Just as water always conflicts with fire and fire with water and such things can never dwell together simultaneously, so likewise egotism and virtue are opposed to each other and can never easily coexist in one and the same soul. Therefore egotism is to be expelled from our souls, and we must abide in Christ’s commandments.

When Jesus warned, Beware of practicing your piety before men, he then added pointedly, to be seen by them. On first glance it seems as if the same thing were being repeated, but if you were carefully to pay attention, you will note a careful distinction. Alms may be given in the presence of others primarily to be seen by them, or they may be given in the presence of others but not to be seen, or they may be openly given in order to be seen but still not be seen, or they may be given quietly and still be seen. He is not focusing simply on the outward act done but the inward intent.

He removes all concern for things of the present and bids those thunderstruck by the hope of the future to pursue neither the favor of others by parading their virtue nor religious boasting through an outpouring of public prayer. Rather, the fruit of good works is to be contained within the knowledge of faith, because the pursuit of human praise will receive only that reward which it looks for from people, while to yearn for God’s approval is to pursue a reward longed for patiently.

You who have offered nothing to God, what do you expect to receive from God? Everything done on account of God is given to God and received by God. But what is done to be seen by others is poured into the wind. . . . What is human praise but the sound of the whistling winds? . . . Those who act on account of others, to be praised by them, have wasted their energy. What sort of wisdom is it to put on a show and to prepare empty speeches? Those who do so scorn the treasure of God waiting in eternity in heaven, preferring fleeting human words. It is better to do nothing than to act to be seen. For those who do nothing, even if they do not enter heaven, at least squander nothing on earth. But those who act to be seen by others not only fail to enter heaven but also earn pitiably little on earth.

Earlier Jesus taught that the work of justice is to be done not for the sake of humans but for the sake of God. Now we are also instructed that we should not blow the trumpet when we perform acts of charity. That is, we should not broadcast what we do, because it is not the mark of a devout mind to do any of the works of God in order to anticipate the glory of human praise. Many people, you see, make a donation for the use of the poor in order to reap from the gesture the human praise and the renown of their contemporaries. The Lord shows that they have received the reward of their work in this age. For as long as they seek the glory of this age, they lose the reward of the future promise.

Every act or speech through which one boasts in good works is like a trumpet. Consider one who performs an act of kindness when he sees someone present but does not do so when no one is there. He is like a trumpet, because through this act his boasting is broadcast. Likewise, consider one who performs an act of kindness when someone asks him to do so but does not do it when no one asks. This bad habit is a trumpet. Again, consider one who gives something of value to an upper-class person, should he see one, a person who is able to reciprocate. But to the lowly and to the poor chained by sufferings, he gives nothing. This too is a trumpet, even if he acted in secret, as long as he did it to seem praiseworthy (first, because he did it; second, because he did it secretly). The very act of concealment trumpets his charity. Whatever this man did, thanks to which he stands out or desires to stand out . . . that is a trumpet. The very act of kindness, although it actually happened, trumpets itself. Therefore it is not so much the place or the act, but rather the intention, that is to be kept secret.

Jesus is not talking about literal left and right hands. Rather, he speaks spiritually with intentional exaggeration. If it is possible, he says, for you to remain unaware, let this be your goal. The result, if it be possible, is that your giving be concealed from the very hands that serve. It is not, as some say, that we should hide it from wrong-headed people, for he has commanded here that it should be concealed from all.

Here the Lord is not speaking literally of the hands of the human body. Hands as such cannot know, having the senses neither of seeing nor or language. Rather, on the right hand means righteous deeds and on the left signifies sinful deeds or persons. Thus we read it written in the book of Kings that hand means people when it says, Do I not have ten hands in Israel?^[1]—that is, ten tribes of Israel. Therefore, there is no doubt that on the right hand means the just and on the left means sinners, according to what Solomon related: The Lord acknowledges the divisions on the right; the perverse are those who are on the left.^[2] The Lord makes very plain the meaning of this right and left in the Gospel when he declares that the just are to be placed at the right, the sinners on the left.^[3] If something is to be accomplished according to the teaching of the Lord, then the right hand of the just must not know what the left is doing. That is, in order to labor religiously and faithfully, we should not boast in the sight of sinners and unfaithful people.

