On Prayer 27.1–27.17

“Give us today our daily bread,” or as Luke has it, “Give us each day our daily bread.” Since some suppose that we are told to pray for bodily bread, it is right to remove their false opinion by the following and to set forth the truth about the daily bread. We must say to them: how can he who says we must ask for heavenly and great things, as though, on their view, he had forgotten what he taught, command us to offer a petition to the Father about something earthly and small, since neither is the bread that is distributed into our flesh heavenly, nor is it a great request to ask for it?

But we, following him as teacher, who teaches about the bread, shall set these things out at greater length. In the Gospel according to John he says to those who had come to Capernaum seeking him: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.” For the one who has eaten “of the loaves” blessed by Jesus and been filled with them seeks more to understand the Son of God more exactly, and hastens to him. Therefore he rightly commands, saying: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” And when those who heard asked about this, saying, “What must we do, to be doing the works of God? Jesus answered and said to them, This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.” And God “sent his word and healed them,” as is written in the Psalms, clearly those who were sick; by this Word those who believe do “the works of God,” which are “food that endures to eternal life.” “And my Father,” he says, “gives you the true bread from heaven; for the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” And the true “bread” is that which nourishes the “true” “man,” the one made “in the image of God,” by which the one nourished comes to be also “in the likeness” “of the Creator.” And what is more nourishing to the soul than the Word, or what more precious to the mind that receives it than the wisdom of God? And what is more suited to rational nature than truth?

And if someone objects to this, saying that he would not teach us to ask for the daily bread as though it were something other than himself, let him hear that in the Gospel according to John he speaks sometimes as of something other than himself, and sometimes as being himself the bread. As of another, in these words: “Moses gave you the bread from heaven,” “not” “the true bread,” “but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.” But as of himself he says to those who said to him, “Give us this bread always”: “I am the bread of life; he who comes to me shall not hunger, and he who believes in me shall never thirst.” And a little after: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live for ever; and the bread which I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world.”

And since all food is called “bread” in Scripture, as is clear from what is written about Moses, that he ate “no bread” for “forty days and drank no water,” and since the nourishing word is varied and diverse, not all being able to be nourished by the solidity and vigor of the divine teachings, for this reason, wishing to present athletic food suited to the more perfect, he says: “The bread which I shall give is my flesh, which I shall give for the life of the world”; and a little after: “Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in yourselves. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will also live because of me.” This is the “true” “food,” the “flesh” of Christ, which, being “Word,” has become “flesh,” according to the saying, “And the Word became flesh.” And when we eat and drink him, “he also dwelt among us”; and when he is distributed, the words are fulfilled, “We beheld his glory.” “This is the bread that came down from heaven, not as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live for ever.”

And Paul, speaking to the Corinthians as “infants” who walk “in a human way,” says: “I fed you with milk, not solid food; for you were not yet able. Nor even now are you able; for you are still fleshly”; and in the Letter to the Hebrews: “And you have come to need milk, not solid food. For everyone who partakes of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is an infant; but solid food is for the mature, who by practice have their faculties trained to distinguish good from evil.” And I think that the words, “One believes he may eat anything, while the weak eats vegetables,” are not spoken by him primarily about bodily food, but about the words of God that nourish the soul: the most faithful and most perfect can partake of all, whom he indicates by “one believes he may eat anything”; while the weaker and less perfect is content with simpler teachings that do not produce much vigor, whom he wishes to indicate when he says, “the weak eats vegetables.”

And I think that what is said by Solomon in Proverbs teaches that one who, because of his simplicity, cannot receive the more vigorous and greater doctrines (though his opinions are not mistaken) is better than one who is quicker and sharper and grasps things more largely but does not make clear the account of the peace and harmony of the universe. His words run thus: “Better is a meal of vegetables with friendship and grace than a calf from the stall with enmity.” Often, at any rate, we have preferred a plain and simple entertainment with a good conscience, being received by those who could not provide us more, to the loftiness of words exalted “against the knowledge of God,” which with much persuasiveness proclaims a doctrine foreign to the Father of our Lord Jesus, who gave “the law and the prophets.” So that we may neither fall sick in soul through lack of food nor die to God through “a famine of the word of the Lord,” let us ask of the Father the living bread, which is the same as the daily bread, obeying our teacher and Savior, believing and living more rightly.

