NOTES for Mat 6:6

Just as He rejects ostentatious almsgiving, Christ rejects demonstrative prayer and tells those who pray to shut themselves in their room. Does this mean that any prayer in the presence of other people falls under His disapproval?

Such a conclusion would be hasty, since He Himself prayed in the presence of many people and did not forbid His disciples to do so. Words of disapproval do not and cannot apply to genuine, sincere prayer that directs the soul toward meeting God. It is another matter when religious formalism turns into showy piety, when public prayer becomes an element of etiquette, deprived of inner fire. Prayer without faith becomes meaningless.

The same is true of many words in prayer. This does not mean that prayer has to be short, but its strength does not depend on its length. Someone compared standing in prayer to shooting a bow, which requires concentration. Prayer may be long, but purposeful; therefore unnecessary words can weaken it, or even destroy it.

From Christ's words that the Heavenly Father sees our needs even before we ask, people often conclude that there is no need to ask Him: He will give anyway. In fact, He does give us much regardless of our requests. But it is sad if we look at Him only as a supplier of gifts while avoiding entering into a relationship with Him that is filled with something greater.

To help us learn this better, Christ gave us the prayer "Our Father" as a model for our prayer. We can repeat its words and meditate on them every day.

In the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord Jesus Christ decisively rejects every display of "spirituality for show." In fact, this is precisely what He rebukes the Pharisees for, and this desire to put one's spiritual life on display turns out to be the most characteristic symptom of Pharisaism. The Lord tells His disciples that anything, even the most serious things, such as prayer and almsgiving, loses its meaning if it is done not for God's sake. Reading these words, we can pay attention to our own heart: we must resist Pharisaism first of all in ourselves.

The Lord contrasts Pharisaic ostentatious piety with prayer witnessed by God alone. Praying in secret, communing with God not for show, we find God Himself in an incredible nearness no one could ever have imagined. To be alone with God is an astonishing gift of the New Covenant and an astonishing calling of Christians. When we read Christ's words about almsgiving, about love for neighbors, about service to people, it is important to remember this call to pray to the Father who is in secret. The Lord calls precisely this communion with God alone the rock on which the entire life of a Christian is founded.

In addition, it must be noted that later Byzantine versions of the Gospel add an extra word: "He will reward you openly." In the ancient manuscripts this word is absent. This means that the reward most likely does not consist in visible prosperity, the very thing the Pharisees considered obligatory. It is remarkable and very important that Christ does not say at all what God's answer consists of. For love, this does not matter. The meaning of the answer in love is contained in the answer itself.

The logic of the Sermon on the Mount continues here: the logic of interiorization, of moving spiritual life from the outside inward. True relationships with God do not consist in performing certain actions, but in the inner motivation for those actions. Best of all is when these actions become so inwardly natural to us that we ourselves no longer notice their motives. It is no accident that the words, "your Father, who sees in secret, will reward you openly," are repeated here like a refrain.

Almsgiving that is unnoticed from the outside, prayer without many words and without onlookers: these are elements of that naturalness. And Jesus Himself shows an example of such naturalness: the prayer "Our Father," born right here and now, which became the standard for Christians of every generation.

And it begins with the word most natural for the Son as He turns to the Father: "Abba," which would best be translated not as "Father" and not even as "Papa," but as "Daddy"; it is such a childlike and tender form of address.

Every action must have a definite goal, and more than that, this goal is reached: the one who loves for show, in order to earn respect and honor, easily reaches his goal - he "has already received his reward." But the one who loves in secret, even from himself, so much that his "left hand does not know" about it, that is, inwardly, in the depth of the heart where even a person's own consciousness does not always penetrate, all the more receives "repayment," that is, reaches his goal.

And it seems that the Gospel, the good news, consists precisely in this promise that the goal will be reached, even if our left hand never finds out about it. Christ promises that compassion, participation in another person's life, will reach that person's heart, that the one who seeks God will manage to be alone with Him in his closet, behind a closed door.