A hypocrite is one who pretends to be something one is not. This person pretends to be righteous yet shows no evidence of righteousness. All attention is focused on how one is being perceived or praised by others. Even pretenders may receive this praise precisely while they are deceiving those to whom they seem to be good. But they receive no reward from God the searcher of the heart—only reproach for their deceit. They may have a human reward, but from God they hear, Depart from me, you workers of deceit. You may speak my name, but you do not do my works.^[1] So you receive your reward with others, you have received the glory of others—so what? If you do good for the express purpose of having human glory, what good have you? The praise of others need not even be sought by one who acts rightly. We ought to follow one who acts rightly, profiting by imitating what we praise.

Understand that he means the secret place of the heart rather than a location. For the Lord dwells in the recesses of your heart, not in a particular secret place. Remember that the Lord does not wish us to act in secret in order that our work may be invisible. Elsewhere he says, Let your light shine so that others may see your good works and may glorify your Father who is in heaven.^[1] But it is the Lord who in due time will reveal. Every good thing becomes more pleasing when it is hidden by us but revealed by God. If you display yourself, there are few who will praise you, and few will understand, even if you should appear humble. The one who does understand this will lament you rather than praise you. If, on the other hand, God reveals you, no one will find fault, except perhaps an evil person, to whom a good person is displeasing. For it is impossible that the Lord would ignore the good work of a good person done in secret. God will make such a one known in this age and boast in him in the future, because the glory comes from God.

When you pray, it is as if you were entering into a palace—not a palace on earth, but far more awesome, a palace in heaven. When you enter there, you do so with complete attentiveness and fitting respect. For in the houses of kings all turmoil is set aside, and silence reigns. Yet here you are being joined by choirs of angels. You are in communion with archangels and singing with the seraphim, who sing with great awe their spiritual hymns and sacred songs to God, the Lord of all. So when you are praying, mingle with these voices, patterning yourself according to their mystical order. It is not to human beings that you are praying but to God, who is present everywhere, who hears even before you speak and who knows already the secrets of the heart. If you pray to this One, you shall receive a great reward. For your Father who sees in secret shall reward you openly. He did not merely say he would give it to you but reward you, as if he himself had made a pledge to you and so honored you with a great honor. Because God himself is hidden, your prayer should be hidden.

While pretending to pray to God, the hypocrites are looking around for human praise. The elaborate garb they wear is laughable, and hardly that of a sincere supplicant. One who is earnestly offering a supplication looks exclusively to the One who has the power to grant the request and lets all other claims recede. But if you leave behind the one you are petitioning and immediately go wandering about looking everywhere for others’ approval, you will depart with empty hands.

Our talk is about prayer, which alone the soul offers to God from its depths. It is a kind of spiritual wealth. All acts of justice which a person does, that person does according to his capability and brings them forth from the store of his capacity. Prayer alone he speaks according to his faith and brings forth from the store of his faith. Do you want to know how precious prayer is? No act of outward justice is compared with incense: only prayer is. As is shown in the Revelation of John, the great angel proceeds before the visage of the altar, holding in his hand a censer of the fragrances of incense, and it is said to him, These are the prayers of the holy ones.^[1] Just as well-blended incense delights the worshipful person, so the prayer of the just person is sweet before God. Do you wish to know its dignity? As soon as it issues from the mouth, the angels take it up in their hands and bring it before God, just as the archangel said to Tobias: I am he who has brought your prayer before God.^[2]

Your inner will cannot be hid. This is why Jesus did not say, They shall not receive a reward but They have received their reward—already! Their reward comes from those from whom they themselves most desire to get it. God does not desire this. For God preferred to bestow upon humanity the grace that comes only from himself. Those who seek their reward from people cannot receive another reward from the One for whom they have sought nothing.

Wherever each one sows his seed, there he reaps; and what he sows, that too he reaps. The hypocrites pray on account of others, not on account of God. Thus they are praised by others, not God. Deceitfully they pray, and even then they are not really praying. Deceitfully they are praised, though they are not really praiseworthy. They sell an empty form of religion, and they buy an empty word of praise. Just as the prayer of these people does not please God, neither does the praise of others adorn them. For what is placed in a word lasts as long as the word is spoken; when the word has ended, the benefit that was placed in the word also has ended.

