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The Lord’s Prayer

08 February 2024

The Lord's Prayer - Year of Prayer 2024

By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)

In the past four reflections, we reviewed the four parts of prayer as understood by Saint Thomas Aquinas. Now, in light of those reflections, we will look briefly at the prayer taught by Christ himself, the Lord’s Prayer, showing how the four parts are present, whether implicitly or explicitly, in this most fundamental of Christian prayers.

Oration: “Our Father…” The opening cry of the prayer immediately places the man Jesus (and with him, all of us), in the status of children before God. This is a first and general expression of our humility and our complete dependency on the Father and Creator of all things.

Thanksgiving: “…who art in heaven.” Here we further recognize God’s greatness by specifically acknowledging his place above us in heaven.

Intercession: the notion of intercession is perhaps not as explicit as the others, but is nevertheless present in the fact that this prayer is always made in the second person plural: “Our Father.” Thus we are meant to pray this together, as a unified Christian community for ourselves and for one another.

Petition: The Lord’s Prayer is famously marked by a series of seven petitions, in which we ask God for the most basic of temporal needs as well as the needs of our eternal soul.

As we can see, all four parts are contained in a nutshell in the very words of Christ. Thus when we pray with all four parts in mind, we are continuing our imitation of the Lord Jesus himself, who taught us how pray with these very words.

Since petition is indeed the most central aspect of prayer, a further look into each the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer will help us appreciate this most archetypal of Christian prayers.

“Hallowed be thy name”: Just as the first two of the Ten Commandments are tied to the glory of God and his name, here we ask not so much that God add greatness to his name, for nothing more can be added to the infinite God. Rather we ask that his name might be magnified ever more in human hearts. This petition is, essentially, a request for the diffusion of the Gospel message to all, and a preparatory step for the next petition.

“Thy kingdom come”: Here we express an eschatological hope in the final consummation of all creation into the original order and harmony intended by the Creator.

“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”: Building more upon the previous petition, we ask not only for harmony within creation or in the natural order. We also ask for the participative conformity of the order of nature with the order of grace.

“Give us this day our daily bread”: In the Gospel of Matthew, the phrase “daily” is actually rendered with an interesting term which is unique in the entire Bible. The bread is described with the Greek term epiousion, in Latin supersubstantialem: this bread is “super-substantial.” More than our regular requirement for sustenance, Matthew is pointing us to a bread whose substance is higher than the mere bread we need for bodily survival. Indeed, the Eucharistic echo of this word rings clear in Matthew’s Greek, and it is therefore fitting that we pray the Lord’s Prayer before receiving the true supersubstantial bread at Holy Communion.

“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”: If the previous petition points us to the Holy Eucharist, this one points us to the Sacrament of Reconciliation. As the Lord says in another place, “if you are presenting your sacrifice at the altar, and there you remember that your brother has something against you, leave your sacrifce there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother, and then come and present your sacrifice” (Matthew 5:23-24). If we must be reconciled to one another before completing our offering, how much more should we be reconciled with God before receiving Him in the Blessed Sacrament?

“Lead us not into temptation”: This petition can sound strange to our ears. Is not God the one “who can neither deceive nor be deceived,” as the First Vatican Council reminds us? Is not Satan the one whose name means “tempter”? The notion that God might lead into something bad, as implied by this verse, is so difficult that even Pope Francis ordered a new Italian translation of the Our Father which reads “do not abandon us to temptation.” Yet even this rendering is not free of problems. Is not God, as the Psalmist tells us, the one who will not abandon us even if our parents leave us orphaned (Psalm 27:10)? The full meaning of this petition is only understood in concert with the seventh and final petition.

“Deliver us from evil”: This petition is linked to the previous one by a parallelism characteristic of biblical rhetoric. Verses like “The righteous flourish like the palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon” (Psalm 92:12) or “Many waters cannot quench love, neither can floods drown it” (Song of Songs 8:7) contain two phrases whose meanings run together but are expressed in different ways. When God delivers us from evil, he is at the same time keeping us free from temptation. So it is less a question of God potentially acting in a way that directly places temptation before us; rather, we acknowledge that when we actively experience his saving power, temptations naturally stand powerless.

With all these things in mind, we see how the Lord’s Prayer expresses a breadth and profundity which can be masked by its brevity. Its short phrases and seven petitions are a key into the inexhaustible riches of the mind of Christ, who left it to us as the prime example of prayer.

In the next instalment, we consider liturgical prayer.

Click here to return to the Year of Prayer page.

