The Lord’s Prayer as a Beggar’s Prayer

I want to start collecting ideas that deal with the classic three topics of Christian catechesis, namely the Apostle’s Creed, the Ten Commandments, and the Lord’s Prayer. This is the first post in what I hope to be a whole series of intermittent posts.

In his reflections on Jesus’s poverty in The Glory of the Lord, vol. 7, Hans Urs von Balthasar makes the point that the Lord’s Prayer is a beggar’s prayer. He begins by saying that Jesus’ prayer is rooted in his own poverty, his own absolute dependence on the Father and the Spirit. He goes on to describe prayer itself as “essentially…the attitude of the beggar.”

In expositing the Lord’s Prayer itself, Balthasar says,

“The prayer which Jesus gave as a model of prayer, the Our Father, is a beggar’s prayer from start to finish. It demands God’s coming, placing at its beginning the address of intimacy, ‘Abba’, which was reserved for Jesus alone; it demands that his name will be hallowed, that his kingdom come, that his will be done on earth as in heaven—three petitions which express the same thing in different ways, the prayer that God’s power prevail where men are powerless. Then the prayer begs for bread that is necessary for life, not for a store to be laid up, but from day to day; then it begs for the forgiveness of sins, displaying its own poverty as far as righteousness is concerned (for the one who forgives his debtor waives justice); and finally, the prayer begs to be borne through temptation, for only God’s power permits us to stand fast in temptation. Total dependance on God means that the one who knocks is sure of being heard.”

One can certainly see the connection between prayer and poverty, and a strand Balthasar doesn’t emphasize here is the theme of forgiven debts in the Lord’s Prayer from the gospel of Luke. Wealth and poverty are one of the great leitmotifs of Luke’s gospel. While the themes of poverty and begging are present in all the gospels, Luke’s gospel foregrounds issues of wealth and poverty more than the other three. From Mary’s great prayer to Jesus’ own declaration of the year of Jubilee in Luke 4 to the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, not to mention the story of the Good Samaritan, the material unique to Luke declares from start to finish that the good news is good news for the poor.

So the Lukan variation on the Lord’s Prayer which emphasis the forgiveness of debts rather than transgressions highlights this theme of poverty in special way. But can we take the next step with Balthasar and see the emphasis on poverty itself as a picture of Jesus’ own poverty, his own dependence on God? This is Balthasar’s suggestion, and it is worth pondering.

As the gospel of Luke makes clear, what we call the Lord’s Prayer flows directly out of Jesus’ own prayer to the Father. And to extend the point in Luke 11, as he illustrates the nature of such prayer, gives us a pictures of need and dependence—first the friend in need of provision and second the child in need of sustenance. In prayer we are like this friend and this child, and as Jesus goes on to teach in Luke 18, in prayer we are like the persistent widow pleading for justice. Each of these asks for that which they cannot give themselves. They are beggars. They are in absolute dependence.

But can we say definitely that Jesus gives us a model of prayer that is rooted in his own poverty, his own dependence on the Father? Maybe this is easier to say if we can take Balthasar’s next statement, which is “Another word for poverty is faith.”

All quotes taken from Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Glory of the Lord: Theology, the New Covenant, vol. 7