We are asked to pray with the bedroom door closed, as it were, and we are taught to pour out our prayer in every place. The saints’ prayers were undertaken in the presence of wild animals, in prisons, in flames, from the depths of the sea and the belly of the beast. Hence we are admonished not to enter the recesses of our homes but the bedroom of our hearts. With the office of our minds closed, we pray to God not with many words but with our conscience, for every act is superior to the words of speakers.

Enter into your inner chamber. Do not let the door stand open to the boisterous, through whom the things that are outside profanely rush in and assail the inner self.

Outside the inner chamber are all things in time and space, which knock on the door. Through our bodily senses they clamor to interrupt our prayer, so that prayer is invaded with a crowd of vain phantoms. This is why you must shut the door. The senses of the body are resisted, that the spirit of prayer may be directed to the Father. This occurs in the inmost heart, where prayer is offered to the Father in secret. There your Father who sees in secret will reward you. This is a fitting conclusion to good counsel, not merely calling us to pray but also showing us how, not merely calling us to give alms but also showing the right spirit for doing so. The instruction is to cleanse the heart. Nothing cleanses the heart but the undivided and single-minded striving after eternal life from the pure love of wisdom alone.

These things are better understood in a spiritual sense, as spoken about the soul. Room is the heart, or the inner, that is, spiritual intellect. It has been written, That which you say in your hearts, also grieve for in private.^[1] The doorway is the exterior, bodily sense through which all things, good and bad, enter upon the soul. So also in the Canticle, Wisdom speaks in the person of the church: Lo, my beloved knocks at the door, ‘Open to me, my sister, my dearest.’^[2] Christ too knocks at the door of the Christian, entering the heart either through the divine Scriptures or good thoughts. The one who receives them opens oneself to Christ. The one who sends them away shuts the door. For this reason Jesus orders that the soul enter the inward understanding when it prays, so that it thinks of nothing except for what it prays and to whom it prays. Thus it closes the doorway of its bodily sense, so that it may shut outside all external thoughts and cares.

We find in the books of Kings that very holy woman Hannah fulfilling the precepts of this Gospel teaching. For while praying without uttering a sound, in her heart and in the sight of God, she poured out her desire in her prayers. She was immediately found worthy to be heard by the Lord.^[1] In the same way the Lord granted to Daniel, who always prayed in secret with three servants, to understand the interpretations of his dream and the secrets of revelation.^[2] Cornelius too, not yet instructed in the precepts of the gospel, prayed secretly and faithfully in his room and was found worthy to hear the voice of the angel speaking.^[3] What should we say of Jonah, who, not only in his room but trapped in the stomach of the whale, deserved so greatly to be heard through his prayers that from the depths of the sea and from the belly of so great a beast he escaped unharmed and alive?^[4]

Nonbelievers think that they can more easily obtain from the Lord what they require by using many words, but the Lord does not expect this from us. Rather, he wants us to send up our prayers not with wordy speech but with faith that comes from the heart. By doing so we command the merits of justice to him. He surely knows better all the things of which we have need and before we speak is aware of everything that we are going to request.

Let us note carefully the gods to whom the pagans pray, that we may understand how not to pray. They pray to demons, who may hear but are not able to heed. They are not even able to supply evil things, unless God permits it. They pray to dead kings, Jove, Mercury, and others, whose crimes are more manifest than their names. They were not able to help, even while they lived. They pray to insensate idols, who are not able to hear nor to give responses. Understandably then their priests spend a long time summoning where there is no one to hear. When the priests of Baal called on their gods through immolated sacrifices, Elijah said in mockery, Shout, shout strongly: perhaps your gods are sleeping.^[1] In the same way the person who prolongs his prayer with a lot of talk rails at God, as if he were sleeping.