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Saint Thomas Aquinas on “Intercession”

08 February 2024

Saint Thomas Aquinas on "Petition" - Year of Prayer 2024

By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)

The fourth part of prayer according to Saint Thomas Aquinas is intercession. This first of all acknowledges that prayer cannot be a singular conversation between me and God, rooted in a mere “personal relationship” with the Lord and divorced from the community of believers. Rather, intercession acknowledges the shared fraternity of the entire people of God. Christ’s command to the disciples to love one another is to be taken seriously, and this mandate is fulfilled every time we pray with and for one another. Thus the petitions which we mentioned in the previous reflection cannot only express personal desires; they must be ultimately be directed to the good of our family, our friends, and the whole Christian community at large.

Moreover, this notion of community extends beyond the Church here on earth; it also extends to the Holy Souls in purgatory, as well as to the angels and saints in heaven. Thus we are called to pray for the faithful departed, that their temporary purgation might soon end; then, with the saints and angels, they will be able to go directly before the Lord’s presence and intercede for us here on earth. This is why the Church has always promoted the veneration of saints, knowing that their prayers rise with great efficacy before the throne of God, because their merits—which are the merits of Christ—redound to our benefit here on earth. Prayer cannot be merely personal, but must participate in the unified cry of praise to the God who made all things.

This is illustrated concretely through the chanting of the Litany of the Saints in the Church’s most solemn occasions. At baptisms, at ordinations, at the Easter Vigil, at the transfer of a deceased pope’s body to Saint Peter’s Basilica, at his funeral, and at the Installation Mass of his successor, the Litany of the Saints summons the entire host of heaven to the Church’s aid. In moments of joy and in moments of morning, we beg the saints for their prayers, knowing that they who now live in perfect communion with Christ are heard by him. Thus, as we say in every Mass, with the angels, saints, and our brothers and sisters in Christ, “we join in their unending hymn of praise,” “for the praise and glory of God’s name, for our good and the good of all his holy Church.”

In the next reflection, we consider the Lord’s Prayer.

Click here to return to the Year of Prayer page.

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Saint Thomas Aquinas on “Petition”

08 February 2024

Saint Thomas Aquinas on "Petition" - Year of Prayer 2024

By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)

The second part of the Catechism’s definition of prayer, “the requesting of good things from God,” is exactly what petition means. Indeed, for Saint Thomas Aquinas, petition is the very essence of prayer. While all four parts of prayer make our address to God whole and complete, petition takes the former two parts (oration and thanksgiving) and makes our cry truly unique and particular by placing a concrete request before God. For Saint Thomas, a true prayer “implores a superior” and is directed toward “determinate things,” such as “earthly benefits” for oneself and for others. More than just calling out to God and giving thanks for past deeds, a true prayer from the heart looks ahead, confidently trusting that the Lord who provided in the past will continue to provide for present and future needs.

Thus, prayer does not only involve a general reaching out to God, nor a mere commemoration of past events, but must be embodied in the present moment by asking something of the Lord. Thus, the contingency of our very existence, which is more implicit in oration, is made clear and exact when we formulate a petition. It grounds and radicalizes the humility expressed in our first cry to God, for through our petitions, we acknowledge our specific needs in the here and now.

One of the most notable aspects of the liturgical reform after the Second Vatican Council is the reintroduction of collective petitions in the Mass. Such petitions had always been part of Mass, but in the course of history their usage came to be confined to the liturgy of Good Friday. Now, at each Mass, we bring our concrete needs collectively to God in the form of the Prayers of the Faithful or bidding prayers, so that the fruits of the Mass might be extended to our families, our communities, to the whole Church, and to the world at large.

Yet, as just as petition forms the essence of prayer in general, it is also central to the Mass itself, our highest prayer. Let us take the Roman Canon, or Eucharistic Prayer 1 as an example. Before the consecration, the priest says, “Be pleased, O God, we pray, to bless, acknowledge, and approve this offering in every respect; make it spiritual and acceptable, so that it may become for us the Body and Blood of your most beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ.” And again after the consecration, “In humble prayer we ask you, almighty God: command that these gifts be borne by the hands of your holy Angel to your altar on high in the sight of your divine majesty, so that all of us, who through this participation at the altar receive the most holy Body and Blood of your Son, may be filled with every grace and heavenly blessing.” Thus the very words of Christ which effect his sacramental presence are “clothed,” as it were, with our own petitions.

In the next reflection, we consider the final part of prayer: intercession.

Click here to return to the Year of Prayer page.

