CHAPTER XIII

OF THE FOURTH PETITION

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD

QUESTION I

What Order is to be observed in this Prayer of our Lord

The fourth and following petitions, in which we particularly and expressly pray for succours of soul and body, are subordinate to those that preceded; for, in the order and arrangement of the Lord’s Prayer, we ask for what regards the body and its sustenance after what regards divine things, because, as men are referred to God as to their ultimate end, so in like manner are the goods of human life directed to those of the next.

QUESTION II

Why the Goods of Human Life are lawfully prayed and sought for from God

The former therefore are to be desired and prayed for, either because the divine order so requires, or because we have occasion for those aids to attain divine goods, which are comprised in the kingdom and glory of our heavenly Father, and in the practice and observance of those precepts which we know to emanate from the will of God. To God, therefore, and to his glory, we should refer all the force and purport of this petition.

QUESTION III

In asking for Temporal Blessings, what Limit is to be observed

Pastors, then, will perform their duty towards faithful hearers, by endeavouring to make them understand, that, in praying for what regards the use and enjoyment of earthly things, our minds and thoughts are to be directed to a conformity with the ordinance of God, from which we are never in the least to swerve. For by these petitions for earthly and transient things, we but too often transgress in what the apostle saith: We know not what we should pray for, as we ought. Temporal blessings, therefore, we should pray for as we ought, lest, praying for anything as we ought not, we receive from God for answer: Ye know not what ye ask. But to judge aright what petition is good, and what bad, the design and purpose of the petitioner affords a sure criterion. Thus if a person seek temporal blessings with the idea that they are absolutely good, and, resting in them as in the desired end, seek nothing else, he undoubtedly does not pray as he ought; for, as St. Augustine observes, we ask not these temporal things as our goods, but as our necessaries. The apostle also, in his epistle to the Corinthians, teacheth, that whatever regards the necessary purposes of life is to be referred to the glory of God: Therefore, whether ye eat or drink, says he, or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God.

QUESTION IV

How many and how great Goods Man obtained in a State of Innocence

But that the faithful may perceive how great is the necessity of this petition, pastors will remind them how much we stand in need of external things for the maintenance and preservation of life. This they will more easily comprehend, if they compare the wants of the first parent of our race with those of his posterity. For although in a most exalted state of innocence, from which he, and through his fault all his posterity, fell, he had need to use food to recruit his strength; yet between his wants, and those to which our life is subject, there exists a wide difference. He would not have stood in need of clothes to cover his body, of a house to shelter him, of weapons to defend him, of medicine to restore health, nor of many other things, which we require for the protection and preservation of our weak and frail nature. To enjoy immortality, it would have been sufficient [to eat of] the fruit which the blessed tree of life would have spontaneously yielded to him and his posterity. Placed, however, by God in that habitation of pleasure in order to be occupied, he was not, in the midst of such supreme delights of paradise, to lead a life of indolence; but to him no employment could be troublesome, no duty unpleasant. Occupied in the cultivation of those happy gardens, his care would have been ever blessed with a profusion of fruits the most delicious, his labours or hopes never frustrated.

QUESTION V

What great Evils followed the Sin of Adam

But his posterity are not only deprived of the fruit of the tree of life, but also visited with this horrible sentence: Cursed is the ground for thy sake: in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life. Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat the herb of the earth. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it thou wast taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return. Entirely different, therefore, is our lot from what his and that of his posterity would have been, had he obeyed the command of God. Therefore have all things been thrown into disorder, and have been changed utterly for the worst; and of the consequent evils the most grievous is, that the heaviest cost, the severest labour and sweat, are very often expended without fruit; either because the crops deteriorate, are smothered by the springing up of noxious weeds, or perish stricken and prostrated by rains, storm, hail, blight, or mildew. Thus is the entire labour of the year in a brief season reduced to nothing, by some calamity arising from the atmosphere or the soil, a calamity caused by the enormity of our crimes, from which God turneth away, and is prevented from blessing our labours; but the dreadful sentence first pronounced against us still remains: In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread.

QUESTION VI

Men are compelled to labour, in order to relieve their Necessities; yet, if God be not favourable, they labour in rain

In treating of this subject, therefore, pastors will exert their diligence, to the end that the faithful people may know, that, if these misfortunes and miseries are incidental to man, the fault is his own; that he must sweat and toil to procure things necessary to life; but that unless God bless our labours, all our hopes must prove deceitful, all our exertions unavailing; for neither he that planteth is anything, nor he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase; and: Except the Lord build the house, they labour in vain that build it.

