A good Sunday to all.

In Jesus' time, as also today, the pious Jew, upon awakening, takes the Tallit, the prayer shawl, places it on his shoulders and turns to his God. It is the Shacharit, the morning prayer. Shachar is the light of the morning. To raise one's gaze to heaven, to enter into dialogue with God is the noblest gesture that one can make. But in our secularized world, this prayer is in crisis, and I believe that for many can be applied the famous phrase of Friedrich Hegel, who said that the morning prayer of modern man is to read the newspaper. And I would add that before the newspaper, we check our cell phones today.

But by letting go of our relationship with God in this way, are we sure that we have gained from this and that we have become more human? By losing sight of the call to God and our ultimate destiny and returning to the realities of this world as if they alone were enough to give full meaning to our lives, are we enriching ourselves as human beings or impoverishing ourselves?

Prayer is in crisis today and there are several reasons for this. There are many distractions and interests; we are overwhelmed by frenetic activism; people are overloaded with commitments, and then we must cut back a little bit, and the first dry branch to be cut is the one we feel the least need for, prayer. Modern men and women think they can be self-sufficient; they rely on science and technology, because they are convinced that these will solve all their problems. But to this disaffection for prayer contributes in a determinant way to the generalized erroneous idea of prayer.

For many, even today, it means repeating formulas, and there is less and less need for this prayer. And Jesus had already warned about this danger when he said: "When you pray, do not multiply words as the pagans do." There is a second form of prayer that presents even more difficulty: It is that of the one who turns to God to obtain from him some favor for himself or others: good health, business success, success in his profession, family peace.

Before this prayer, today's man feels a certain restlessness because he wonders what God has to do with it. with these are problems that we must solve. The restlessness increases later when we see believing people who, to obtain these favors from God, implore the intercession of the saints, sometimes resorting to relics from here and there, miraculous blessed objects. We do not want to despise these manifestations of popular piety but let us be careful because they border on magic and degrade prayer.

In conclusion, I would say that the objections that we hear today to prayer are only because we have not understood what it means to pray. Today's Gospel passage allows us to reflect on this subject to understand what it means to pray, and it begins precisely by introducing us to Jesus in prayer. Let us listen:

 

"Once Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.’”

 

The evangelist Luke presents Jesus in prayer seven times and notes that he taught the Lord's Prayer at the request of the disciples after they saw him praying. What prompted them to make this request of Jesus: 'Teach us to pray'? They must have noticed that something beautiful was happening in Jesus when he prayed. During his public life, Jesus often experienced disappointment; he was surprised at the unbelief of his fellow townspeople in Nazareth and also of his own family. Then sometimes, he was indignant at the hypocrisy of those who were continually setting traps to condemn him; he was often embittered by the hardness of heart of his own disciples.

How did Jesus live these moments? Indeed, like us, he has tasted the impulse to react but he never consented to this impulse; he always maintained serenity and inner peace. The disciples, in those moments, saw Jesus retiring to pray, and in the dialogue with the Father, Jesus was discovering how to behave in a new way with these people who were hostile to him, with the disciples who were hard-headed and whom he loved and wanted to lead to the truth.

When the prayer was finished, the disciples saw Jesus as wrapped in a beautiful light, the same light that shone on the face of Moses when he came down from the mountain, after having conversed with the Lord. The disciples also saw in Jesus a good person, kind, available to all, one who was not afraid of conflicts, but was always loyal, and they must have made the connection with the fact that he was a man of prayer, one who made all his choices after dialoguing with the Father, and they began to desire to learn to pray like him to become as good as him. And they said to him, "teach us to pray as John taught his disciples."

The rabbis used to summarize in a prayer their spirituality and the values they wanted to instill in their disciples; and the Baptist had also taught a prayer, that's why the apostles asked Jesus to teach them a prayer that would make them identify themselves as his disciples. Before commenting on this prayer, which is the Lord's Prayer, it is necessary, however, to make some observations that will help us understand it better.

First, let us keep in mind that there are two versions of the Lord's Prayer, one longer, the one found in the Gospel according to Matthew, which is the one we usually recite; and another shorter one, the one found in today's Gospel that Luke has transmitted to us. And there is a third one, which is older than the two that we find in Matthew and in Luke and it is found in the Didache. So, the question arises spontaneously: Which of the three versions was taught by Jesus? The answer is none of the three.

Let's go to the second observation: The Lord's Prayer is not a prayer formula that is added to the others; it is not a formula of prayer like the Hail Mary, the Angelus, the Hail Holy Queen, no. The Lord's Prayer is the synthesis in prayer form of all the fundamental themes of the Christian message. In the Lord's Prayer, all the themes of our faith and our moral life are touched upon. St. Augustine said that if you read all Sacred Scripture, you will not find anything that is not included in the Lord's Prayer. So, what is the Lord's Prayer if it is not a formula like all the others? It was recited three times in the primitive communities because it was like a mirror in front of which every disciple was called to make a check to verify his identity as a believer in Jesus.

