A Homily for the Tuesday of the Twenty-Third Week: An Explanation of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our Father” (Part 1)

Drawn from patristic writings, chiefly from the 9th Discourse of Saint Cassian the Roman

Prayer, being the precious heritage of all Christians, constitutes the chief occupation of the holy desert dwellers. It is their food; it is their book; it is their learning; it is their life. The great desert dweller John, the Forerunner of the Lord, was a practitioner of prayer; he was also a teacher of it. This great science, which grants man union with God, was taught by the holy Forerunner to his disciples, as we have heard today in the Gospel (Lk 11:1–4; Mt 6:9–13).

The disciples of the Lord wished to learn prayer from the Lord Himself. A sensible, just desire! The true teacher of true prayer is God alone, while holy teachers – men – give only initial understanding of prayer, point out the right disposition in which the gracious teaching about prayer can be conveyed through the bestowal of supernatural, spiritual thoughts and feelings. These thoughts and feelings proceed from the Holy Spirit, are communicated by the Holy Spirit. The Lord fulfilled the wise request of His disciples, the request essentially necessary for soul-building and salvation: He taught them the prayer which only God could teach. This will be proved by the explanation of this prayer, called, in distinction from the prayers composed by holy men, the Lord’s Prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer begins with the invocation: “Our Father”. Who among holy men would allow himself and his brethren, sinful men, rejected, held in captivity by the devil and eternal death, such an invocation to God? Clearly, no one. This only God could allow. He allowed it; and if He allowed it, then He also granted it. The Son of God, having become man, made men sons of God, His brothers. He relates to God the Father by right of nature: “Our Father!” and to us He grants the gracious right to approach God as Father, to begin our prayer to Him with a wonderful, striking beginning, which would not have dared come to anyone’s mind: “Our Father!”

The beginning of the Lord’s Prayer is a gift of the Lord, a gift of infinite price, a gift of the Redeemer to the redeemed, the Saviour to the saved. The petitions of which the Lord’s Prayer consists are petitions for spiritual gifts, acquired for humanity by redemption. There is no word in the prayer about the fleshly, temporal needs of man. He who commanded to seek only the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, who promised to add everything necessary temporal to those seeking this kingdom, teaches a prayer in accordance with His commandment and promise.

Following the invocation and to the very invocation “Our Father” is immediately added an indication of the place where the Father dwells, uncontained by any place, omnipresent, containing all things in Himself: “Our Father, who art in heaven”. By indicating the Father’s dwelling in heaven the praying soul is raised to heaven. Forget all earthly things; set aside the earth – this shelter given to you for the briefest time; set aside all the appurtenances of this shelter, which will be taken from you after the brief term expires; direct all your care to your homeland, to heaven, lost by the Fall, restored by redemption; offer a prayer for the granting to you eternal, spiritual, all-holy, divine gifts, surpassing by their immeasurable worth not only the comprehension of men, but also the comprehension of angels. These gifts are already prepared for you; they already await you. God’s justice, inseparable from His goodness, requires that your willingness to receive the heavenly treasures be made manifest, be made manifest by your prayer and by your life.

All servants of the Lord, without exception, will be struck with amazement at the greatness of the Lord’s Prayer. From God’s right hand divine mercies are showered down. Even the righteous man recognizes himself unworthy of them, and the request for them unlawful for himself. How much more will amazement strike the sinner, who acknowledges himself worthy of punishment alone. This amazement is resolved by an explanation that leads from amazement to amazement. The Lord’s Prayer was given to men before their redemption was finally accomplished; they were called sons and invited to the rights of sons before adoption, before rebirth by Baptism, before participation in the Mystery of the Last Supper, before renewal by the Holy Spirit. The Lord’s Prayer was given to sinners. Where God works, there all is possible and all is incomprehensible.

The Lord’s Prayer was given to sinners, and first of all they are taught to ask of God, their Father, “that His name be hallowed”. In this petition of man is contained the acknowledgment of sinfulness, of the Fall. In this petition is contained the petition for the grant of sincere repentance. “Hallowed be Your name” in my soul’s temple! I ask this because I do not find this in myself. I find the opposite: I am in sorrowful bondage to sin and to fallen spirits, who have invented sin, infected me with sin, enslaved themselves to me and hold me in bondage by means of sin. In my soul wander shameful, foul-smelling thoughts and sensations. Whether they enter it from without, or are born in it – I do not know; I know that they appear unhindered and imperiously, that I have no strength to drive them out of myself and cast them forth. By these thoughts and sensations God is angered; from them recoils the all-holy God; by them God is blasphemed; with them I remain alienated from God. I have need of cleansing! I have need of repentance! Grant me, my Heavenly Father, mighty repentance, which would cleanse my inner temple from all impurities and stench, would make me capable of receiving the adoption given by You, would make me even during my earthly pilgrimage a dweller of heaven. Until now I creep along the earth. Let true knowledge of God enter my soul! Let it sanctify my mind, my heart, all my activity: “Hallowed” be in me “Your name” (Mt 5:8). Such is the significance of this petition. We can desire repentance and purity; we can and must employ all means within our power to obtain them; but their acquisition does not depend on us. It is a gift of God. We must first of all ask the heavenly Father that from His spiritual treasuries He send down to us the gift of repentance, by repentance cleanse us from sinful defilement, adorn us with blessed purity, which sees God (Mt 5:8), which alone is capable of receiving true knowledge of God. “Hallowed be Your name!”