QUESTION VII

God must be besought to supply us with the Things of which we stand in need. This he doeth abundantly

Pastors therefore will teach, that those things that are necessary to human existence, or, at least, to its comforts, are almost innumerable; and by this knowledge of our wants and weaknesses, the faithful will be stimulated to have recourse to their heavenly Father, and humbly to solicit from him terrestrial and celestial blessings. They will follow the example of the prodigal son, who, when he began to experience want in a far country, and there was no man who, when he hungered, might even give him the husks [on which the swine fed,] at length returning to himself, perceived that, for the evils that oppressed him, he could expect a remedy from no one save only from his father. Here also the faithful people will have recourse more confidently to prayer, if, in reflecting on the divine goodness, they recollect that his paternal ears are ever open to the cries of his children. For whilst he exhorts us to ask for bread, he promises to bestow it on us abundantly, if we ask it as we ought; whereas, by teaching us how to ask, he exhorts; by exhorting, he urges; by urging, he promises; by promising, he inspires us with the most certain hope of obtaining it.

QUESTION VIII

Objects of this Prayer for Bread

When, therefore, the minds of the faithful are thus animated and inflamed, [the pastor] will next proceed to declare the objects of this petition; and first, what is that bread for which we pray. It should then be known that, in the sacred Scriptures, the word bread has a variety of significations, but more especially the two following; first, whatsoever is necessary for the sustenance of the body, and for our other bodily wants; secondly, whatsoever the divine bounty has bestowed on us for the life and salvation of the soul; but in this place, according to the interpretation and authority of the holy fathers, we ask those succours of which we stand in need in this life.

QUESTION IX

It is shown that Temporal Blessings may be asked of God

Those, therefore, who say that it is unlawful for Christian men to ask from God the earthly goods of this life, are by no means to be listened to; for to this error are opposed not only the unanimous opinions of the fathers, but also very many examples both in the Old and New Testament. Thus Jacob, making a vow, prayed as follows: If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way which I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then the Lord shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be the house of God; and of all that thou shall give me, I will surely give the tenth to thee. Solomon also prayed for a means of subsistence in this life, when he said: Give me neither poverty nor riches: feed me with food convenient for me. Nay, the Saviour of the human kind himself commands us to pray for those things which no one will dare deny are corporeal blessings: Pray, says he, that your flight be not in the winter, neither on the Sabbath. St. James also saith: Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray. Is any merry? Let him sing. And the apostle thus addresses himself to the Romans: I beseech you, for the Lord Jesus Christ’s sake, and for the love of the Spirit, that ye strive together with me, in your prayers to God, for me, that I may be delivered from them that do not believe in Judea. As then we are divinely permitted to ask those temporal succours, and as this perfect form of prayer was delivered by Christ our Lord, there can be no doubt that it constitutes one of the seven petitions.

QUESTION X

What, appertaining to the Needs of the Body, is here understood by the Name of “Bread”

We also ask our daily bread, that is to say, the things necessary for sustenance, understanding by the word bread, whatever is sufficient for food and raiment, whether it be bread, meat, fish, or anything else; for in this sense we find the word made use of by Elijah, when admonishing the king to give bread to the Assyrian soldiers, who had received a large quantity of meats. We also know that of Christ our Lord it is written, that he went into the house of a certain prince of the Pharisees on the Sabbath-day to eat bread, that is to say, whatever appertained to eating and drink. To comprehend the full meaning of the petition, it is also to be observed, that by this word bread we are not to understand a profusion of exquisite meats, and of rich clothing, but what is necessary and simple; according as the apostle writes: Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content; and of Solomon as already quoted: Feed me with food convenient for me.

QUESTION XI

Why we do not ask simply for “bread,” but for “our bread”

Of this frugality and parsimony, we are admonished in the next word of the prayer; for when we say our, we pray for that bread to satisfy our necessities, not to gratify luxury; for we do not say our, to imply that of ourselves, and independently of God, we can procure it; for we read in David: These wait all upon thee, that thou mayest give them their meat in due season; that thou givest them they gather: thou openest thy hand, they are filled with good; and in another place: The eyes of all wait upon thee, O Lord; thou givest them their meat in due season; but to imply, that it is necessary for our sustenance, and is given to us by God, the Father of all, who by his providence feeds all living creatures.