By the example of the importunate widow who prevailed with the pitiless and cruel ruler by persevering in her requests,^[1] we are shown how to pray. We hear the insistent voice of the friend who came late at night and roused the sleeper from his bed,^[2] not for friendship’s sake but out of his urgent need. By these examples Jesus called us continually to make earnest supplication to the Father. He did not ask us to compose a prayer of ten thousand phrases and so come to him and merely repeat it. He warned against those who think that they shall be heard for their loquacity. For your Father knows what you need before you ask him. But if he already knows what we need, why do we pray? Not to inform God or instruct him but to beseech him closely, to be made intimate with him, by continuance in supplication; to be humbled; to be reminded of our sins.

We have an example of just how great a distance there is between the wordy and the humble and simple prayer in the story of the Pharisee and the publican. The prayer of the Pharisee vaunting himself in his abundance of words was rejected. The humble and contrite publican, on the other hand, asking forgiveness for his sins, came away more justified than the self-boasting Pharisee. In this we find fulfilled what was written: The prayer of the humble penetrates the clouds,^[1] reaching God who is ready to hear the request of the one who prays.

Your Father knows what is necessary for you before you ask him. If he knows what we want ahead of time, then we do not pray to demand from God what we want but that it may please him to bestow what we need. God is to be conciliated, not taught; a long prayer is not needful for him but a genuine spirit.

Prayer begins with a demonstration of our belief in God and a blessed act of faith at the moment when we say, Father, who art in heaven. For we are thereby both adoring God and demonstrating our faith, and this form of address is the result. It is written, To those who believe in God he gave the power to be called the children of God.^[1]

Our Lord so frequently spoke to us of God as Father. He even taught us to call none on earth father,^[1] but only the one we have in heaven.^[2] Therefore, when we pray to the Father, we are following this command. Blessed are they who recognize their Father! Remember the reproach made against Israel, when the Spirit calls heaven and earth to witness, saying, I have begotten sons and they have not known me.^[3] In addressing him as Father we are also naming him God, so as to combine in a single term both filial love and power. Addressing the Father, the Son is also being addressed, for Christ said, I and the Father are one. Nor is Mother Church passed over without mention, for the mother is recognized in the Son and the Father, as it is within the church that we learn the meaning of the terms Father and Son.

According to the apostle, as long as the heir has not reached his majority, he differs little from a servant, though he be lord of all. He remains under tutors and governors until the time of his maturity appointed by his father.^[1] But the fullness of time^[2] consists in our Lord Jesus Christ coming among us, when those who desire it receive adoption as sons, as Paul says in these words: For you have not received the spirit of bondage in fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons, whereby we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’^[3]

He wishes himself to be called Father rather than Lord, so that he may give us great confidence in seeking him and great hope in beseeching him. Servants do not always demand what they want nor even always seek with a good conscience things that are righteous. Frequently servants do not consider what pertains to the benefit of their master but to their own benefit. Hence they do not always deserve to be heard. Sons, however, always make petition because they seek with good conscience what is righteous. They do not consider first what is for their own good but what is for the good of their father. Hence they always deserve to be heard. If you believe yourself to be a son of God, seek those things that are advantageous for you to receive and that it behooves him to bestow. However, if you always seek from him carnal and earthly things, you are setting yourself a difficult or impossible task. How would those things benefit you who don’t have them, which everywhere he admonishes you to scorn if you did have them?

Let the new people, therefore, who are called to an eternal inheritance freely employ the word of the New Testament and say, Our Father who art in heaven, that is, the place where holiness and justice reign. For God is not contained spatially. The heavens may be in a sense higher created bodies of the world, even while remaining created, and so cannot exist apart from some spatial location. But do not think of this spatially, as if the birds are nearer to God than we. It is not written that the Lord is closer to tall people or nearer to those who live on higher hills. For it is written, The Lord is near to the broken-hearted and saves the crushed in spirit,^[1] namely, close to those who are humble.

This at once takes away hatred, quells pride, casts out envy and brings in the mother of all good things, charity. By inward prayer the inequality of human things is thwarted. It shows how nearly equal are the king and the poor person in all those matters that are most indispensable and of greatest weight. Behind those closed doors before God, we are all equals.