“Your kingdom come!” “The kingdom of God is within you” (Lk 17:21). What a wonderful sequence in the Lord’s Prayer! By this sequence is depicted the sequence, the gradualness, the exalted and holy system of spiritual progress. After the petition for the granting of perfect knowledge of God, the Lord teaches the man adopted by God to ask that the Kingdom of God descend into his soul. This kingdom He commands to be requested by a humble but powerful prayer of faith. It is impossible for the believer not to receive it. It is promised by God’s Word: “He who has my commandments and observes them, he is the one who loves me”; in whom my name is hallowed, “he is the one who loves me: and he who loves me will be loved by my Father” (Jn 14:21). “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word; if anyone loves me”, in him will my name be hallowed, “and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him” (Jn 14:23). “Your kingdom come!” Wondrous petition; wondrous desire is awakened by the petition; bold prayer is inspired by a supernatural desire! And this prayer is fulfilled. It is fulfilled: there are experiences serving as proof of its fulfillment. To what else can the great signs which the holy ones of God performed be attributed, if not to the fact that God dwelt and worked in them? To what else can the ability to prophesy, to reveal secrets hidden in the depths of hearts and minds, which was manifested in God’s holy ones, be attributed, if not to the fact that God was present in them and spoke through them, God who sees the distant future as the present, God for whom there are no secrets? The saints themselves testified to this. Apostle Paul wrote about himself to the Galatians: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me” (Gal 2:20); he wrote to the Corinthians: “Do you seek proof that Christ is speaking in me” (2 Cor 13:3). When the apostles Peter and John healed the lame man from his birth at the Beautiful Gate of the temple in Jerusalem, and the amazed multitude gathered around the apostles, they said to him: “Men of Israel, why do you marvel at this? Or why do you stare at us as if we had made him walk by our own power or piety? The God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified his servant Jesus” (Acts 3:12–13). In the book of Acts we read a striking event: Jerusalem Christians, in fulfillment of the Lord’s command, sold their possessions and brought the proceeds and laid them at the apostles’ feet, by which means there was not a single poor person among them. Like the others, one named Ananias, with his wife Sapphira, sold their property, but with her knowledge his wife kept back some of the proceeds, and brought only a part and laid it at the apostles’ feet, thinking to deceive the Spirit-bearing apostles. Then Saint Peter said to him: “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the proceeds of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, were not the proceeds at your disposal? How is it that you have contrived this deed in your heart? You did not lie to us but to God”. Ananias, hearing these words, fell down dead. Sapphira met the same fate, wishing to support her husband’s action and taking part in his sin before the Holy Spirit who dwelt in the apostles (Acts 5:1–10). Throughout all centuries of Christendom on the records of Church history are inscribed experiences displayed in God’s holy ones, actions surpassing human nature, belonging not to human nature, but to God, dwelling and reigning in holy men. Saint Macarius of Egypt says: “In those whom the grace of the Divine Spirit has illumined and settled in the depth of their mind, the Lord is, as it were, the soul.” Again this great Father says: “The action and power of the Holy Spirit abide in man renewed.”.

One who has felt the Kingdom of God in himself becomes alien to the world, hostile to God. One who has felt the Kingdom of God in himself can wish, by true love toward neighbors, that the Kingdom of God be revealed in all of them. He can infallibly wish that the visible Kingdom of God come to pass on earth, consume sin from the face of the earth, establish the reign of Justice upon it. Out of this state the holy John the Theologian made his prayerful appeal to the Lord, conversing with him in his spiritual rapture, who promised to come soon for the final settling of the world’s fate: “Yes, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev 22:20): the earth is filled with lawlessness, it needs cleansing and renewal. The unprepared one, seeing his soul’s temple still in sorrowful emptiness, without its dweller – God, asks the contrary. He asks for the grant of time to complete the struggle, like the vinedresser who begged the master who had commanded the cutting down of the barren, mysterious fig tree: “Sir, leave it alone for one more year, while I dig around it”, separating it from attachments that drain its strength, “and put manure on it” – humility and repentance (Lk 13:8).

