Hatchet Burying

Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test.” (Luke 11:1-4)

Today is the Memorial of Our Lady of the Rosary.  We pray the “Our Father” (although a bit different from Luke's version) when we begin the rosary.  For each decade we pray one Our Father.  One difference between the rosary and this passage from Luke is we say: “we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us.”  There is no mention of “trespass.”  

Debt was huge in Jesus’ time.  Putting people – usually the poor – in debt was the way the rich got richer by taking the land of the poor as the way to cover debt.  Land-owners became servants on what once was their land.  Therefore, praying to have one’s sins forgiven by promising to forgive debts was quite the tit-for-tat.  It would have been a big deal, and one wonders how many land-grabbing rich would have prayed in this way Jesus instructed.  It might have been more profitable for the rich to offer sacrifices in the Temple than to give back valuable land and lose the indentured servants.

When Jesus said to pray by not subjecting us to the final test as opposed to “deliver us from evil,” what did he mean?  We can only guess; however, “deliver us from evil” seems far clearer.  Evil confronts us every day and doesn’t involve some final test God will require, like a pass-fail entrance exam for admission to heaven.  

Bringing the Kingdom of God to earth as in heaven means daily confrontations with evil that abounds in so many places and in so many hearts, especially divided hearts caused by political affiliations and tribal thinking.  We all know those who have trespassed against us, that is, those who have hurt or offended us and stand against the truth.  Forgiving debt is good, especially crippling, exorbitant school loans, but more likely, evil is best confronted by burying hatchets in the ground, rather than in each other.

Deacon David Pierce