We pray Hallowed be thy name, not that we wish that God may be made holy by our prayers but that his name may be hallowed in us. But by whom is God made holy, since he himself is incomparably holy? It is because he commands us, Be holy, even as I am holy,^[1] that we ask and entreat that we who were sanctified in baptism may continue in that which we have begun to be. And this we pray for daily, for we have need of daily sanctification, that we who daily fall away may wash out our sins by continual sanctification.^[2]

The prayer to hallow God’s name corresponds with what Jesus has previously taught: Let your light so shine before others that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven,^[1] just as the seraphim too, giving glory, sang Holy, holy, holy.^[2] So hallowed means glorified. In effect he is saying, Enable us to live so purely that through us all may glorify you. It points us again to mature self-control, that we may present to all a life so irreprehensible that every one of those who observe may offer to the Lord the praise due to him for this.

The kingdom of God, according to the word of our Lord and Savior, comes not with observation; and neither shall they say, Behold here, or behold there—but the kingdom of God is within us^[1] (for the word is very near to us,^[2] in our mouths and in our hearts). So one who prays for the coming of the kingdom of God rightly prays that the kingdom of God might be established in himself, that it might bear fruit and be perfected in himself. Every saint, being ruled by God as king and obedient to the spiritual laws of God, as it were, dwells within this kingdom as in a well-ordered city. The Father is present to such a one, and Christ reigns with the Father in the soul that is maturing. This is in accord with the promise that we will come to him and make our abode with him.^[3]

We ask that the kingdom of God may come to us, even as we also ask that his name may be sanctified in us. But when was it ever the case that God did not reign? Or when did that kingdom begin with him who both always has been and never ceases to be? We are here praying that our kingdom, which has been promised us by God, may come, the very kingdom acquired by the blood and passion of Christ. We pray that we who now are his subjects in the world may hereafter reign with Christ when he reigns. For this he himself promises when he says, Come, you blessed of my Father, receive the kingdom that has been prepared for you from the beginning of the world.^[1] Christ himself, dearest beloved, is the kingdom of God, whom we day by day desire to come, whose advent we crave to be quickly manifested to us. For since he is himself the resurrection, since in him we rise again, so also the kingdom of God may be understood to be himself, since in him we shall reign.

The expression thy kingdom come is not to be thought of as if God were not now reigning.^[1] But some might get the strange impression that come implies for the first time upon the earth—as if to imply that God were not even now really reigning upon earth! Or that God had not always reigned upon the earth from the foundation of the world! Come, therefore, is to be understood in the sense of manifested to humanity. Just as light that is present is absent to the blind or to those who shut their eyes, so the kingdom of God, though it never departs from the earth, yet is absent to those who know nothing about it. To none, however, will ignorance of God’s kingdom be permitted when his Only Begotten comes from heaven. Then he will be recognizable not only by the intellect but visibly as the Man of the Lord to judge the living and the dead.

The kingdom of God is called the retribution or the tribulation, which the just receive according to the reward of their justice or sinners according to the guilt of their sinning. The saints too are called the kingdom of God, as it is written, And they will gather the weeds out of his kingdom,^[1] that is, out of the Christian people. The kingdom of God is also called justice, as it is said, The kingdom of God will be taken away from you and will be given to the nation that does his work.^[2] For all these things, there is one interpretation. It is one thing to be a king and another thing to rule. Understand, God is naturally a king, but he does not reign in all. Not all people are his kingdom because not all do his will. Among evil people God does not reign, but the devil—it is his will they do.

When we pray thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we do not imply that anyone could prevent the fulfillment of God’s will or that he needs our prayer to accomplish his will. Rather, we pray that his will be done in all. Think of heaven and earth as a picture of our very selves, spirit and flesh. The sense of the petition is the same, namely, that in us (as spirit and flesh, as heaven and earth combined) the will of God may be done on earth as it is in heaven. Now, what does God will more than that we ourselves walk according to his ways? We ask therefore that he supply us with the energy of his own will and the capacity to do it, that we may be saved, both in heaven and on earth. The sum of his will is the salvation of those whom he has adopted.

