I've been out of town. I'm back now. I hope these posts help out. Here is the MIM for this weekend:
Message in a Minute for July 28
In today’s gospel we hear the “Our Father” prayer from Luke’s gospel. If it does not sound familiar to you, that’s because the version we are used to praying is the one found in Matthew’s gospel. Certainly, there are no contradictions between these two versions of the “Our Father;” Matthew’s version is just a bit longer.
Having two different “Our Father” prayers in the bible got me thinking. Is one version more accurate than the other? If Jesus taught his disciples the Our Father prayer, how could there be two different ones?
I think it’s important to remember that Jesus taught his disciples every day for years. I think it is entirely possible that Jesus taught them how to pray to the Father on numerous occasions. This fact probably helps to explain why there are two versions, because Jesus probably used different wording choices over the course of his years of teaching. Also, we should remember that Jesus would have spoken the Aramaic of his time. The gospels are all written in Greek. Therefore, the words of the bible are translations of the words Jesus would have used during his lifetime. This could also account for the differences in the wording.
But, I would like to leave everyone with this thought: there are two versions of the Our Father, but both of them encourage us to turn to God with our praise and our needs. This is the most important thing we can do when it comes to our prayer. We simply turn to God with praise and with trust, asking him to be in our lives. So, don’t forget to spend some time in prayer today saying:
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.
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