The texts from the Roman Catholic Lectionary today remind us to contemplate our relationship with God and others in prayer.
Work and Prayer
The reading from the Second Letter of Paul to the Corinthians reveals the conflict between Paul and false Apostles.
* [11:5] These “superapostles”: this term, employed again in 2 Cor 12:11b, designates the opponents of whom Paul has spoken in 2 Cor 10 and again in 2 Cor 11:4. They appear to be intruders at Corinth. Their preaching is marked at least by a different emphasis and style, and they do not hesitate to accept support from the community. Perhaps these itinerants appeal to the authority of church leaders in Jerusalem and even carry letters of recommendation from them. But it is not those distant leaders whom Paul is attacking here. The intruders are “superapostles” not in the sense of the “pillars” at Jerusalem (Gal 2), but in their own estimation. They consider themselves superior to Paul as apostles and ministers of Christ, and they are obviously enjoying some success among the Corinthians. Paul rejects their claim to be apostles in any superlative sense (hyperlian), judging them bluntly as “false apostles,” ministers of Satan masquerading as apostles of Christ (2 Cor 11:13–15). On the contrary, he himself will claim to be a superminister of Christ (hyper egō, 2 Cor 11:23).1
Psalm 111 is praise for God’s Wonderful Works.
* [Psalm 111] A Temple singer (Ps 111:1) tells how God is revealed in Israel’s history (Ps 111:2–10). The deeds reveal God’s very self, powerful, merciful, faithful. The poem is an acrostic, each verse beginning with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet.2
In the Gospel of Matthew, we are taught the Lord’s Prayer.
* [6:7–15] Matthew inserts into his basic traditional material an expansion of the material on prayer that includes the model prayer, the “Our Father.” That prayer is found in Lk 11:2–4 in a different context and in a different form.3
Jeanne Schuler summarizes that we are here to praise God and to seek God’s will in the murky light of human existence. Our lives are not mortgaged to another world. The kingdom coming is already with us. We are frail. Our needs bubble up daily. With help from God and many others, these needs are met. No one carries her burden alone. My load lifts on the sobering condition that I forgive others. Ornery spirits connive to turn gladness into doubts and regret. God, drive these pests from our door. Pope Francis calls the church to “open its doors more widely” and to walk with the Popular Movements. There we can discern imposters from truth.
On the margins I have discovered so many social movements with roots in parishes or schools that bring people together to make them become protagonists of their own histories, to set in motion dynamics that smacked of dignity. Taking life as it comes, they do not sit around resigned or complaining but come together to convert injustice into new possibilities. I call them “social poets.” In mobilizing for change, in their search for dignity, I see a source of moral energy, a reserve of civic passion, capable of revitalizing our democracy and reorienting the economy. It was precisely here that the Church was born, in the margins of the Cross, where so many of the crucified are found. If the Church disowns the poor, she ceases to be the Church of Jesus. (120)4
Don Schwager quotes “Blessed are they who recognize their Father!” by Tertullian, 160-225 A.D.
"Our Lord so frequently spoke to us of God as Father. He even taught us to call none on earth father, but only the one we have in heaven (Matthew 23:9). 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' (Isaiah 1:2). 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." (excerpt from ON PRAYER 2.2-6)5
The Word Among Us Meditation on Matthew 6:7-15 comments that making the effort to pray with fewer words can shake up our usual routine and just might breathe new life into our time with the Lord.
What follows are three phrases from the Lord’s Prayer... Our Father: you are a child of God. Perhaps God’s fatherhood calls to mind a father figure who had a positive impact on your life... Thy will be done: Your life isn’t random. God has a plan for you and wants you to say yes to him... Deliver us from evil: There is evil, not only in the world crowding around you, but within your own heart. Don’t let it drag you down. Focus rather on Jesus, mighty enough to overcome evil in every form.6
Friar Jude Winkler explains the sequence of the four letters of Paul to the Corinthians. The new Italian version of the Lord’s Prayer is phrased as “do not abandon us to temptation”. Friar Jude reminds us that the mercy we need is accepted in our open hearts as we extend mercy to others.
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, believes the darkness in which we find ourselves when facing our shadow can also become the shadowland of God—or what the saints call “the dark night”—if we can see God in it. Maybe this is even the most common pattern. The wound can become the sacred wound, or it can just remain a bleeding, useless wound with a scab that never heals.
The work of the shadowland can go on for quite a long time and if you do not have someone loving you during that period, believing in you, holding on to you, if you do not meet the unconditional love of God, if you do not encounter radical grace, being loved in your unworthiness, the spiritual journey will not continue. You have to discover God as unearned favor, unearned gratuity, or you will regress, you will go backwards. But in the shadowlands, you learn to live with contradiction, with ambiguity. This is true self-critical thinking. [2]7
As we acknowledge our need for mercy, we receive our daily bread of life in the Spirit.
References
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