We pray that God’s will may be accomplished in sinners also, even as it is accomplished in the saints and the just. This can be taken in two ways. First, we are to pray even for our enemies. For what else shall we call those in spite of whose will the Christian and Catholic name still spreads? According to this understanding the petition, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven, is intended to convey the following meaning: As the righteous do your will, let sinners do it also, so they may be converted. Second, the interpretation may be taken in the sense that your will be done on earth as it is in heaven is to be understood as a petition for the final rendering of his just due to every person. This will be done at the last judgment, when the lambs will be separated from the goats.

Notice how carefully Jesus spoke. He did not say, Father, hallow thy name among us, bring thy kingdom upon us, do thy will among us, lest God should seem to hallow himself among people or want to bring his kingdom among those he wishes or to do his will among those he wishes; and thus God would show partiality toward certain people. Nor did he say, Let us hallow thy name, let us receive thy kingdom, let us do thy will, in heaven and on earth, lest it seem that only people are hallowing God or receiving his kingdom or doing his will. Rather, he spoke moderately and impersonally; in other words, Let it be hallowed, let it come, let it be done, that he might show the necessary work of both persons, for humans consider God necessary and God considers human willing necessary for the doing of justice. For even as people cannot do good without God’s help, neither does God will to do good in people unless they will to let him.

Since some understand from this that we are commanded to pray for material bread, it will be well to refute their error here and to establish the truth about the epiousios (supersubstantial)^[1] bread. We must ask them how it could be that he who commanded us to ask for great and heavenly favors should command us to intercede with the Father for what is small and of the earth, as if he had forgotten—so they would have it—what he had taught. For the bread that is given to our flesh is neither heavenly, nor is the request for it a great request.

We, on our part, following the Master himself who teaches us about the bread, shall treat the matter explicitly. In the Gospel according to John he says to those who had come to Capernaum seeking for him: Amen, amen, I say to you, you seek me, not because you have seen miracles but because you did eat of the loaves and were filled.^[2] One who has eaten of the bread blessed by Jesus and is filled with it tries all the more to understand the Son of God more perfectly and hastens to him. Hence his admirable command: Labor not for the meat that perishes but for that which endures to life everlasting, which the Son of Man will give you.^[3] . . . The true bread is that which nourishes the true humanity, the person created after the image of God.

Daily bread may be understood both spiritually and simply, because both meanings help us to understand salvation. For Christ is the bread of life; and this bread is not the bread of all, but it is our bread. And as we say our Father, because he is the father of those who understand and believe, so too we say our bread, because Christ is the bread of us who touch his body. Now we ask that this bread be given to us today, lest we who are in Christ and receive his Eucharist daily as the food of salvation should be separated from Christ’s body through some grave offense that prohibits us from receiving the heavenly bread. For according to his words: I am the living bread that came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread that I shall give is my flesh for the life of the world.^[1]

In the Gospel the term used by the Hebrews to denote supersubstantial bread is maar. I found that it means for tomorrow, so that the meaning is Give us this day our bread for tomorrow, that is, the future.^[1] We can also understand supersubstantial bread in another sense: bread that is above all substances and surpasses all creatures.

What is daily bread? Just enough for one day. Here Jesus is speaking to people who have natural needs of the flesh, who are subject to the necessities of nature. He does not pretend that we are angels. He condescends to the infirmity of our nature in giving us his commands. The severity of nature does not permit you to go without food. So for the maturing of your life, he says, I require necessary food, not a complete freedom from natural necessities. But note how even in things that are bodily, spiritual correlations abound. For it is not for riches or frills that we pray. It is not for wastefulness or extravagant clothing that we pray, but only for bread. And only for bread on a daily basis, so as not to worry about tomorrow.^[1]

How necessary, providential and expedient it is for us to be reminded that we are sinners and must ask pardon for our sins. And while we ask for God’s forgiveness, our minds retain an awareness of those sins! Lest anyone become complacent and suffer the fate of flattering himself, he is instructed and reminded that he sins daily, while he is ordered to ask pardon for his sins. Thus John advises us in his epistle, If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we acknowledge our sins, the Lord is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.^[1] In his epistle there is a twofold connection. We must ask pardon for our sins and obtain forgiveness when we ask pardon. Moreover, he said that the Lord is faithful in pardoning sins and loyal to his promise, for he who taught us to ask forgiveness for our trespasses and sins promised paternal mercy and subsequent pardon. He added and clearly imparted a law that binds us by a definite condition and guarantee. We shall be pardoned for our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, knowing that we cannot obtain pardon for our sins unless we give equal pardon to those who sin against us. In this regard he says in another place: With what measure you measure, it shall be measured to you.^[2] And the servant who, after his every offense has been forgiven by the Lord, is unwilling to forgive his fellow servant shall be sent to prison. Because he was unwilling to pardon his fellow servant, he forfeited what the Lord had pardoned him.^[3]

