The Lord's Prayer Luke 11:1-4

27th Week  Night Office Reading From a conference of John TAULER Christ Teaching How to Pray Mass Intro The Gospel is the shorter version of the ‘Our Father’, St. Luke 11:1-4 The Matthew (Mt. 6:9-13) ‘Our Father’ is the one we ‘know by heart’. That is how we say it familiarly, but in fact it can be the mechanical habit of a prayer. The Dominican, Tauler, in the Night Office Reading, used the brief prayer, ASK, SEEK, KNOCK. Even the briefest can be mechanical. Tauler reminds; “we must use whatever methods of prayer come to us, whether they are directed to God's divinity or to the Holy Trinity or to the passion or the sacred wounds of our Lord.” It can be misleading to learning a prayer ‘by heart’ as it can be just as mechanical. The truth is to pray ‘by heart of heart, of heart, of heart’, we must bring our hearts home Tauler provides the choice of words. From a conference by John Tauler God is ready to give if we will only ask him properly; and he has been at pains to tell us and urge us and teach us how to ask him properly. All the same, his gifts are only given to those who beg and pray and keep on praying, never to idlers and loungers. We should observe what we must ask for, and how. If we want to be wholehearted in our prayer, above everything else we must bring our hearts home, call them back from their wanderings among created things, from their distractions, and then with deep humility we must prostrate ourselves at God's feet and ask him to be merciful and generous to us. We must knock at the Father's heart and beg for bread. This bread is God's love. If we have no bread, then we have no appetite for any other food, however rich it may be; we cannot enjoy it, it does not nourish us. God's love is like that; it is the one thing we really need. So we must ask God to give to us, and ask him to teach us in our prayer and in our spiritual exercises, how to ask him in the way most pleasing to him and most profitable to us. Then we must use whatever methods of prayer come to us, whether they are directed to God's divinity or to the Holy Trinity or to the passion or the sacred wounds of our Lord. So "ask" means ask the Lord for something. It is not given to everyone to use purely mental prayer; some people have to use words. If you need to do this, speak to our dear Lord lovingly and tenderly with all the most loving words you can think of. This will raise up your love and your heart. Ask the heavenly Father to give you a foretaste of himself through his only Son in whatever way is most pleasing to him; and when you have found the form of prayer that suits you best, even if it is the remembrance of your sins and your faults, persevere in it and make it your own. "Seek" means seek out whatever is most pleasing to God and most profitable to you. And "knock" means apply yourself with zeal and persistence; because the prize is given to the person who persists to the end. Response:  Mt. 7:7. Ask and you will receive, seek and you will find; + knock and the door will be opened to you. …

MEDITATION    OF THE DAY www.magnificant.com

Praying "Our Father" 

from Jesus of Nazarene (Pope 1966)   

We must therefore let Jesus teach us what father really means. In Jesus' discourses, the Father appears as the source of all good, as the measure of the recti­tude (perfection) of man ... The love that endures "to the end" (In 13: 1), which the Lord fulfilled on the cross in praying for his enemies, shows us the essence of the Father. He is this love. Because Jesus brings it to completion, he is entirely "Son", and he invites us to become "sons" according to this criterion ...

The Lord reminds us that fathers do not give their children stones when they ask for bread. He then goes on to say: "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!" (Mt 7: 9ff.). Luke specifies the "good gifts" that the Father gives; he says, "how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" (Lk 11: 13).

This means that the gift of God is God himself. The "good things" that he gives us are himself. This reveals in a surprising way what prayer is really all about: it is not about this or that, but about God's desire to offer us the gift of himself - that is the gift of all gifts, the "one thing necessary". Prayer is a way of gradually purifying and correcting our wishes and of slowly coming to realise what we really need: God and his Spirit.

Benedict XVI  elected to Pope 2005. 

COMMENT on the connection of 25 and 27 in Matthew 11.

Thank you, William, for the following.
D.

----- Forwarded Message ----
From: WILLIAM ...
To: Donald ... .
Sent: Tue, 5 July, 2011 14:38:38
Subject: Re: [Matt 11:25-30] Ben XVI

Dear Father Donald,

You present this pericope with the interpretation of Pope Benedict XVI’s “Jesus of Nazareth” Vol.1, the most exquisite interpretation of the passage that I have ever read, and I love the conclusion: “The term "Son;' along with its correlate "Father (Abba)," gives us a true glimpseinto the inner being of God himself.”

As an ‘aside’, the word GLIMPSE describes it well for me, for when I first read it, my mind went into spiral mode – as it does when one is trying to read something when overtired. My eyes ‘separated’, as it were, glazing over as I gazed at the text on the screen, two images there before me. And then, as my focus returned and the images reunited, I realised that what I was experiencing with my vision was also being experienced in my spirit… two images, as of the Father and the Son, momentarily 'glimpsed' separately, now rejoined in focus to become one, and how intense the focus had become – indeed, it seemed that only by having that momentary GLIMPSE of them ‘separated’ could I now begin to SEE them as One.

