Devotion for today: Give us this day our daily bread, part one

Matthew 5:43-48: You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’  But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?  You, therefore, must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Ps 104:27-30: These all look to you
    to give them their food in due season;
 when you give to them, they gather it up;
    when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.
 When you hide your face, they are dismayed;
    when you take away their breath, they die
    and return to their dust.
 When you send forth your spirit, they are created;
    and you renew the face of the earth.

In our meditation on The Lord’s Prayer, today we look at the petition to ‘give us this day our daily bread’. We begin with one of the beautiful explanations found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

2828 "Give us": The trust of children who look to their Father for everything is beautiful. "He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust." He gives to all the living "their food in due season." Jesus teaches us this petition, because it glorifies our Father by acknowledging how good he is, beyond all goodness.

We need to remember, when we come to this petition in The Lord’s Prayer, that we began this conversation with God by calling Him ABBA, that is, DADDY. We let Him know we honored Him, that we truly recognized His power and might, and that we wanted Him to take away every part of our will and fill it with His, because we know and trust that by giving up our selfish attachments to things of earth, we will be filled with God’s heavenly love. Now we come before Him asking Him to give us something else. Just like kids, right? But the word “give” implies an unspoken and yet confident knowledge that what we ask for, we will receive. None of us ever asks for help from someone we know won’t help us. We avoid people who are selective and stingy in the giving of their time and love. So when we ask God, Daddy, to give us something, we feel pretty sure He is going to do it. And what does Jesus teach us to ask God for? He teaches us to ask for our daily bread.

 Of course, this has many meanings on many levels. Today, however, we will examine one. Our daily bread is what we need for life, not just physical life, but spiritual life. We have already told God we want Him to take out our pride, anger, self-righteousness and attachments to things of this earth and create in us a heavenly spirit. God, as a loving father, knows just what we need to separate us from our personal demons and replace those now empty spaces with His love. Picture a parent of a new born. In the beginning, the parent needs to be sure the baby is clean, fed and rested. He can pretty easily provide that. As the child grows and matures, however, that is not enough. Soon discipline, structure, education, stern lectures, loving hugs, words of encouragement, punishments, and rewards all come into play. The needs of a child, a teenager, a young adult change almost daily. So, too, then does the parent adapt and provide for that daily need.

All the great saints talk about the levels of spirituality one must pass through to come to a full communion with God. Most of us never get to the top level because it requires a complete and total abandonment to God’s will, holding back nothing: not family, not health, not recognition, nothing. Now just as a parent will do what it takes to bring out the best in his child, even if the child doesn’t want to be his best, so, too, God does what it takes to bring us to the full version of ourselves He had planned for us from the beginning of time. And He does it every day. 

The bread we need daily is the work God needs to do in us today, right now. We were not always so angry with a family member; we didn’t always put our job before our family; we were not always so hungry for recognition from the outside world, or attached to our possessions. So God looks at us every single day and decides what we need to pull those weeds out of our soul and replace them with goodness and love. 

When we ask God to daily give us what we need, we must mean it.  He balances justice with mercy, hugs with reprimands, and “yeses” with “no’s”. Let us ask for our daily bread today knowing we will get just what we need for our salvation. It is the greatest gift a loving Daddy can give. 

(Friday we will look at “our daily bread” as the Eucharist.)