This prayer for forgiveness belongs to believers. For the uninitiated could not call God Father. We discover forgiveness within the nurturing pedagogy of the church. If then the prayer belongs to believers and they pray, entreating that sins may be forgiven them, it is clear that even after baptism the profit of repentance is not taken away.^[1] If he had not meant to signify this, why would he have instructed us to pray for forgiveness? He asks us to bring our sins to remembrance and ask for forgiveness, and he teaches us how to obtain remission. He makes the way uncomplicated. By this rule of supplication it is clear that it is possible even after the font of baptism that our offenses may still be washed away. He thereby persuades us to be modest, commands us to forgive others, sets us free from vengeful obsessions, promises pardon, and holds before us good hopes and a high view of the unspeakable mercy of God.

It is certainly a bargain to be reckoned with when we say, Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. We can be sure that we have violated that rule if we do not forgive those who ask our pardon, since we too want to be forgiven by our most generous Father with respect to those who seek pardon from us. Now, as to that commandment by which we are ordered to pray for our enemies,^[1] we are not ordered to pray for those who seek forgiveness. For such persons are not enemies. In no way, however, can someone really say that he is praying for a person he does not know. Therefore it must be said that we should forgive all sins committed against us if we want the Father to forgive what we have committed.

With what assurance does that person pray who harbors animosity toward someone who has offended him? Even as he lies when he prays and says, I forgive and does not forgive, so too he seeks pardon from God, but he will not be pardoned. Therefore, if that person who has been offended prays to God without assurance unless he pardons the very person who offended him, how do you think that person prays who not only has been offended by another but himself offends and oppresses others through injustice? But many people who are unwilling to forgive those who sin against them avoid saying this prayer. They are ill-advised, first, because the one who does not pray as Christ taught is not Christ’s disciple; second, because the Father does not graciously hear a prayer that the Son has not recommended. For the Father knows the words and meaning of his Son, and he does not accept what the human mind has devised but what the wisdom of Christ has expressed. Therefore you may indeed say a prayer, but you may not outsmart and deceive God. And you will not receive forgiveness unless you yourself have first forgiven.

To complete the prayer that was so well arranged, Christ added that we should pray not only that our sins be forgiven but also that they be resisted completely: Lead us not into temptation, that is, do not allow us to be led by the tempter. God forbid that our Lord should seem to be the tempter, as if he were not aware of one’s faith or were eager to upset it! That weakness and spitefulness belongs to the devil. For even in the case of Abraham, God had ordered the sacrifice of his son not to tempt his faith but to prove it. In him he might illustrate that which he was later to teach, that no one should hold loved ones dearer than God. . . . The disciples were so tempted to desert their Lord that they indulged in sleep instead of prayer. Therefore the phrase that balances and interprets lead us not into temptation is but deliver us from evil.

Jesus here calls the devil the wicked one, commanding us to wage against him a war that knows no truce. Yet he is not evil by nature, for evil is not something derived from any nature as created but is what has been added to nature by choice. The devil is the prototypically evil one, because of the excess of his evil choices and because he who in no respect was injured by us wages against us an implacable war. Thus we do not pray deliver us from the wicked ones in the plural but from the wicked one.

After all those things, in the prayer’s summation there occurs a little clause concluding all our petitions and prayer in succinct fashion. For at the very last we state but deliver us from evil, understanding the phrase to mean all adversities that the enemy undertakes against us in this world. There can be strong and faithful protection against these adversities if God delivers us, if, as we pray and implore, he furnishes us his aid. Moreover, when we say deliver us from evil, nothing remains for which we should ask still further. When once we seek God’s protection against evil, having obtained this, we stand secure and safe against all the works of the devil and of the world. For what fear, indeed, is there with regard to the world for one who has God as protector in the world?

