 14:13-14; James 4:3).

What do we ask for in prayer?  What is prayer for?  To continue to keep asking, seeking, and knocking at the door of heaven ("I am the door") is expressive of a drive to discipleship and the deeper movement into communion with God.  We are invited into mysteries to great to fathom and too deep to predict.  We are given a key to a kind of way to find ourselves in this realm of the kingdom of God.  In Christ, we find out who we are.  Through repentance, we discard the things we find within ourselves that really are not what belongs to that identity we have in Him and that He seeks to bring us.  In what is called the Prayer of the Hours, written by St.  Basil the Great, we pray to Christ as He "who calls all to repentance and salvation through the promise of good things to come."  When we pray, no matter what we pray for, we keep in mind that the real goal of all Christian worship is union with God.  Whatever it is that we need to get there, it is that for which we fervently and persistently keep asking and seeking and knocking.  We don’t know how Christ will draw us forward into that journey, nor what paths and parallels and twists and turns we will experience as we are drawn forward into the love and longing of our Father for our love.  It is, indeed, a long and also daily journey, in which we take up our cross and ask for the daily nourishment we need.