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Saint Thomas Aquinas on “Thanksgiving”

10 January 2024

St Thomas Aquinas on "Thanksgiving" - Year of Prayer 2024

By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)

In his Angelus address yesterday, 21 January 2024, Pope Francis said the following:

The coming months will lead us to the opening of the Holy Door, with which we will begin the Jubilee. I ask you to intensify your prayer to prepare us to live well this event of grace, and to experience the strength of God’s hope. Therefore, today we begin the Year of Prayer; that is, a year dedicated to rediscovering the great value and absolute need for prayer in personal life, in the life of the Church, and in the world. We will also be helped by the resources that the Dicastery for Evangelization will make available.

In these days, let us pray especially for Christian unity, and let us never tire of invoking the Lord for peace in Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, and in many other parts of the world: it is always the weakest who suffer the lack of it. I am thinking of the little ones, of the many injured and killed children, of those deprived of affection, deprived of dreams and of a future. Let us feel the responsibility to pray and build peace for them!

In the previous reflection, we considered the first part of prayer, oration, as a posture of humility before the God to whom we raise our minds and hearts. In this refleciton, we consider a second part of prayer according to the division of Saint Thomas Aquinas: thanksgiving.

Whereas oration signifies a general calling on the name of the Lord, thanksgiving gives more concreteness and specification to our cry. We explicitly acknowledge God’s greatness by recalling the many wonderful things he has done for his people throughout the ages. Thanksgiving is thus tied to memory, and our cry to God is always accompanied by memorializing something real which God has accomplished for us. From childhood we are taught to thank people for what they have done for us, no matter how big or small the deed; how much more should we express our thanks to the God who holds us and all creation in being at every instant?

The notion of thanksgiving is so central to Christian prayer that it gives its name to the very sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood. Our word “Eucharist,” derived from the Greek eucharistia, means “thanksgiving.” At each Mass, we are reminded that Christ “gave thanks” before blessing the bread and wine; and this is again linked to the notion of memory, for Christ commanded the Apostles and all future priests to “do this” in his remembrance. Memory and thanksgiving make the presence of the Lord real.

In the next reflection, we will consider petition.

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Saint Thomas Aquinas on “Oration”

10 January 2024

Saint Thomas Aquinas on "Oration" - Year of Prayer 2024

By Joey Belleza, PhD (Cantab.)

Saint Thomas Aquinas OP (1225-1274) is one of the Doctors of the Church. His teaching has been especially promoted by the Church as an exemplar of philosophical clarity and theological orthodoxy. In his great systematic work called the Summa Theologiae (a “summary” or “manual” of theology), he treats of nearly all aspects of Christian doctrine, from the doctrines of God as Creator, as Triune, and as Incarnate, to rigorous reflections on the sacraments and the so-called Four Last Things (judgment, hell, purgatory, and heaven). In the Summa, he also considers the nature of prayer, bringing to bear the reflections of Scripture and the saints who came before him. This reflection is the first of four in which we look at Saint Thomas’s treatment of the four parts of prayer, namely: oration, thanksgiving, petition, and intercession. As we progress through this Year of Prayer, we will return to these basic themes presented by Saint Thomas, showing how his fundamental insights are shared by saints and holy figures from throughout the Church’s history

Saint Thomas did not invent this fourfold division. Although it was first codified in a systematic way by the monk Saint John Cassian (360-435), the roots of this division comes from Saint Paul himself in 1 Timothy 2:1: “I urge… that petitions, orations, intercessions, and thanksgiving be made for all people.” In this reflection we will consider oration.

Oration is derived from the Latin oratio, which can be translated simply into English as “prayer,” but the theological tradition has given it a more specific meaning. Related to the noun os (oris), meaning “mouth,” an oration is something spoken aloud toward someone or something. It pertains to the first part of the definition of prayer given in the Catechism, “the raising of one’s heart and and mind to God,” but this ascent is done by explicitly calling out to God.

But who is the source of this calling out? Does it come merely from ourselves? Or is it already a participation with God’s own action? Indeed, we are only able to call out to God because God has called us first. Indeed, as the Creator who is the source of all things, our call to God can only be a response to the one who gives us our being as the very first gift. When we raise our hearts and minds to God and call upon his Name, we are in a sense returning ourselves to the source of our being, acknowledging his greatness and our humility before him. This humility is the basic posture of prayer: we place ourselves before God and call out to the one who made all things visible and invisible. All prayer, all oration, starts from God and returns to him.