The Lord's Prayer tells us how the one who recites this prayer should be, how he should think, and how he should live. It is the mirror in which we are called to contemplate, to see if the beauty of our face corresponds to that prayer; but also to notice the defects, the limits. It is a mirror in which we can check if we are well, if everything is in order in our baptized life. That is to say if we correspond to the image of the true Christian that he has presented to us in this prayer that we are called to recite three times a day. In the early Church, the disciples stood before this mirror.

Third observation: The biblical scholars affirm that Jesus did not pronounce the Lord's Prayer. It is a composition made by the Christian community that wanted to synthesize all their faith in the form of a prayer. And this was done very early, already in the first years of the life of the Church. That's why we approach this text with emotion because it puts us in front of the mirror with which not only we but all our brothers and sisters in the faith have proved before God their identity as Christians and their faithfulness to the Gospel.

In the primitive Church, the Lord's Prayer was given to the catechumens at the end of the catechesis preparatory to baptism; it was given to them as a compendium of all that they had learned about God and the life they were to lead as baptized. Let's try to reflect ourselves today in this prayer. Let us listen to it:

 

"Jesus said to them, ‘When you pray, say, Father.’"

 

"Say, Father." Jesus tells us who is the interlocutor of our prayers and to whom we should address ourselves with the certainty of being heard: To the Father. It is important to verify who is our interlocutor because if we make a mistake, we risk addressing a God who does not exist. The atheist, of course, cannot pray because he does not have an interlocutor, and neither can pray one who believes in an absolute of which he is a part as it happens in pantheism or in certain oriental religious forms that do not believe in a personal God. The Christian, when praying, is invited to ask himself the question Is it the Father to whom I am addressing myself? For some Christians, God is still the 'great Sovereign' to whom one approaches with fear and trembling and before whom one must kneel or prostrate oneself.

This is the reason why many feel most comfortable praying to the saints, but if the interlocutors are the saints, one is not praying to the Father. It is beautiful to pray with the saints, with Mary, with Saint Anthony, with our sisters, with our brothers who have preceded us to the Father's house and risen with Christ, but we don't need intermediaries... who intercede before God to obtain those favors that we do not dare to ask him directly.

The Lord's Prayer teaches us that the Christian's prayer is directed to the Father and only to Him, with the confidence of one who feels that he is a beloved son or daughter. Let us try then to place ourselves in front of the mirror of the Lord's Prayer and let's verify if really the God in whom we believe is the one that in the prayer Jesus always called 'Abba,' Father. When Jesus speaks of God, he always calls him Father. In the gospels, we find 184 times this appellative on his lips; in fact, it is only he who calls God in this way; there is only one exception, it is Philip who, during the last supper, turns to Jesus and says: "Show us the Father and it will be enough."

The image of God the Father recalls the affectionate atmosphere of family life, not that of the sovereign seated on the throne; the pharaoh before whom we tremble and live in subjection. The word 'Father' makes us feel that God is near us, involved in our joys and our sorrows, that he accompanies us in every moment of life when things go well and when we shed tears; it is not the God who will be infinitely happy, even if we were to go to hell, as some think, NO. Since he created us, the Father has put his joy at stake in our response to his love. The God Jesus wants us to address is Father, good Father and only good. He does not punish; he does not make pay those who make the unhappy choice not to listen to him. Also, praying to God the Father, we become aware that we are his sons and daughters, made in his image and likeness, both the good and the not so good because the likeness of their faces can be very disfigured but the image of God the Father can never be erased; we will always remain his sons and daughters. Finally, when we address God by calling him Father, we remember that we are and must live as brothers and sisters.

Now let's listen to the requests that Jesus invites us to make to the Father:

 

"Hallowed be your name, your kingdom come."

 

The first petition: "Hallowed be your name." The name is also important for us; just think how we feel when we are in the middle of a crowd, and we hear someone calling our name; we feel dragged out of anonymity. It's me, precisely; someone is interested in me, not because of many of my relatives' surnames, but because of my name. For the Semites, the name was even more important because it identified the same person. If one went to a magician because he wanted to bless or curse a person, the magician would ask him what his name was, and acted based on that name.

So "Hallowed be your name" means that your person should be sanctified, must show that your person or God is holy. What is meant by 'holy'? 'Kadosh' in Hebrew means 'separate,' 'diverse.' When we say 'sanctuary' (‘tenemos’ in Greek) it comes from the verb 'temno,' which means to cut. ‘Tenemos' is the space understood as holy amid the profane space, and when in the temple were used vessels for liturgies; these were holy vessels; they could not be used for improper uses.