QUESTION XII

The Bread that we crave as “our bread,” must be obtained by our own Labour

It is also called our bread, because we are to obtain it lawfully, not by injustice, fraud, or theft; for what we obtain by evil arts, is not our own, but the property of another; and it generally happens, that the injustice is embittered by the acquisition, the possession, or, at least, by the loss of such [ill-gotten] goods; whilst, on the contrary, the fruits of honest industry are enjoyed by religious men in peace and great happiness, according to these words of the prophet: For thou shall eat the labour of thine hands: happy shall thou be, and it shall be well with thee. To those who, by honest labour, strive to obtain the means of subsistence. God promises the fruit of his benignity in these words: The Lord shall command the blessing upon thee in thy storehouses, and in all that thou settest thine hand unto; and he shall bless thee. The object of this petition, however, is not solely to beg of God to grant us to use with the aid of his benignity the fruit of our virtuous toil, for that we truly call our own; but we also pray for a right understanding, well and prudently to use what we have acquired well.

DAILY

QUESTION XIII

Why this word is added

By this word also, is conveyed that idea of frugality and parsimony, of which we have just spoken; for we pray not for variety or delicacy of meat, but for that which may satisfy the necessary demands of nature; and they should here blush who, loathing with fastidiousness ordinary meat and drink, look for the rarest viands and the richest wines. The word daily conveys a no less severe censure against those to whom Isaiah holds out these awful threats: Woe unto them that join house to house, that lay field to field, even till there be no place: that they may be placed alone in the midst of the earth! The cupidity of such men is insatiable: He that loveth silver, says Solomon, shall not be satisfied with silver; and to them apply the words of the apostle: They that will be rich, fall into temptation, and a snare. We also call it our daily bread, because we use it to recruit the waste of vital humour, which suffers daily diminution from the natural heat of the system.

Finally, another reason for the use of the word daily, is the necessity of unceasing prayer, to the end that we may be kept in the practice of loving and serving God; and that we may be thoroughly convinced, as is the case, that on him depend our life and salvation.

GIVE US

QUESTION XIV

What these two words signify

What ample matter is afforded by these two words, for exhorting the faithful to worship and revere with piety and holiness the infinite power of God, in whose hands are all things, and to detest that execrable ostentation of Satan: To me all things are delivered, and to whom I will, I give them; is too obvious not to strike every one; for by the sovereign will of God alone are all things dispensed, and preserved, and increased.

QUESTION XV

In what sense these words are applicable to the Rich

But what necessity, some one may ask, have the rich to pray for their daily bread, possessing as they do abundance of all things. They are under the necessity of praying thus, not that those things in which by the benignity of God they abound, may be given to them, but that they may not lose what they abundantly possess. Let, therefore, the rich, as the apostle teacheth, hence learn, not to be high-minded, nor to trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God; who giveth us richly all things to enjoy. As a reason for the necessity of this petition, St. Chrysostom saith, that in it we pray not only for the means of subsistence, but that it may be supplied us by the hand of God, which, imparting to our daily bread a salubrious and salutary influence, renders the food profitable to the body, and the body subject to the soul.

QUESTION XVI

Why we say “give us,” not “give me”

But why say give us, in the plural number, not give me? Because it is the proper part of Christian charity, that each individual be solicitous not for himself alone, but also active in the cause of his neighbour; and that, whilst he attends to his own interests, he forget not the interests of others. Furthermore, the gifts which God bestows, he bestows not with a view that he to whom they are given, should possess them exclusively, or live luxuriously in their enjoyment; but that he should impart his superfluities to others. As St. Ambrose and St. Basil say, It is the bread of the hungry that thou withholdest: it is the clothes of the naked that thou lockest up; it is the redemption, the freedom, the money of the wretched, that thou dost bury under ground.

