Whose Daily Bread Do We Pray For – Mine? or Ours?

Every three summers the Sunday Gospels focus on the Bread of Life discourse in St. John’s gospel. A happy coincidence as we reflect on what Pope Francis teaches us about “Give us this day our daily bread.”

“Today we move on to analyze the second part of the “Lord’s Prayer”.

“Jesus’ prayer begins with a compelling request, which quite resembles a beggar’s plea: “Give us our daily bread!”. This prayer comes from an evident [fact] that we often forget, which is to say that we are not self-sufficient beings, and that we need to nourish ourselves every day.”

“Jesus teaches us to ask the Father for our daily bread. And he teaches us to do so united with many men and women for whom this prayer is a plea — often stifled within — which accompanies the anxiety of each day. How many mothers and how many fathers, even today, go to sleep with the torment of not having enough bread for their own children tomorrow! “

“Let us imagine this prayer recited not in the security of a comfortable apartment, but in the precariousness of a room in which one adapts, where life’s necessities are lacking… it begins from reality, from the heart and from the flesh of people who live in need, or who share the condition of those who do not have life’s necessities.”

…  “bread” also means water, medicine, home, work…. Asking for life’s necessities.”

“The bread a Christian requests in prayer is not “mine”, but “ours”. This is what Jesus wants. He teaches us to request it not only for ourselves but for the world’s entire fraternity. “

“If one does not pray in this way, the “Our Father” ceases to be a Christian prayer. If God is our Father, how can we present ourselves to him without taking each other by the hand? All of us. And if we steal from one another the bread that he gives us, how can we call ourselves his children?”

“This prayer contains an attitude of empathy, an attitude of solidarity. In my hunger I feel the hunger of the multitudes, and thus I will pray to God until their request is answered. This is how Jesus teaches his community, his Church, to bring to God the needs of all: “We are all your children, O Father, have mercy on us!”.

“And now it will do us good to pause a bit and think about the starving children… Let us think about the children who are in warring countries: the starving children of Yemen, the starving children in Syria, the starving children in so many countries where there is no bread, in South Sudan. Let us think about these children and, thinking of them, let us recite the prayer together aloud: “Father, give us this day our daily bread”. Everyone together.”

“The bread we request from the Lord in prayer is the very same that one day will fault us. It will reproach us for the paltry habit of breaking it with those who are close to us, the paltry habit of sharing it. It was bread given for mankind, and instead it was eaten by just one: love cannot bear this. Our love cannot bear it; nor can God’s love bear this selfishness of not sharing our bread.”

When we pray for our daily bread, what bread do we focus on?

• The bread that is consecrated in Eucharist?
• The bread longed for by the 815 million bodies of Christ who go to bed hungry every night?
• The bread of life’s necessities – water, medicine, home, work?

Click below for an audio version of this Vincentian Mindwalk