Let us remember the profanation that king Baltazar of Babylon had done; when he was drunk one night amid all his wives and concubines, he brought in the sacred vessels that his father Nebuchadnezzar had stolen from the temple in Jerusalem. It was a terrible desecration of the sacred vessels. What does it mean then when we say to the Father: 'Show that your name be holy, be separate, show that you are different from all the other gods people have invented?’ What is this holiness of God that makes him unique? It is his remarkable identity of God, which is love and only love; no other god is like him.

The Lord's Prayer reminds us of this diversity of the God of Jesus of Nazareth and invites us to erase and repudiate all gods, which perhaps even Christians or some Christians still believe in. Let us place ourselves before the mirror of the Lord's Prayer. If we continue to preach the lawgiver God, the punishing and just God, this God is not different; he is the same as the other idols we have created for ourselves; and they are idols that we like because they look like us and think like us.

So, if we preach this God, we blaspheme his name, we defile his identity. We could paraphrase the first petition we make to the Father in this way: 'Grant that, through us, your sons and daughters, all may see your holy name shine forth; of God love and love alone, for as you do, so do we who have received your same life and thy same Spirit, we show that we are capable to love unconditionally as you do, even those who hurt us.’

The second petition: "Your kingdom come." Which kingdom do we want to belong to? Because there is an old kingdom which is characterized by competition, the will to impose, dominate, and enslave the weakest. And in this old world of competition, there can only be wars and abuses, violence, and exploitation of the weakest. Jesus came to start a new world, his kingdom, which is not different; it is the opposite of the old kingdom.

It is the world that Jesus began, in which is great not the one who dominates but the one who serves; and then, the mirror of the Lord's Prayer puts us in front of the choice we have already made, and the Lord's Prayer reminds us that we belong to the kingdom of the lambs that give life, not to the kingdom of the wolves, which is the old world. "Your kingdom come" means: 'Give us the light, the strength to be builders of this new world.’

Now come the petitions concerning the moral life of the Christian; let us listen to the first one:

 

"Give us each day our daily bread.”

 

Let us remember the test God had made his people undergo in the wilderness. He had given them the manna and had decreed that each one could only gather enough for one day. He wanted his people to learn to control their greed, avarice, and the urge to accumulate and hoard more than they needed. He wanted to educate his people to be content with what a day's life requires. By asking for daily bread, we remember this truth, that the goods of this world are not ours, they are a gift from God; they belong to him.

"For the Lord’s is the earth and all it contains, the universe and all its inhabitants," says the first verse of Psalm 24. We are not owners; we are guests, diners at a banquet to which we have been invited. The Lord's Prayer questions our judgment about the use of this world's goods. So, one cannot ask God the daily bread who hoards for himself, to satisfy his whims, who collaborates in the construction of humanity that is divided in two, where some die of poverty and others squander, those who can afford to squander. We ask God to give us 'our bread,' therefore it is his gift, but it is also ours because it is the fruit of our labor. Bread does not grow in the field; grain grows. For it to become bread, man's work is needed.

The Lord's Prayer reminds us of the responsibility in the production of the necessities of life. Those who do not work, those who live in idleness, cannot recite the Lord's Prayer; they would be lying because they cannot say that the bread he gives us is also ours.

Let us now listen to the last two petitions that we make to the Father:

 

"Forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test.”

 

What does God's forgiveness consist of? How does God forgive us? There is still a prevalent image of his forgiveness and it is the one that is reflected in the prayer that someone still recites when going to confession: 'By sinning, I deserved your punishment.' It is the image of the great sovereign who was offended by those who dared to defy him by transgressing his orders; and you ask Him to forgive you because He is good. He forgives and forgets everything. But if you do not ask Him to forgive you, then he is forced to punish you.

This is a blasphemous image of God's forgiveness, and he who says these things profanes his name, he does not sanctify it. This god is very much like us; he is our idol. We love him because he thinks like us. If this were the forgiveness of God, even we who are his sons and daughters, we would be called to forgive only those who recognize their mistake and apologize to us. Instead, we should forgive everyone, as does the heavenly Father who forgives everyone, even those who do not ask for forgiveness. Sin hurts man, not God.

Elihu says to his friend Job: 'If you sin, what harm do you do? If you multiply your offenses what does it matter to God? You are not harming God.' Sin impoverishes those who do it: violence, adultery, theft, lying destroys people, brutalizes them. This is the reason why God, who loves man, shows him the way of life and points out to him what dehumanizes him, and when man sins, God cannot add more evil to that which man has already done to himself.