Now we must consider what “daily” (epiousios) means. First, it must be known that the word epiousios is used by no Greek writer, whether among the learned, nor is it current in the everyday speech of ordinary people, but it seems to have been coined by the evangelists. At any rate Matthew and Luke agreed in using it, without any difference. The translators of the Hebrew Scriptures did the same in other cases. For what Greek ever used the word enōtizou (“give ear”) or akoutisthēti (“be made to hear”) instead of “receive into your ears” and “cause yourself to hear”? A word similar to epiousios is written by Moses, spoken by God: “But you shall be to me” “a people for my own possession (periousios).” And it seems to me that each word is formed from ousia (“being”): the one showing the bread that contributes to our being, the other signifying the people that is occupied with being and shares in it.

Being (ousia) in the proper sense, according to those who say that the existence of incorporeal things is primary, is understood to belong to incorporeal things, which possess being firmly and neither admit addition nor suffer subtraction (for this belongs to bodies, in which growth and decay occur because they are in flux and need something that comes in to support and nourish them; if at any time more comes in than flows away, there is increase, and if less, decrease; and perhaps some things that receive nothing at all coming in are, so to speak, in unmixed decrease). But according to those who think that incorporeal existence is secondary and that of bodies primary, its definitions are these: being is either the primary matter of existing things, from which existing things come; or the matter of bodies, from which bodies come; or of things named, from which things named come; or the first substrate without quality; or that which underlies existing things; or that which receives all changes and alterations while itself unaltered in its own nature; or that which endures every alteration and change. According to these, being is in its own nature without quality and without shape, and does not even have a determined size, but lies ready for every quality like a prepared place. And by qualities, in their technical sense, they mean activities and productions in general, in which motions and states happen to exist; for they say that being in its own nature participates in none of these, but is always inseparable from one of them by being affected, and nonetheless is receptive of all the activities of the agent, as it acts and changes it; for the tension that is with it and has passed through all of it would be the cause of every quality and of the dispositions concerning it. And they say that it is changeable throughout and divisible throughout, and that every being can be mingled with every other, while remaining united.

Since we have said these things in inquiring about being, because of “the daily” “bread” and the “people for his own possession,” in order to distinguish the meanings of “being,” and since in what went before the bread we ought to ask for was intelligible bread, it is necessary to understand being as akin to the bread; so that, just as bodily bread, distributed into the body of the one nourished, passes into his being, so “the living” “bread” that came down “from heaven,” distributed into the mind and soul, imparts its own power to the one who has given himself to the nourishment that comes from it; and so the “bread” we ask for will be “daily” (epiousios). And again, just as the one nourished comes to have different strength according to the quality of the “food,” whether “solid” and suited to athletes, or like milk or vegetables, so it follows that, as the Word of God is given either as milk suitably to children, or as vegetables fittingly to the sick, or as meat seasonably to those who contend, each of those nourished, in proportion to the Word to which he has given himself, is able to do this or that and to become this kind or that. There is, however, some supposed food that is poisonous, another that causes disease, and another that cannot even be digested; all of which must be transferred by analogy to the differences among the teachings thought to be nourishing. The daily bread, then, is the one most suited to rational nature and akin to being itself, bringing health, good condition, and strength to the soul, and imparting its own immortality (for the Word of God is immortal) to the one who eats it.

