"Give us this day our daily bread" (Luke 11:3)

Pope Benedict XVI calls this the “most human” of all the petitions we find in the Our Father, and his analysis of these seven words opens up a broad spectrum of requests, responsibilities and degrees of engagement in one’s spiritual life.

First, while Jesus teaches his disciples to pay homage to God in the opening petitions of prayer, He recognizes humanity’s physical needs in this physical world. The Pope cites Matthew 6:25 “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat” he explains that this verse invites us to turn our care (and our worries) over to God.

Second, the Pope reminds us that there can be no bread, or wheat, without rain, or water, nor without a sun to shine on it so the wheat can grow. Pride (one of the seven cardinal sins) can lead us to believe we control the ability to produce our sustenance. He goes on to state that: “Such pride makes man violent and cold. It ends up destroying the earth. It cannot be otherwise, because it is contrary to the truth that we human beings are oriented toward self-transcendence and that we become great and free and truly ourselves only when we open up to God.”

Third, like the first word of the first verse of the Our Father, in this verse we do not ask for “my” daily bread but for everyone’s. The Pope’s interpretation is that no one may think selfishly in this or any of the other petitions. We are praying for our sustenance as well as the rest of humanity’s – family, friends and foes alike. “Those who have an abundance of bread are called to share,” the Pope states, then adds: “By expressing this petition in the first person plural, the Lord is telling us: ‘Give them something to eat yourselves’.” (Mark 6:37)

Fourth, this verse presupposes poverty, that some people have renounced the world and its riches for the sake of faith and that they ask for nothing beyond what they need to live. Although the Pope does not state it explicitly, my interpretation between the lines of what he says in his book “Jesus of Nazareth” at the middle of page 152 is that embedded in this verse is a petition for all those whose vocation is of a religious calling. Tell me if you think my interpretation is overblown, because it is based on this sentence by the Pope: “There must always be people in the Church who leave everything in order to follow the Lord, people who depend radically on God, on his bounty by which we are fed – people, then, who in this way present a sign of faith that shakes us out of our heedlessness and the weakness of our faith.”

Just imagine if people like Father Joe, who could arguably earn a lot more money as a motivational speaker, did not “depend radically on God” to help us grasp Scripture.

Fifth, the Pope argues that this verse’s petition for bread for just today evokes Israel’s 40 years in the Sinai. Each Israelite was only allowed to gather as much manna as was needed for that day and only on the sixth day was it allowed to gather enough to last two days, so as to keep the Sabbath.

Sixth, this bread we ask for is God’s sustenance, as Father Joe has mentioned in past sermons at the feast of Corpus Christi. “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4; Deuteronomy 8:3)