God's forgiveness precedes the sinner's repentance. The sinner repents after God has forgiven him, i.e., after God has achieved to make him understand that he was on the wrong path. And how does God perform this forgiveness? First, with his word; that word which is the light that keeps on indicating the right path; and then, through his angels who are his sons and daughters who feel like their own the pain of their brother who has gone astray and who is not happy, and they are interested in him; they study all the possible ways to make him understand that he is hurting himself and that he is also hurting others.

To forgive is to give no truce until peace is achieved, until the sinning brother recovers. The sinner is not forgiven because he repents, but he repents after God has forgiven him. Then we do not need to apologize to God; never Jesus in the Gospel says that we have to apologize; we have to apologize to our brother or sister to whom we have done wrong. When God forgives us, we repent; we realize that we have gone astray, and we are invited to celebrate because, in heaven, there is a feast, there is no need to do penance.

In the letter of James, the last sentence of chapter 5 reads: "My brethren, if one of you departs from the truth, and another sets him straight, he who converts the sinner from the wrong way will save his life from death and obtain forgiveness of a multitude of sins." The Lord's Prayer keeps us in this atmosphere of attention to the brother or sister.

The last request we make in the Lord's Prayer, "do not subject us to the final test.” Formerly it was translated: 'Lead us not into temptation.' We know that the translations of this petition that we make to the Lord presented some difficulties; formerly we used to say, 'lead us not into temptation.' This translation was wrong because God does not lead us into temptation. No. Another translation says: 'forsake us not into temptation.' Let us be clear; it is not pretty; if anything, it would be more correct to say, 'in temptation, do not forsake us.' It is not that we ask God not to forsake us in temptation as if he wants to forsake us, and we ask him not to. It's not very well expressed. Even these translations do not respect the original Greek text.

In the Greek text, we find the verb 'eisperein,' which in the Greek has only one meaning: 'not to take us in.' Therefore, it is not to abandon us, no. Not 'to take us inside.' Second term: 'Temptation.' 'Peirasmos' ('do not subject us to the final test’ in our translation). Peirasmós can mean temptation, but it can also mean 'test.' This is the correct translation; we ask the Lord not to bring us inside the test. God guides our life; in this life, we must go through many situations, we must face many trials from which we can come out mature or defeated. And certain tests frighten us.

The trials are not only the diseases, the misfortunes but also successes, strokes of luck. We all know people who have lost their minds or families that were destroyed when wealth came to them out of the blue. That test was not well lived. Among the many inevitable trials that we encounter on the path of life, some frighten us because we feel weak and fragile. The ones that scare us the most are pain; when we go to a hospital, and we see so much suffering we say to the Lord: 'Don't make me go through this trial because I am weak, perhaps I might even lose my faith and come to blasphemy.' These trials frighten me, and I ask the Lord to deliver me from them. Even Jesus made this request, and in the Lord's Prayer is his request to the Father: 'If it is possible, take this cup away from me,' do not take me into this trial. It is not God who sends us trials, no. It is those that are found in life, and we ask the Lord to deliver us from those that frighten us. And when we pray, if we then find ourselves in these trials, we know that precisely through prayer, we will tune our thoughts with God's thoughts, and he will give us the strength to mature from these trials.

This invocation keeps us constantly alert to live in the light of the Gospel everything that happens in our lives; it keeps alive in us the conscience of always having a Father at our side, especially in difficult moments when we are frightened.

Now Jesus concludes his teaching on prayer with a parable that only the evangelist Luke relates. Let us listen to it:

 

“And he said to them, ‘Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him,’ and he says in reply from within, ‘Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.’ I tell you, if he does not get up to give him the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence. ‘And I tell you, ask seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the holy Spirit to those who ask him?’”

 

Several times in the gospels, Jesus invites us to pray; he assures us that the heavenly Father listens to us and answers to our prayers. "Whatever you ask the Father in my name, he will grant you." And in today's parable: “‘Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.’ And then he insists: ‘And the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.’” And if you still do not receive an answer, insist.

When is a prayer answered? We think that prayer is answered when we can get God to do something what we want, no. Prayer is heard not when God changes, but when God gives us his light, --because in prayer we prepare ourselves to receive it--, we begin to think like Him, to see the world and things and life as He sees them.

And to get our thoughts in tune with His takes time. This is why Jesus says that prayer must be long if it is to be answered. It takes time to get in tune with the thoughts of the heavenly Father. Let us think about how difficult it is to make sense of certain painful situations, diseases, injustices, betrayals, abandonment, loneliness... How to live these trials in the light of God? To assimilate His thoughts, it is necessary to remain in intimate dialogue with Him. What is the gift he wants to give us? We can only receive the gift if we put our heart into prayer. It's his life, his Spirit; then, when we pray, the Spirit that we have received from him can act and can manifest in our life, the presence and the life of Jesus of Nazareth because it is the same Spirit that animated him. And when his Spirit acts in us, it means that the prayer that we have made has been heard.

I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.