Seven Blessings

Praying with the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer

06/22/2017

Matthew 6:7-15 

Jesus said to his disciples: "In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them. Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. "This is how you are to pray: 'Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.' "If you forgive others their transgressions, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions."

           In the Christian life, we come across many “sacred sevens” (lists of seven holy things). For instance, we find the seven sacraments, the seven deadly sins, the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sorrows of Mother Mary, the seven days of creation, and of course, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In the gospel today, Jesus introduces us to another list of seven, but one that most people haven’t heard of, namely, in the Our Father. Did you know the Lord’s Prayer is comprised of seven petitions, seven requests we make of God? Listen to how the Catechism of the Catholic Church beautifully describes this in the fourth and final section on prayer. We read: “After we have placed ourselves in the presence of God our Father to adore and to love and to bless him, the Spirit of adoption stirs up in our hearts seven petitions, seven blessings” (Catechism, 2803). I highly recommend you read the whole section on the Our Father, but let me briefly touch on each of these seven petitions.

           The first petition asks, “Hallowed be Thy name.” “Hallowed” means “holy,” and we pray that God’s holy Name may never be defiled or taken in vain. This first petition corresponds to the second of the Ten Commandments, “Do not take the Name of the Lord your God in vain” (Exodus 20:7). If you’ve ever used God’s Name as a curse word, or as an expletive, this first petition is to help you keep God’s Name holy, “hallowed by thy name.”

           The second petition prays: “Thy kingdom come.” I frequently point out this second petition at funerals. I say, “The Kingdom has come for our beloved dead; we pray he or she stands before the King of kings today. That we, too, may be in the kingdom one day, we pray as Jesus taught us.” In other words, the second petition begs Jesus to return in glory at the end of time, and establish his kingdom definitively. And the sooner he returns the better, “Thy kingdom come.”

           The third petition is “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Have you ever wondered: what is God’s will? It’s simple: God wants us to be happy but God also wants us to be holy. Why does he also want us to be holy? Well, because God knows that we will never be really happy without also being really holy. And holiness always comes with a cross: an illness, the loss of a job, a broken friendship, a failed project, a divorce, people who hurt us. As Scott Hahn likes to say: “God loves us just the way we are, but he loves us too much to let us stay that way.” God’s will is for our happiness and our holiness, “Thy will be done.”

            The fourth petition asks: “Give us this day our daily bread.” The Catechism explains that this means certainly ask God for physical nourishment, but above all for spiritual sustenance. We read in the Catechism: “’Daily (epiousios) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament…Taken literally (epi-ousios: ‘super-essential’), it refers directly to the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the ‘medicine of immortality,’ without which we have no life within us” (Catechism, 2837). By the way, in case you’re wondering why you get up so early, and lose sleep, are barely awake, and stumble into daily Mass at 7 a.m., it’s to fulfill the fourth petition of the Our Father: “give us this day our daily (Eucharistic) Bread.”

          The fifth petition is the hardest in my book, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” This asks for God’s grace to forgive others not only with our lips, but with our hearts, which means not harboring hatred, or resentments, or past hurts. This is one of the biggest hurdles in marriage counseling: not bringing up past hurts, and that’s why Jesus included it as the fifth petition, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

          The sixth petition is “lead us not into temptation.” The Catechism explains that this verb “lead” means both don’t put us in the path of temptation, but also means give us the grace to overcome those temptations. Sometimes it’s only when we are tempted and tested that we grow. I give little tests in parish council meetings, and everyone else prays, “Lead us not into temptation” of Father John! But while temptations hold out the risk of failure, they are also the necessary condition for the reward of holiness, “lead us not into temptation.”

          

          The final petition requests: “Deliver us from evil.” This is s stark and sober reminder that evil exists. In our overly scientific and sanitized world, we can forget about evil, sin and Satan, and that’s exactly what the Devil wants. But Jesus wants us to remember the Evil One, and to ask the Father for the strength to overcome him, “deliver us from evil.”

           Next time you pray the Lord’s Prayer, pay close attention to these seven sacred petitions, almost as closely as you pay attention to the movie “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

Praised be Jesus Christ!