“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. Heaven is the name given to the heavenly dwellers: by them the will of God is accomplished immaculately, unfailingly. They no longer mix their own will with the will of God! They no longer have a separate will! Their will has merged into one with the will of God. Upon them has been fulfilled what the Saviour of the World requested from God the Father for His disciples and for all His followers, men: “I do not ask only on behalf of these”, apostles, “but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, all one… so that they may be one, as we are one: I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one” (Jn 17:20–23). “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. By earth are named Christians. Each of us will not err if, pronouncing this petition, he understands by the name “earth” his own heart, not separating the body from the heart. Whatever direction the powers of the heart take, the powers of the body are directed in the same direction, and the attraction of the body is transformed in accordance with the attraction of the heart, from carnal and bestial to spiritual, holy, angel-like. Complete union of human will with the will of God is the state of perfection which rational creatures of God can alone attain. The angels have this perfection. Our Saviour desires that we too, weak and unhappy men, taken from the earth, wandering and tossed about on earth during the brief term, descending into the earth after its passage, should acquire what the most holy heavenly spirits possess. He commands us to seek perfection, still incomprehensible to us. One who has felt the Kingdom of God in himself learns not to be content with this; he learns not to give himself to heedlessness and idleness; he learns to strive toward the fuller development in himself of the reign of the Divine. Let the will of God act exclusively in all the being of man, in all the component parts of it, in spirit, soul and body, joining together and in itself the will of these parts, separated by the Fall! Only by the will of God can human will, poisoned by sin, be healed; only in the will of God and by means of it can the desires of the component parts of man, which have taken different, opposite directions, pass from discord to concord, be united in one desire; only animated by the will of God can human will tear itself away from the earth and ascend to heaven. “Brothers”, Saint Apostle Paul says, “I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us then who are mature think this way” (Phil 3:13–15).

“Give us this day our daily bread”. This is not said about perishable food! “Do not worry, saying, What will we eat? or What will we drink? or What will we wear?” (Mt 6:31); it is spoken about food that gives eternal life and remains eternally, about new food which the God-man Son of God bestowed upon men, about the bread of life descended from heaven, about God’s bread, able to satisfy and bestow eternal life upon the whole world (Jn 6:27, 33). The word “daily” means that this bread by its quality is superior to all things existing. Its greatness and holiness are infinite, incomprehensible; the sanctification, dignity bestowed by its consumption, are boundless, indescribable. The bread given by the Son of God is His all-holy flesh, which He gave for “the life of the world” (Jn 6:51). To this wondrous food is joined an equally wondrous drink. The flesh of the God-man is given as food to the faithful, His blood as drink. The God-man differed in nothing from other men, being a perfect man; but He was at the same time a perfect God: all saw and handled in Him a man by appearance; by His deeds they recognized God. Similarly He willed that His all-holy body and all-holy blood be covered by the substance of bread and wine: bread and wine are seen and tasted, but the Body and Blood of the Lord are received and consumed in them. There are no words, no means to depict the state into which those who partake of the body and blood of the God-man are raised. The God-man depicted this state thus: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” (Jn 6:56). The state depicted and explained by these words remains incomprehensible and indescribable: by these words is depicted a height of state beyond the grasp of human reason. It is known to God alone: “No one knows who the Son is except the Father” (Lk 10:22), and the one who is united with the Son is incomprehensible fully to neither neighbors nor himself; adequately comprehensible to God alone.

According to the dignity of the food, according to the effect which is accomplished from its consumption in those who consume it, the Lord named His Flesh the one true food, and His Blood the one true drink of man renewed by redemption (Jn 6:55). Ordinary food of the sons of the old Adam, common to them with dumb animals, destroyed by digestion and unable to prevent death, is this “food that perishes” (Jn 6:27), unworthy of the name food when the daily bread appeared, the heavenly bread, the bread that destroys death, that imparts eternal life (Jn 6:58). “Our daily bread” – thus the petition is written by the holy evangelist Luke – “give us each day” (Lk 11:3). With the petition is joined a commandment, imposing on Christians the obligation, now so much neglected, of daily partaking of the Holy Mysteries. “Having said ‘each day’, the Lord expressed by this that without this bread we are incapable of passing even one day in spiritual life. Having said ‘today’, He expressed by this that it should be tasted daily, that its bestowal on the past day is insufficient, if on the current day it will not be bestowed on us again. The daily need for it requires that we repeat this petition more frequently and bring it forward at all times: there is no day in which it is not necessary for us by use and partaking of it to strengthen the heart of our inner man.”.

