Copyright © 2006 By Doug Lawrence. All Rights Reserved.
Catechism Of The Catholic Church Reprinted With Permission.
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God’s Truth From The Catechism Of The Catholic Church – cont.
2830 "Our bread": The Father who gives us life cannot not but give us the nourishment life
requires - all appropriate goods and blessings, both material and spiritual. In the Sermon on the
Mount, Jesus insists on the filial trust that cooperates with our Father's providence.
115
He is not
inviting us to idleness,
116
but wants to relieve us from nagging worry and preoccupation. Such is
the filial surrender of the children of God:
To those who seek the kingdom of God and his righteousness, he has promised to give all
else besides. Since everything indeed belongs to God, he who possesses God wants for
nothing, if he himself is not found wanting before God.
117
2831 But the presence of those who hunger because they lack bread opens up another profound
meaning of this petition. The drama of hunger in the world calls Christians who pray sincerely to
exercise responsibility toward their brethren, both in their personal behavior and in their solidarity
with the human family. This petition of the Lord's Prayer cannot be isolated from the parables of the
poor man Lazarus and of the Last Judgment.
118
2832 As leaven in the dough, the newness of the kingdom should make the earth "rise" by the
Spirit of Christ.
119
This must be shown by the establishment of justice in personal and social,
economic and international relations, without ever forgetting that there are no just structures
without people who want to be just.
2833 "Our" bread is the "one" loaf for the "many." In the Beatitudes "poverty" is the virtue of
sharing: it calls us to communicate and share both material and spiritual goods, not by coercion but
out of love, so that the abundance of some may remedy the needs of others.
120
2834 "Pray and work."
121
"Pray as if everything depended on God and work as if everything
depended on you."
122
Even when we have done our work, the food we receive is still a gift from our
Father; it is good to ask him for it and to thank him, as Christian families do when saying grace at
meals.
2835 This petition, with the responsibility it involves, also applies to another hunger from which
men are perishing: "Man does not live by bread alone, but . . . by every word that proceeds from
the mouth of God,"
123
that is, by the Word he speaks and the Spirit he breathes forth. Christians
must make every effort "to proclaim the good news to the poor." There is a famine on earth, "not a
famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD."
124
For this reason the
specifically Christian sense of this fourth petition concerns the Bread of Life: The Word of God
accepted in faith, the Body of Christ received in the Eucharist.
125
2836 "This day" is also an expression of trust taught us by the Lord,
126
which we would never
have presumed to invent. Since it refers above all to his Word and to the Body of his Son, this
"today" is not only that of our mortal time, but also the "today" of God.
If you receive the bread each day, each day is today for you. If Christ is yours today, he
rises for you every day. How can this be? "You are my Son, today I have begotten you."
Therefore, "today" is when Christ rises.
127
2837 "Daily" (epiousios) occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. Taken in a temporal sense,
this word is a pedagogical repetition of "this day,"
128
to confirm us in trust "without reservation."
Taken in the qualitative sense, it signifies what is necessary for life, and more broadly every good
thing sufficient for subsistence.
129
Taken literally (epi-ousios: "super-essential"), it refers directly to
the Bread of Life, the Body of Christ, the "medicine of immortality," without which we have no life
within us.
130
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