A Homily About Prayer, Eggs and Fish, Spiders and Scorpions

Today’s Gospel comes in two halves – the first half is the famous Lord’s Prayer, the second has a parable and some rhetorical questions. Let’s start with the second half. It might help us return to the Lord’s Prayer with fresh eyes.
 
Jesus asks: “What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?”
 
We trust Jesus, and believe that God loves us like a good father, that he is always reaching out to bless us. 
 
But yet, some days we must protest: why does life sometimes feel like we’re receiving snakes and scorpions?
 
Maybe consider St. Patrick, over there in a stained glass window in this church. He grew up while the Roman Empire was collapsing in Britain. Pirates abducted him when he was 14, shipping him off to a life of slavery in Ireland. After six years, he makes a harrowing escape back home. But then, after a few more years, he discerns God calling him, and voluntarily returns to the land of his captivity, and becomes the apostle to the Irish, changing the history of western civilization.
 
Were the years of a collapsing empire, the kidnapping, the slavery – was that God giving Patrick fish and eggs, or scorpions and snakes?
 
It’s a question to ask with humility, with fear and trembling. As Abraham says in our first reading, “I am but dust and ashes." We should be careful not to presume when we speak to our Lord. How God’s providence works in history and in our own lives is a profound mystery.

But nevertheless, we trust Jesus, and we believe that he is always at work.
 
Looking back, Patrick himself wrote that it was during those years of slavery that he really learned how to pray, that he drew close to God in ways that enabled his mission later on.
 
In my own life, suffering has shaped me, driven me to my knees, made me who I am. I think especially of relatives who had painful illnesses, and died too young. I think of relationships where people struggled over years to apologize and forgive. I think of institutions that disappointed me. I think of tragic sins that preceded moments of conversion. I think of questions I have had about difficult Church teaching – for example, about God’s anger in our first reading, over Sodom and Gomorrah – which it sometimes took years of wrestling for me to accept.
 
But at the end of it all, deep in my conscience, I have to concede that it always eventually becomes clear that one way or another, God has been at work, even when I didn’t see him or feel him at the time. God was always offering eggs and fishes, the gifts of grace that I needed most deeply, but I wasn’t always tuned in to perceive it.
 
If that is true, and since this is what Jesus is teaching today, the question becomes: how do we tune in, how do we pay attention and become more alive to God’s ways?
 
Now we can listen again to the first half of today’s Gospel: “one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray…. Jesus replied, ‘pray like this: Our Father, who are in heaven, hallowed by thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done. Give us each day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive others, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
 
The Lord’s Prayer is an invitation, a structure for paying attention to how God moves in our lives, a technique for seeing the fishes and eggs on offer to us. Without prayer, our hearts are dull to reality, and we cannot be fully alive.
 
It is said that St. Catherine of Siena, the great 12th century Doctor of the Church, was once assigning a penance to a younger woman. The penance was to say the Lord’s Prayer only once - but to say it slowly, to stretch out that prayer over an hour.
 
I’ve never managed a full hour, but I find it captivating to try, even for a few minutes. If I may, I’ll close by just sharing personally a little of what it sounds like, in my own mind, when I let this prayer orient my perceptions:
 
“Our Father” – think of the word “our,” and marvel at what it means to approach God as a “we.” Who do we intend by “our,” the “we”? Who taught us to pray this way? What is the path in history for how these words reached us?
 
And then, the word “Father.” Of all the names for God, it’s only Jesus who teaches us to say “Father.” Only Jesus is the son, and yet he invites us into the Trinity, to relate to the Father as intimately as he does.
 
“who art in heaven” – here we can notice that God is a “who,” not a “what.” This “who” inhabits a heavenly or supernatural dimension. Prayer is appealing to this Person, a Person whose presence and activity is beyond what we can normally see.
 
“hallowed be thy name” – we are in the presence of someone who is due reverence, some one who is higher and purer. And his presence demands something from us, evoking changes in us to align with what is holy.
 
“thy kingdom come” – almost all of Jesus’ parables are about the kingdom, so we’re asking for his teaching to shape and color our lives. We’re asking to encounter his light and authority.
 
“thy will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven” – like Jesus in Gethsemane, while I have my preferences and requests, here I yield even my deepest fears and disappointments. Thy will be done, not mine, right here, right now, in this life.
 
“give us this day our daily bread” – it is that “us” again, that “our.” On whose behalf are we praying? We are part of some corporate identity, praying for what we need, one day at a time, not as entitlement, not out of appetite for luxury, but for just enough to live in dignity, and to receive everything as gift, as something we can elevate as we offer each day back in thanksgiving.
 
“and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” – Who are we angry at? who is under our skin? who have we disappointed? Recovering from sin means living a life of confession and reconciliation, which takes courage, patience, and supernatural help.
 
“and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” – what tempts us? what do we struggle with? We don’t know why life is hard, why we have unfulfilled longings. We may not understand how God is at work, but Lord, may I never despair of your goodness, may I never surrender to the tricks and counterfeits of the devil.
 
In the end, if we let it, the Lord’s Prayer can reorient our approach to reality. This prayer unlocks the power to discern fish and eggs in a world of scorpions and spiders.
 
There are many beautiful commentaries on the Lord’s Prayer if you’d like to read what others have thought and prayed. The Catholic catechism has a beautiful section on prayer in general, including its own line-by-line commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, which you can read online for free. In Pope Benedict’s trilogy about the life of Jesus, a good chunk of the first volume is also a line-by-line meditation.
 
Prayer arises in our hearts spontaneously sometimes, but prayer is also a skill, something we can practice. It’s like learning a sport, an instrument, or a new language – a bit of coaching can sometimes help. But that’s what we’re here for, that’s why we have church. Take your friendly local deacon out for a coffee or a beer, or make an appointment to visit your pastor – we love this stuff, and we’re always happy to continue the conversation.
 
In the meantime, we confess that God loves us. We trust that God gives us gifts, eggs and fish. Even when life might feel like scorpions and spiders, God is at work, and prayer is how we stay near to him, and start to get an intuition for the mystery. Amen.