“And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors”. Having granted sinners the most exalted goods, goods of most precious worth, surpassing all worth, bestowed them from His infinite mercy, the Lord requires also mercy from us toward our neighbors. The mystery of redemption is founded on mercy. It is the manifestation of God’s mercy toward fallen humanity and can be received solely by the disposition of a soul wholly attuned to mercy toward fallen humanity. We cannot receive the redemption bestowed upon us by God except by having compassion on ourselves and on humanity, as acknowledging our sinfulness, our fall, our ruin; as acknowledging the sinfulness, fall, ruin of all humanity; as acknowledging the universal, all-complete need for God’s mercy. The forgiveness to neighbors of their sins against us, their debts, is our own need: not fulfilling this, we shall never acquire the disposition capable of receiving redemption. Hardness of heart is like iron, firmly locked gates! It will not admit the divine gift into our heart. Explaining this property of redemption and the reason for the condition in the petition, the Lord said: “For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your trespasses” (Mt 6:14–15). A Christian should pay particular attention to the spiritual malady of grudge-holding, drive it out at its first appearance, not permit it to nest in the soul under any pretext, however righteous the pretext may appear at first glance. If we allow grudge-holding to act – it will lay waste to the soul, make all our struggles and virtues fruitless, deprive us of God’s mercy. Our forgiveness of the sins of our neighbors is a sign that God’s Spirit has dwelt in us, reigns in us, governs and guides our will. Until that time there is need for special personal effort to resist the passion of grudge-holding. Our struggle against this passion is secretly aided by God, Who withholds obvious help so that our will may express itself with certainty. Grudge-holding is based on pride. Pride lurks even in those sanctified by grace, God’s chosen ones. It is necessary for them too to watch against this inner poison and against the soul-murder produced by it – grudge-holding. Through the forgiveness by us of our brothers’ debts we draw God’s grace into ourselves: we retain it in ourselves, constantly forgiving the debts of our neighbors.

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”. The second half of the petition explains the first. By temptations are meant here those truly calamitous cases and misfortunes when, for our own voluntary inclination toward sin, we are delivered into the power of the devil and perish, as did Judas Iscariot. “Satan entered into him”, Scripture says of him (Jn 13:27). The petition does not teach us to reject sorrows, necessary for our salvation, that protect us from our passions and demons. “I take pleasure”, the Apostle says of the grievous afflictions to which he was subjected, “in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, and in calamities for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor 12:10). These afflictions were permitted to the Apostle by God’s Providence, as he himself explains, to keep him from conceit (2 Cor 12:7). The Lord has given as a portion to His followers, throughout the time of their earthly pilgrimage, sorrows. “In the world you face persecution” (Jn 16:33), He said to the apostles, and through them to all Christians: “If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hates you” (Jn 15:19). “You will be hated by all on account of my name. But by your endurance you will gain your souls” (Lk 21:17, 19). Together with the dogmas of Christian faith, Holy Apostle Paul proclaimed to the world, “It is through many persecutions that we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). In the Epistle to the Hebrews the Apostle says that all who pleased God endured punishment and training from the Lord, that those not subjected to it are rejected by God, as foreign to Him (Heb 12:8). “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil!” Not only do not permit the passions to gain mastery over us, by which we are subjected to the devil, but also deliver us from that captivity in which we are held by the devil because of our fall! Do not permit us to be drawn away by our sinful will, by the fulfilling of which we deceive and destroy ourselves! Do not permit us to be seduced by false thoughts and teachings! Do not permit us to be overcome by avarice, love of glory, love of power! Do not permit us to be enslaved to lust and sensuality while we have abundance of earthly goods, nor to cowardice and complaining when we are surrounded by deprivations! Do not permit us to sin! Do not permit pride to seize us when we live a virtuous life, nor let despair and hopelessness swallow us at any stumbling.

The beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, by which man is permitted to relate to God as to a father, explains the reason for the most exalted petitions that constitute the prayer. A son can ask of his father everything that the father has. And in the Lord’s Prayer we ask God that He grant us Himself as an inalienable possession of ours, that He dwell in us, establish His kingdom in us, that thereby we in turn may dwell in Him – reign through His mediation over all. The beginning has a corresponding conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer. On God’s infinite goodness toward humanity is founded the vastness of the petitions; on God’s omnipotence is established the conviction in hearing and obtaining the petitions. “For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, forever. Amen”. With such words of faith the Lord’s Prayer is sealed! By them is recognized and confessed the one essential, all-encompassing power – the power of God. From the confession of it the Christian becomes free, as the Lord declared to the blind Pilate, who boasted of his power over Him: “You would have no power over me unless it had been given you from above” (Jn 19:11). Spiritual freedom is the heritage of perfect Christians. Of it the Apostle said: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17). When the omnipotence of God opens before the eyes of the mind, purified by repentance and illumined by grace, then the power of angels and men descends into nothingness (1 Cor 7:21–23), then the believer and pray-er confesses the great truth “that” to God alone belongs “the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever”.