THIS DAY

QUESTION XVII

What is meant by these words

These words remind us of our common infirmity; for who is there who, although he may not hope to be able by his own exertions to provide permanent subsistence, does not feel confident of having it in his power to procure necessary food at least for the day? Yet even this confidence God will not permit us to entertain, for he has commanded us to ask him for the food even of each successive day; and the reason is, that as we all stand in need of daily bread, we should all, as a necessary consequence, make daily use of the Lord’s Prayer. Thus much touching that bread, which, received by the mouth, serveth to nourish and support the body, and which, being common to believers and unbelievers, to pious and impious, God, who maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust, bestows, in his admirable beneficence, indiscriminately on all.

QUESTION XVIII

What is here to be understood by the Spiritual Bread, included in this Petition

It now remains to treat of that spiritual bread, which we also ask in this petition, and under which are comprehended all things necessary in this life for the safety and salvation of the soul. The soul, not less than the body, is nourished by a variety of food; for the word of God is the food of the soul, as wisdom saith: Come, eat my bread, and drink the wine which I have mingled. When God deprives men of the means of hearing this his word, which he often does when grievously provoked by our crimes, he is then said to visit the human race with famine; for thus we read in Amos: I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst of water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. And as an incapability of taking food, or of retaining it when taken, is a sure sign of approaching death; so is it a strong proof of the utter hopelessness of salvation, when men either seek not the word of God, or, having it, endure it not, but utter against God the blasphemous cry, Depart from us, for we desire not the knowledge of thy ways. Such is the phrenzy, such the menta I blindness of those, who, disregarding the Catholic bishops and priests, who legitimately preside over them, and abandoning the holy Catholic Church, have transferred themselves to the direction of heretics, who corrupt the word of God.

QUESTION XIX

Of the true Supernatural Bread, which is Christ the Lord

Christ our Lord is also that bread, which is the food of the soul: I am, says he, the bread which came down from heaven. It is incredible with what pleasure and delight this bread fills the souls of the pious, when they have most to contend with earthly troubles and disasters; and of this we have an illustration in the holy choir of the apostles, of whom it is recorded: They indeed went from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for the name of Jesus. The lives of the saints are replete with similar examples; and of these inward delights of the righteous, God thus speaks: To him that overcometh, I will give to eat of the hidden manna.

QUESTION XX

Christ is truly contained in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, and therefore is property called our Bread

But Christ our Lord, who is substantially contained in the sacrament of the Eucharist, is himself pre-eminently our bread. This ineffable pledge of his love he bequeathed to us, when he was about to return to the Father; and of it he said: He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him: take, eat: this is my body. But, for useful matter to the faithful people on this subject, pastors will recur to what we have already said specially touching the force and nature of this sacrament. But it is called our bread, because it is the food of faithful men only, that is, of those who, uniting charity with faith, wash away the defilements of sins in the sacrament of penance; who, not unmindful that they are the children of God, receive and adore this divine sacrament, with all possible holiness and veneration.

QUESTION XXI

Why the Eucharist is called our Daily Bread

It is called daily for two obvious reasons; the one, that in the sacred mysteries of the Christian Church it is offered to God daily, and is given to those who seek it with piety and holiness: the other, that it should be received daily, or at least that we should live in such a manner as to be worthy, as far as possible, to receive it daily. Let those who, on the contrary, are of opinion, that we should not partake of this salutary banquet of the soul but at distant intervals, hear what St. Ambrose says: If it is daily bread, why dost thou receive it yearly?

QUESTION XXII

How we ought to be affected, if we receive not the sowght for Bread forthwith

But in this petition the faithful are emphatically to be exhorted, when they have honestly used their best consideration and industry to procure the necessary means of subsistence, to leave the issue to God, and submit their own desire to the will of him, who shall not suffer the righteous to waver for ever. For God will either grant what is asked; and thus their wishes will be realized; or he will not grant it; and this will afford most unequivocal proof, that what they desire will promote neither their interest nor their salvation, whereas it is denied to the pious by God, who is more careful of their salvation than they themselves. This topic pastors can amplify, by explaining the reasons admirably collected by St. Augustine in his letter to Proba.

QUESTION XXIII

What subject for Meditation is here presented

Finally, in the exposition of this petition, [the pastor must exhort] the rich to recollect, that they are to look upon their wealth and riches as gifts of God, and to reflect that these goods are accumulated on them in order that they may share them with the indigent. And with this truth the words of the apostle, in his first epistle to Timothy, will be found to accord, and will supply pastors with an abundance of divine precepts, wherewith to elucidate the subject in a useful and salutary manner.