Thank you for a wonderful study – and for a magical moment!

. . . in Our Lord,

William

Benedict XVI’s analysis of the title “Son of God”, with its complex prehistory, leading to the simple designation of “Son”, which is found only on the lips of Jesus, is fascinating. The historical perspective is illuminating, explaining the political theology that attached to the original title, and its progression from the “myth of divine begetting” to the  “theology of election” which could only have meaning in a future promise, which was fulfilled in Jesus. In Jesus the term Son of God became “detached from the sphere of political power and becomes an expression of a special oneness with God” which is displayed, not in earthly courts and palaces but “in the Cross and Resurrection”.

Benedict XVI sees in the passage Mt 11:25-27, the “Messianic Jubelruf” (joyful shout) the decisive testimony:. “Only the Son truly "knows" the Father. Knowing always involves some sort of equality… Truly to know God presupposes communion with him, it presupposes oneness of being with him….It becomes clear what "the Son" is and what this term means: perfect communion in knowledge, which is at the same time communion in being.”

The key passage must be that which follows:

“Only the " 

The connection between verses 25 and 27 (of Mt 11) now enables us to see their unity of will.

Sunday 3 July 2011 Matthew 11:25-30

The Sunday riveting pericope Matt 11:25-30 resounded in our hearts. Any  commentaries are found lacking. 

Pastoral ruminations serve their purpose. The incisive and scriptural roots search for more. 

To the rescue again is Benedict xvi; as in Jesus of Nazareth, Part 1 'The Son' pp.355-344.

Let us return to the Jubelruf. The equality in being that we saw expressed in verses 25 and 27 (of Mt 11) as oneness in will, and in knowledge is now linked in the first half of verse 27 with Jesus' universal mission and so with the history of the world: "All things have been delivered to me by my Father.” When we consider the Synoptic Jubelruj in its full depth, what we find is that it actually already contains the entire Johannine theology of the Son. There too, Sonship is presented as mutual knowing and as oneness in willing. There too, the Father is presented as the Giver who has delivered "everything" to the Son, and in so doing has made him the Son, equal to himself: "All that is mine is thine, and all that is thine is mine" (Jn 17:10). And there too, this fatherly giving then extends into the creation, into the "world": "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son"  (Jn 3:16).

POPE BENEDICT XVI   JESUS OF NAZARETH Part I, pp 335-345

THE SON

At the beginning of this chapter, we saw briefly that the two titles “Son of God” and "Son" (without further qualification) need to be distinguished; their origin and significance are quite different, even though the two meanings overlapped and blended together as the Christian faith took shape. Since I have already dealt quite extensively with the whole question in my Introduction to Christianity, I offer only a brief summary here as an analysis of the term "Son of God.”

The term “Son of God” derives from the political theology of the ancient Near East. In both Egypt and Babylon the king was given the title "son of God"; his ritual accession to the throne was considered to be his "begetting" as the Son of God, which the Egyptians may really have understood in the sense of a mysterious origination from God, while the Babylonians apparently viewed it more soberly as a juridical act, a divine adoption. Israel took over these ideas in two

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ways, even as Israel's faith reshaped them. Moses received from God himself the commission to say to Pharaoh: "Thus says YHWH, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, 'Let my son go that he may serve me'" (Ex 4:22f.). The nations are God's great family, but Israel is the "firstborn son," and as such, belongs to God in a special way, with all that firstborn status means in the ancient Middle East. With the consolidation of the Davidic kingship, the royal ideology of the ancient Near East was transferred to the king on Mount Zion.

The discourse in which Nathan prophesies to David the promise that his house will endure forever includes the following: "I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his king­dom .... I will be his father, and he shall be my son. When he commits iniquity, I will chasten him ... but I will not take my steadfast love from him" (2 Sam 7:I2ff.; see Ps 89:27f., 37f.). These words then become the basis for the ritual installation of the kings of Israel, a ritual that we encounter in Psalm 2:7f.: "I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, 'You are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession:"

Three things are evident here. Israel's privileged status as God's firstborn son is personified in the king; he embodies the dignity of Israel in person. Secondly, this means that the ancient royal ideology, the myth of divine begetting, is discarded and replaced by the theology of election. "Begetting" consists in election; in today's enthronement of the king, we see a summary expression of God's act of election, in which Israel and the king who embodies it become God's "son:'

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Thirdly, however, it becomes apparent that the promise of dominion over the nations-a promise taken over from the great kings of the East-is out of all proportion to the actual reality of the king on Mount Zion.