Daily Gospel Reflection

A Fresh Take on the Lord’s Prayer

Welcome back to Radical and Relevant, where each day we're exploring the genius of the Gospel. Today's reading is a very familiar one. And anytime we're reading the Bible and the reading is familiar to us, it's easy to read through it rather than reading into it. It's an opportunity to go deeper, but if we're not careful, we can just skim the surface. And today's reading is a very, very, very familiar reading. It's from the Gospel of Luke 11:1-4.

"Jesus was praying in a quiet place, and when He finished, one of His disciples said to Him, 'Lord, teach us to pray as John taught His disciples.' And Jesus said to them, 'When you pray, say, "Father, hallow be thy name, thy kingdom come. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us and lead us not into temptation."'"

What jumps out at you today? It's interesting. This is a reading we've heard so many times. It's obviously a prayer we pray often. But what jumped out at me today was, "And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us." And it's the everyone that jumped out at me today because I think we want to be forgiving. I think we try to be forgiving. I think there are many people who hurt us, offend us, whatever, that we're able to forgive. It may be a struggle initially, but we're able to forgive. But my experience is there's usually one or two people who really struggle with forgiving them. And even to the point where you can go through the process, you feel like, "Okay, I've forgiven this person," and then something will happen, and it will just sort of flare up again and you realize, "No, no, actually, I'm not there yet. I haven't forgiven the person yet."

And it reminds me a bit of the reading where Peter says to Jesus, "How many times I've got to forgive? This person keeps--" seven times seven and all the sevens start flying around. And I've always thought about that. And we read that reading, and I think we think that the person is doing the same offensive thing over and over and over and over again. But I think another way to look at it is to think, "Okay, when somebody does something to hurt us, really hurt us, wound us deeply, it's not really a matter of just forgiving them once very often." It could be a matter of forgiving them seven times. It could be, "Okay, you go through the process. You feel like you've forgiven them, but then it flares up again and you work through it again. You feel like you've forgiven them." It could be seven times. It could be 7 times 70. It could be any amount of times. And it doesn't mean that person is doing the same thing over and over and over again to offend you, but that our forgiveness maybe isn't complete. Our wound maybe isn't healed. And so that need to forgive can come in waves. And some of them are big waves, some of them are little waves, just like sitting on a beach. But what word, phrase, or idea jumped out at you today? What word, phrase, or idea did the Spirit use to stir you? And use that word, phrase, or idea to anchor your day in the Gospel. Have a great day, and remember, Be Bold, Be Catholic.