In the next instalment, we will consider a second aspect of prayer: thanksgiving.

Click here to return to the Year of Prayer page.

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Educating in Virtue

The Logos & Literature: Elaborating the Divine
#5 Educating in Virtue: Appealing to the Young Mind

***The talks are made available freely with the request for a donation to support our costs.***

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Stories are a fundamental and important means of communicating principals and actions by which to live life: namely morality and virtue. They have played a central role in education in every civilised society, adapting to the specifics of each era and place. Acclaimed author, Corinna Turner, will explore the challenges of presenting and exemplifying virtues in literature to the modern, young mind.

About the speaker:

Corinna Turner is the Carnegie medal nominated author of the I Am Margaret series, The Boy Who Knew (Carlo Acutis), and other works for young adults and adults. She is a Lay Dominican, and lives in the UK.

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Inspiring Heroism

The Logos & Literature: Elaborating the Divine
#6 Inspiring Heroism: Counter-Reformation Catholicism

The Catholic Church’s response to the challenges posed by the Reformation was often embodied in drama and performance. Even among England’s persecuted Catholics, cultural activity of this kind occurred: secretly or discreetly on the mainland, and more openly in plays put on by the colleges set up on the Continent to educate English youths. Both at home and abroad, such plays encouraged Catholics to hold onto tradition, and celebrated saints and martyrs in a way intended to inspire both actors and audience.

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About the speaker:

Prof. Alison Shell is Professor of English at University College London, and runs the MA in English: Shakespeare in History. She is an editor and critic, reviewing for the Times Literary Supplement, the Church Times and a number of academic journals. Principal works include: Catholicism, Controversy, and the English Literary Imagination, 1558-1660 (1999), Oral Culture and Catholicism in Early Modern England (2007), and Shakespeare And Religion (2011)

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Fiction as Formation in CS Lewis

The Logos & Literature: Elaborating the Divine
#4 Fiction as Formation: CS Lewis & the Chronicles of Narnia

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The Chronicles of Narnia draw much of their depth from CS Lewis’ appreciation of the Christian vision of education and the liberal arts. Dr Rebekah Lamb will focus on the formative elements of Lewis’ fiction, with special emphasis on The Silver Chair.

About the speaker:

Dr Rebekah Lamb lectures at the School of Divinity, University of St. Andrew’s. She specialises in Religion and Literature from the long-nineteenth century to the present, with  emphasis on the Pre-Raphaelites and their affiliate circles. Prior to St. Andrews Rebekah was an inaugural Étienne Gilson Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of St. Michael’s College (USMC) in the University of Toronto and also taught Literature and Humanities Studies at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College (SWC) in the Ottawa Valley.

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Catechetical Poetry

The Logos & Literature: Elaborating the Divine
#3 Catechetical Poetry: Presenting Christianity in China

The beauty and structure of poetry presents a particular form of literature that is at once attractive and easily memorised. Roy Peachey will examine how Wu Li, one of the masters of early Qing Dynasty painting, used traditional Chinese verse to evangelise the people of China. Even after he became a Jesuit priest in 1688, Wu Li continued to paint and write poetry, using his elegant art to present the essentials of Christianity to the Chinese people at a time of great political and religious uncertainty. Despite the very different conditions in which it was produced, his work therefore offers an intriguing example for our own times too.

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About the speaker:

Roy Peachey was educated at Oxford, London and Lancaster universities, studying Modern History, English and Chinese Studies. He is has held several senior educational roles whilst teaching, and pubilshed a number of books, including 50 Books for Life: A Concise Guide to Catholic Literature.

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Truth in Fact & Fiction Today

The Logos & Literature: Elaborating the Divine
#2 Searching for Truth: Fact & Fiction Today

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Fiction plays a powerful role in the search for and perception of truth. Historical fiction offers a means of accessing the past, and contemporary fiction often helps to shape the way a society is perceived. Fiorella Nash will explore the importance of both genres in seeking and reclaiming truths both religious and about ourselves, and in a particular way, the role of the murder mystery genre in the search for truth and justice.

About the speaker:

Fiorella De Maria is an Anglo-Maltese writer who grew up in Wiltshire, England and studied English literature at Cambridge University. A winner of the National Book Prize of Malta, she has published ten books including: Poor Banished Children, Do No Harm, We’ll Never Tell Them, A Most Dangerous Innocence and the Father Gabriel mysteries which have been described as “Miss Marple for the twenty-first century”. She lives in Surrey with her husband, four children and a dog called Monty. For more information about Fiorella, click here.

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