NOTES for Luk 11:1-10

In the Lord's Prayer, we ask the Father to give us our daily bread, understanding this as the material goods without which life could not continue. For example, when translating the Bible into an Eskimo language, specialists had to use the word “fish” instead of “bread,” which for that people is more a luxury than the basis of the daily diet. This idea can also be interpreted more broadly, with this line of the prayer understood as a request for strength for each day. But precisely for each individual day, not for an entire lifetime. Christ calls us to ask for “daily bread,” for today, and not to worry about tomorrow. Yet how often we begin to ask for something in the future, something that exists only in our plans and dreams.

The Lord Jesus Christ proposes to His followers the prayer of "our Father" and completes it with a brief recommendation in answer to the demand of these last ones to teach them how to pray. The brevity of Christ’s answer to a so important question is in itself astounding. Conversations about prayer in the contemporary Christianity are more ample than what says the Lord. Besides, we can find in His words some very important moments. Firstly, Jesus tells His followers nothing similar to these words: "you cannot understand this now", as He did sometimes to the followers and especially to the Jews on the mystery of Incarnation. His recommendation is of a rather simple and practical character; He doesn’t make of the prayer an esoteric thing, which means accessible only to the elected ones and the initiated and veiled from laymen.

The Lord Jesus proposes to turn to His Heavenly Father with worship and ask for the fulfillment of His will and His vision for the world. He also suggests making a very brief request of our daily needs, a request for forgiveness, the ability to forgive others, and protection against evil. And further, Jesus speaks only about insistence and humility in prayer in His explanation to the followers. All the rest, what is written in tomes concerns in essence not only prayer, but also the fact that we have to gather together our personality that is divided in parts.

The apostle Paul tells us: now these three remain: faith, hope, and love (1 Cor 13:13), and through his word faith, hope, and love became the most important Christian virtues. People speak often and at length about what faith and love are. But what is hope? "Put not your trust in princes, in sons of men" (Ps 145:3), we sing at every liturgy. This is a kind of apophatic definition of hope. Our hope cannot dwell in the world of passing human relationships. This is sometimes hard to understand and accept, because we are used to hoping in one another; that, it would seem, is our brotherhood. But something else is meant here. Each of us is weak and sinful, and for that reason alone cannot always give another person what he asks for.

But we have another kind of hope, the holy promise that the Lord will always give us what we ask of him. Only one thing is needed: that we have faith, hope, and love. Faith, so that we direct our gaze toward God; hope, so that we have the strength to wait, knock, and seek; love, so that we give the fruits of God's kindness to others. But reasoning this way, one gradually comes to the thought that the division between these three virtues is to a certain extent conditional. Faith is akin to hope, for it is just as strong; hope is akin to love, for it is just as radiant. One without the other is meaningless. And perhaps even corrupt. Think what today's passage about hoping that God will answer would mean if there were no faith and no love. Then we could be called consumers of divine grace, and nothing more.

There is something common to today’s readings from Genesis and the Gospel of Luke. Abraham speaks with his guest (guests?), while understanding that he is speaking with God. This transforms the entire conversation into prayer. Does this prayer achieve its purpose? If the purpose was to intercede for Sodom and Gomorrah, then no! But if its purpose was to deepen the relationship with God, to discern His will and to penetrate the depths of His mercy, then yes, that purpose is achieved! The entire passage from Luke’s Gospel concerns the same thing. What should our prayer be like, and what is its purpose? Jesus’ answer is the prayer “Our Father” and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit.

It would probably not be wrong to say that the central message of Christ's preaching is the message of the Father. In many other parables, the Lord portrays God in a way close to Jewish ideas and perhaps sometimes necessary for us: as a King who has absolute power over His subjects. But in today's parables He appears only as a father who loves his children whatever they may be like, or as a friend ready to help even at the most inconvenient moment.

Jesus' listeners know from their own experience that, however gloomy and unkind a person may be, he is still capable of showing tenderness and care towards what is dearest to him—his children. They also know that people are able to help one another in need even when it is unpleasant for them. Now, Jesus says, understand one simple thing: God is better than you, kinder and more generous—can He really be a worse Father to you than you are to your children? In this light, the prayer “Our Father” becomes not simply one possible form of addressing God but an astonishing revelation of the mystery of the Father's love, stronger and more tender than anything else in the world.

Today's reading includes two episodes joined by the evangelist into one account. It begins with the disciples' question about prayer, in response to which Jesus offers them, and through them all of us, the "Our Father" (vv. 1-4). Luke, as one can see, focuses chiefly on the importance of asking, and of asking persistently, as a necessary condition for receiving what is asked (vv. 5-13). It would seem that God is not a human being who needs, like a forgetful or unfriendly steward, to be reminded again and again of what is requested. On the other hand, persistence in this case turns out above all to be evidence that a person remembers his request and that it is truly important to him. Indeed, is it worth granting a request that the one who asks forgets the very next day? One can ask this way only for trifles; important requests are those that a person who truly cares about them is ready to repeat again and again, confirming the seriousness of his intentions.

The same seriousness is at issue in the second part of today's passage. The point is not only that the very idea of casting out demons by the power of their ruler was absurd (vv. 17-18, 21-22). The point is also that for those arguing, everything Jesus did was a kind of game, something remotely resembling their own disputes, which were undoubtedly fascinating but, in essence, demanded no commitment. This explains the demand for a sign that would prove Jesus right (vv. 14-16).

The proof had to be theologically correct; it had to correspond to the "right" ideas of the "right" rabbinic school in order to be accepted. And until such proof was presented, anything would do as an explanation of what was happening, including absurd claims about the "prince of demons." But Jesus Himself was not going to play these games, because for Him everything He did was absolutely serious. And He tries to explain to His listeners the full seriousness of what is happening (vv. 24-26). The games are over; what is at stake is a person's spiritual life and spiritual death.

But professional disputants, as one can see, have no concern for that. What matters to them is whether Jesus will manage to outargue them or not. And in their disputes they lose the Kingdom without noticing it. For the Kingdom is not a game; it is serious. And forever.

Like an epigraph to this Gospel passage, words from the deuterocanonical book of the Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach come to mind: “...and you will be like a son of the Most High, and He will love you more than your mother does” (Sir. 4:10). Today, when the Lord speaks to us of His love for every person—a love so difficult to understand and feel that He has to turn to an analogy, the analogy of a person's love for their child—we understand something. The words “if even you, being evil” contain an important indication that the Lord loves us more than our parents do. The Lord probably did not want to offend anyone by calling them evil, but it mattered to Him to say precisely what the author of the Wisdom of Sirach expresses so vividly. More than your mother does... This is a striking and powerful image, because perhaps there is no stronger love on earth than a mother's love for her child. And a child's love for their mother... Today's reading and the words of Sirach take us beyond earthly horizons, where our feelings must fall silent: as instruments of this earthly life, they can no longer tell us anything. So if these words about a mother hurt someone, that is the most fitting and natural—even, one might say, healthy—reaction of our earthly feelings. It is worse if these words are accepted immediately and easily: that means something is wrong in our lives.