We must consider and carefully set forth the respective and distinctive notes of those seven petitions. While our present life is passing away like time, our hope is fixed on the life eternal, and while we cannot reach the eternal without first passing through the present life, eternal things are first in importance. In addition, the fulfillment of the first three petitions has its beginning in the life that begins and ends in this world. For the hallowing of God’s name began with the advent of the Lord’s humility; and the coming of his kingdom—the coming in which he will appear in brightness—will be made manifest not after the end of the world but at the ending of the world; and the perfect fulfilling of God’s will on earth as in heaven—whether you take the words heaven and earth to mean the righteous and the sinful, or the spirit and the flesh, or the Lord and the church, or all of these together—will be fully achieved through the full attainment of our blessedness, and therefore at the ending of the world. But all three will continue for all eternity; for the hallowing of God’s name will continue forever, and of his kingdom there is no end, and there is the promise of everlasting life for our blessedness. Therefore these three things will continue, completely fulfilled, in the life that is promised to us.

It seems to me that our remaining four petitions pertain to the needs of this temporal life. The first of them is give us this day our daily bread; the mere fact that it is called a daily bread shows that it pertains to the present time, the time which the Lord has called today. This is equally clear, no matter what significance one may attach to the expression daily bread; that is to say, whether we take it as signifying spiritual bread or the bread that is visible either in the sacrament or in our earthly food. Of course, this opinion does not imply that spiritual food is not everlasting. What the Scriptures call daily food is offered to the soul in the sound of human speech or in some kind of sign that is confined to time. There will be none of these things when everyone will be taught of God^[1] and will be imbibing the ineffable light of truth through mind alone but not imparting it through any bodily actions. Perhaps that is the very reason why this nourishment is called food rather than drink. For just as food must be broken up and chewed before it can become nourishment for the body, so also is the soul nourished by the Scriptures when it has uncovered and digested their inner meaning. But whatever is taken in the form of drink is not changed as it flows into the body. Therefore truth is called food as long as it is referred to as daily bread; when there will be no need of breaking it, so to speak, and chewing it, then it will be in the form of drink. This will be the case when there will be no need of discussing and discoursing, when nothing will be needed but a drink of pure and crystal truth.

In this life we are both receiving and granting forgiveness of sins, and this is the second of those four petitions. But in eternity there will be no forgiving of sins, because there will be no sins to be forgiven. Temptations make this life troublesome, but there will be no temptations after the fulfillment of the promise, You will hide them in the secret of your presence.^[2] Of course, the evil from which we wish to be delivered is an evil that is present with us in this life, and it is during this life that we wish to be delivered from it. For through God’s justice we have by our own faults made this life mortal, and through the mercy of God we are being delivered from that mortality.

Nothing makes us so like God as our readiness to forgive the wicked and wrongdoer. For it is God who has made the sun to shine on the evil and on the good.^[1]

For this same reason again in every one of the clauses Jesus commands us to make our prayers together in one voice, saying, our Father, and thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven, and give us the bread, and forgive us our debts, and lead us not into temptation, and deliver us. So everywhere he is teaching us to use this plural word that we may not retain so much as a vestige of resentment against our neighbor.

How great a reproof then must they deserve, who, after all this, still do not forgive and even ask God’s vengeance on their enemies. In doing so they diametrically transgress this command. Meanwhile Christ is seeking in every way possible to hinder our conflicts with one another. For since love is the root of all that is good, by removing from all quarters whatever mars it he brings us together and cements us to each other. For there is not one, not a single one, whether father or mother or friend, who loves us as much as the God who created us.

And certainly we should not heedlessly neglect to call attention to the fact that of all the pronouncements in which the Lord has ordered us to pray, he has deliberately attached a very special commendation to the pronouncement that deals with the forgiving of sins. In this pronouncement he wished us to be merciful because that is the only prescribed means of avoiding miseries. Indeed, in no other petition do we pray in such a manner as to make a kind of covenant with the Lord, for we say, Forgive us as we also forgive. If we default in this covenant, the whole petition is fruitless, for he says, For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.^[1]