What is our daily bread?

  • goose-flying.jpgA foot­note in the Ortho­dox Study Bible (OSB) reminded me of some­thing I’ve been mulling over since I heard it in one of Fr. Hopko’s taped lec­tures two years ago. It has to do with a peti­tion we say in prayer at least once a day: Give us this day our daily bread. But what does that mean exactly?

    Silly ques­tion? Per­haps. I used to think that that line was the one I under­stood best in the Lord’s Prayer. It just means “pro­vide for our needs every day,” right?

    Not really.

    The nuance to the expres­sion comes from the word that is trans­lated as “daily.” As Fr. Hopko said in his lec­ture series on the Lord’s Prayer (here), if you stop and think about it, you real­ize that the word is redun­dant — “give us this day the bread we need this day”? Doesn’t really work, does it? But then, as Fr. Hopko explained, “daily” isn’t really a very good trans­la­tion of the orig­i­nal Greek. The OSB foot­note at Matt. 6:11 says:

    Daily is a mis­lead­ing trans­la­tion of the Greek epi­ousios, which is lit­er­ally “above the essence,” or “super­sub­stan­tial.” The expres­sion daily bread indi­cates not merely bread for this day, for earthly nour­ish­ment; it is the bread for the eter­nal day of the King­dom of God, for the nour­ish­ment of our immor­tal soul. This liv­ing, super­sub­stan­tial bread is Christ Him­self. In the Lord’s Prayer, then, we are not ask­ing merely for mate­r­ial bread for phys­i­cal health, but for the spir­i­tual bread of eter­nal life (Jn 6:27–58).

    So whereas it would be a com­fort­ing thing to know that I’m ask­ing God to pro­vide for my daily needs, it gives you much more to think about if you real­ize that you’re ask­ing God to pro­vide this day for what will feed you for all eternity.

    And does God answer that prayer? We know as faith­ful peo­ple that He does. But unless you’re monas­tic, you’re not par­tak­ing of Holy Eucharist every day. So what form does this super­sub­stan­tial bread take?

    This is the thing I’ve been mulling over for years. Prob­a­bly silly to think I would know, but it pleases me to enter­tain myself with this, because I don’t see how I could get it entirely wrong.

    I think my daily bread can be the sound of the honk­ing geese migrat­ing south, or the clam­orous greet­ing of a young friend in church, or the quiet tears that helped lighten the load at the end of a long week. I think it can be very good news or very bad news, and as big as los­ing a loved one or as small as the lit­tle things you do to take care of those in your charge. Maybe your daily bread can even be actual bread, under the right cir­cum­stances. Maybe it can be like the title of a book I liked very much(*) and any small thing can save you, or like another book I didn’t like so much(*) and just be the need­ful things. I think some­times I know what it is and more often I don’t, or per­haps I just have the vague impres­sion of all the things in which I see some inde­scrib­able reminder of Christ’s love in a way that sus­tains me when I most need it.

    That’s all I’ve been able to fig­ure out, but there’s prob­a­bly much more there for some­one who put real effort into it. And that’s just two words from the Lord’s Prayer.

    With these power-packed sorts of things, a lit­tle can go a long way.

    geese-flying.jpg

    Related posts:

    1. The Lord will have mercy; the Lord has had mercy
    2. “Lord, have mercy”, cont.
    3. The Daily Lives etc. Calendar
    4. They see your heart
    5. You know you’re Ortho­dox if …

    January 24th, 2009 | Grace | 2 Comments |

2 Responses and Counting...

  • Tanya 01.24.2009

    How impact­ful. And, IMHO, I think you are absolutely right about “our daily breads” being some­times lit­tle or big, sad or joy­ous, vis­i­ble or invis­i­ble things. I will have to go and lis­ten to Fr. Hopko’s talks on the topic. Just to think — and these are only two words of a prayer we say sev­eral times a day. Makes me won­der how much more I can be miss­ing, but also how many more dis­cov­er­ies I have ahead of me.

  • Grace

    I really rec­om­mend that series. One of the big points that Fr. Hopko makes is that in the first days of the Church, the Lord’s Prayer was regarded as a mys­tery of the Church and reserved for those who had been through enough cat­e­chism to begin to under­stand its mean­ing. (That’s why it isn’t said until the part of the divine liturgy after the cat­e­chu­mens had been dismissed.)

    Not to say we want to go back to those times nec­es­sar­ily. But we cer­tainly want to real­ize that there’s a lot packed into this prayer, and there’s a lot that we really don’t under­stand as well as we might.

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