This daily bread seems to me to be called by another name in Scripture, “the tree of life”: whoever stretches out “his hand” to it and takes from it “will live for ever.” And by a third name this “tree” is called the “wisdom” of God by Solomon, in these words: “She is a tree of life to all who lay hold of her, and to those who lean upon her as upon the Lord she is secure.” And since the angels too are nourished by the wisdom of God, being strengthened by the contemplation of truth with wisdom to accomplish their own works, it is said in the Psalms that the angels too are nourished, the men of God, who are called Hebrews, sharing with the angels and becoming as it were their table companions. Such is the meaning of “Man ate the bread of angels.” For let our mind not be so impoverished as to think that the angels are always nourished by partaking of some bodily bread, the one recorded to have come down from heaven for those who had come out of Egypt, and that the Hebrews shared this very bread with the angels, the ministering spirits of God.

It is not out of place, as we inquire into “the daily” “bread,” and “the tree of life,” and the wisdom of God, the common food of holy men and angels, to consider also what is written in Genesis about the three men who lodged with Abraham and partook of three measures of “fine flour” kneaded to make cakes baked in the ashes: whether perhaps this is said purely figuratively, since the saints can sometimes impart spiritual and rational food not only to men but also to more divine powers, either for their benefit or to show what very nourishing things they have been able to acquire for themselves; the angels being gladdened and nourished by such a display, and becoming more ready to work with them in every way and in future to join in helping them to a grasp of more and greater things, the man who had been prepared with the former nourishing teachings having gladdened and, so to speak, nourished them. And it is no wonder if a man feeds angels, when even Christ confesses that he stands at “the door” and knocks, so that, entering in to the one who opens to him, he may dine “with him” from what is his, and afterwards himself impart of his own to the one who first, according to his own power, entertained the Son of God.

The one who partakes of the daily bread, then, strengthened in his “heart,” becomes a son of God; but the one who partakes “of the dragon” is none other than the spiritual Ethiopian, changing into a serpent himself through the nets of “the dragon,” so that, reproached by the Word, even if he says he wishes to be baptized, he hears: “Serpents, brood of vipers, who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?” And David says this about the dragon's body feasted on by the Ethiopians: “You crushed the heads of the dragons on the water; you broke the head of the dragon; you gave him as food to the peoples, the Ethiopians.” And if it is not incongruous, since the Son of God subsists in his own being and the adversary also subsists, that each of them should become food for this person or that, why do we hesitate to accept, of all the powers, better and worse, and of men, that each one of us can be nourished by all of these? Peter at any rate, when he was about to have fellowship with the centurion Cornelius and those gathered with him at Caesarea, and afterwards to impart the words of God to the Gentiles too, sees the “vessel” “let down by four corners” from heaven, “in which were all kinds of four-footed animals and reptiles and beasts of the earth”; when he is commanded to “rise,” kill, and eat, and, after he had declined and said, You know “that nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth,” he is commanded “to call no man common or unclean,” because what has been cleansed by God must not be made common by Peter; for the text says, “What God has cleansed, do not call common.” So the clean and unclean food distinguished by the law of Moses under the names of many animals, referring to the different characters of rational beings, teaches that some are nourishing to us and others the opposite, until God has cleansed all and made them nourishing, or those “of every kind.”

This being so, and there being such a difference of foods, one bread, beyond all those mentioned, is the daily bread, for which we must pray, so that we may be counted worthy of it and, nourished by God the Word who was “in the beginning” “with God,” may be made divine. But someone will say that epiousios is formed from epienai (“to come”), so that we are commanded to ask for the bread belonging to the age to come, so that God may anticipate it and give it to us now; so that what will be given as it were tomorrow may be given us “today,” “today” being taken as the present age and tomorrow as the age to come. But since the former interpretation is better, in my judgment at least, let us examine “today,” added to these words in Matthew, or “each day,” written in Luke. It is customary in many places of Scripture for the whole age to be called “today,” as in “He is the father of the Moabites to this day,” and “He is the father of the Ammonites to this day,” and “This story has been spread among the Jews to this day,” and in the Psalms, “Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.” And in Joshua it is said most clearly thus: “Do not depart from the Lord in the days of today.” And if this whole age is “today,” perhaps “yesterday” is the past age. We have supposed that this is said in the Psalms and by Paul in the Letter to the Hebrews; in the Psalms thus: “A thousand years in your eyes are like yesterday, which has passed” (whatever is the famous millennium, which is likened to the day “yesterday,” as distinct from “today”); and in the apostle it is written: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever.” And it is no wonder that for God the whole age has the proportion of the length of one of our days; indeed I think even less.