Speaking about spiritual life, Jesus singles out the principal thing that forms its foundation: relationships with God and with people. When He speaks of those who “have already received their reward,” He probably wants first of all to tell us that a reward received here in this world according to the laws of this world will remain in it. It will not become part of the Kingdom. It would perhaps be easier for us to think that by following the Savior’s instructions we are thereby preparing for ourselves some other reward that awaits us in another, better world, where we will one day come in order to enjoy the fruits of our efforts here. But is that so? If the Kingdom awaited us after death, if it were something absolutely other than our world, rewards would probably work precisely as we are accustomed to think. Yet after Christ’s coming, the Kingdom is no longer the future for us but the present, provided of course that we are Christians not merely in word. Our task as Christians is not to lay up reserves for the future, but to take root in the life of the Kingdom here and now. This is precisely what Jesus directs us toward. He calls us to think not about what this present, still untransformed world will say about us, but about how our prayers, good works, and everything else will affect our life in the Kingdom, where the relationships of which the Kingdom consists come to the forefront. Then the successes we have achieved, our rewards, will become part of our new life, the life that is properly called Christianity.

Prayer, as the highest form of communion, contains many different components. Somewhat conventionally, we divide them into thanksgiving, praise, and petition. Someone may offer another classification or suggest other types of prayerful speech; here nothing defines anything completely, just as no scheme fully applies to the living current of life. But this is what today's reading reminds us of. The Lord calls us to brevity in prayer, and at first glance this appears to contradict the whole practice of long services and extensive prayer rules. It would contradict them, if not for the words: for your Father knows what you need. That is, when speaking about prayer, the Lord has only petitionary prayer in mind. Why, if He Himself so loves to pray from the Psalter, where there is so much praise and so many other expressions of the spirit of a person's communion with God? It appears to us that this is full of deep meaning and is not accidental at all. We sometimes rank petitionary prayer below the others; it appears to us that asking for something means humiliating ourselves. We are accustomed to relying on ourselves, especially now in today's world, when so much is accessible to human powers. But in reality, and Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh writes about this, petitionary prayer is a very important prayer; perhaps it is even more important than the others, and the text of today's reading reminds us of this. But here is the question: how should we ask, in order to raise petitionary prayer to such a height? The answer to this question is contained in the priceless treasure that is the Lord's Prayer, in which the element of petition is very strong precisely in this highest sense. One recalls Metropolitan Anthony's conversation with an atheist woman. She said that in the Lord's Prayer she could accept everything except the words "and lead us not into temptation" - a sign of weakness, she said. And when we think little of petitionary prayers, we act like that woman. In these moments let us remember the revelation of the apostle Paul: "...for My power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Cor 12:9).

Preparation for Lent concludes with a reading of Christ's words, handed down to us by the evangelist Matthew, about what fasting and prayer are. In the Sermon on the Mount the Lord tells His disciples that fasting and prayer have meaning only in secret from people. Only when they become events in your deeply personal relationship with God and are visible to no one except God - only then do fasting and prayer have meaning. The Lord warns us about the subtle temptation to "appear to people to be fasting." In this time of fasting, our enemy really does tempt us with the desire to appear so that those around us will think (even if not out loud): "Ah, how devout, practically a saint..." This "Ah!" destroys the whole meaning of fasting. "Rend your hearts and not your garments," as we heard from the prophet Joel (Joel 2:13).

And today the Lord also speaks to us about prayer: do not heap up words like the Gentiles. Neither the length of a prayer nor the number of words said in it means anything. Only the movement of the soul toward God gives prayer its value. And today's reading ends with the Lord's Prayer. The apostles had the custom of saying this prayer three times a day: morning, noon, and evening. Without doubt, the apostles prayed beyond that, but these three times became for Christians a kind of spiritual frame on which the whole day - and all of life - rests.

God Himself never forces His mercy on anyone. Even His coming into this world takes place simply as the birth of an earthly Child. If we are called to become like His perfection (Mt 5:48), then our mercy and piety too must be neither showy nor intrusive, but a joyful expression of our hidden relationship with the heavenly Father.