Chapter X.
36. But the distinction among these seven petitions is to be considered and commended. For inasmuch as our temporal life is being spent now, and that which is eternal hoped for, and inasmuch as eternal things are superior in point of dignity, albeit it is only when we have done with temporal things that we pass to the other; although the three first petitions begin to be answered in this life, which is being spent in the present world (for both the hallowing of God’s
name begins to be carried on just with the coming of the lord of humility; and the coming of His kingdom, to which He will come in splendour, will be manifested, not after the end of the world, but in the end of the world; and the perfect doing of His will in earth as in heaven, whether you understand by heaven and earth the righteous and sinners, or spirit and flesh, or the Lord and the Church, or all these things together, will be brought to completion just with the perfecting of our
blessedness, and therefore at the close of the world), yet all three will remain to eternity. For both the hallowing of God’s name will go on for ever, and there is no end of His kingdom, and eternal life is promised to our perfected blessedness. Hence those three things will remain consummated and thoroughly completed in that life which is promised us.
37. But the other four things which we ask seem to me to belong to this temporal life.335
| 335 Or, as he expresses it in another place (Sermon lvii. 7), “to this life of our pilgrimage” (“ista vita peregrinationis nostræ”).
|
And the first of them is, “Give us this day our
daily bread.” For whether by this same thing which is called
daily bread be meant
spiritual bread, or that which is visible in the sacrament or in this
sustenance of ours, it
belongs to the present time, which He has called “to-day,” not because
spiritual food is not
everlasting, but because that which is called
daily food in the Scriptures is represented to the
soul either by the sound of the
expression or by temporal
signs of any
kind: things all of which will certainly no more have existence when all shall be taught of
God,
336
and thus shall no longer be making known to others by movement of their bodies, but drinking in each one for himself by the
purity of his
mind the ineffable
light of
truth itself. For perhaps for this reason also it is called
bread, not drink, because
bread is
converted into aliment by
breaking and masticating it, just as the Scriptures
feed the
soul by being opened up and made the subject of
discourse; but drink, when prepared, passes as it is into the body: so that at
present the
truth is
bread, when it is called
daily bread; but then it will be drink, when there will be no need of the labour of discussing and discoursing, as it were of
breaking and masticating, but merely of drinking unmingled and transparent
truth. And
sins are at present
forgiven us, and at present we
forgive them; which is the second petition of these four that remain: but then there will be no pardon of
sins, because there will be no
sins. And
temptations molest this temporal
life; but
they will have no existence when these words shall be fully realized, “Thou shall
hide them in the
secret of Thy presence.”
337
And the
evil from which we wish to be
delivered, and the deliverance from
evil itself,
belong certainly to this
life, which as being
mortal we have deserved at the
hand of God’s justice, and from which we are delivered by His mercy.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