And we must examine whether the principles of the feasts or festivals recorded according to “days” or “months” or “seasons” or “years” refer to ages. For if “the law has a shadow of the things to come,” the many sabbaths must be a “shadow” of many days, and the new moons must come round at intervals of time, accomplished by I know not what moon in conjunction with what sun. And if the “first” “month,” and the tenth day “until the fourteenth,” and the feast of unleavened bread from the fourteenth “until the twenty-first,” contain a “shadow” “of things to come,” “who is wise and” so much a “friend” of God as to see the first of many months, and its tenth day, and what follows? And why need I speak of the feast of seven weeks of days, and of the seventh month (whose new moon is a day “of trumpets,” and “on the tenth” “a day of atonement”), known only to God, who gave these laws? And who has so received the mind of Christ as to understand the seventh years of the release of Hebrew servants and of “the remission” of debts, and of rest from cultivating the holy land? And there is also something higher than the seven-year feast, the one called the Jubilee, of which no one can form even a slight clear idea, or of the true laws to be fulfilled in it, except the one who has contemplated the Father's counsel about the ordering of all the ages according to “his” “unsearchable” “judgments” and his untraceable ways.

I have often been perplexed, when I compare two sayings of the apostle, how there is a consummation “of the ages,” at which Jesus “has appeared” “once for all” “to put away sins,” if there are to be ages coming after this one. His words run thus, in the Letter to the Hebrews: “But now once for all at the consummation of the ages he has appeared to put away sins by the sacrifice of himself”; and in the Letter to the Ephesians: “so that in the ages to come he might show the surpassing riches of his grace in kindness toward us.” And conjecturing about such great matters, I think that, just as the last month is the consummation of the year, after which the beginning of another month comes, so perhaps, since many ages complete as it were a year of ages, the present age is a consummation, after which certain ages to come will arrive, whose beginning is the age to come; and in those ages to come God will show the riches “of his grace in kindness”; while the greatest sinner, who has blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, is held by sin in the whole present age, and from beginning to end in the age to come, and after that will be dealt with I know not how.

Whoever, then, has seen these things, and has conceived in his understanding a week of ages, so as to contemplate a holy sabbath rest; and a month of ages, so as to see the holy new moon of God; and a year of ages, so as to understand the feasts of the year, when “every male” must appear before “the Lord God”; and the corresponding years of such great ages, so as to grasp the seventh holy year; and seven weeks of ages, so as to praise him who gave such great laws—how can he, having examined these things, quibble about the smallest fraction of an hour of a day of so great an age, and not do everything so that, having become worthy through his preparation here to obtain the daily bread, he may receive it on the day “today” and “each day,” the meaning of “each day” now being clear from what has been said? For the one who prays to God, who is from infinity to infinity, not only for “today” but also in some way for “each day,” will be able to receive from him who can give “far more abundantly than all we ask or think,” to speak hyperbolically, even things beyond what “eye has not seen, and” beyond what “ear has not heard, and” beyond what “has not entered into the heart of man.”

These things seemed to me most necessary to examine, so that both “today” and “each day” might be understood, when we pray that “the daily” “bread” be given “to us” by his Father. And if, according to the last book, we examine “our” first—since it is said not, “Give us today our daily bread,” but, “Give us each day our daily bread”—still we must examine how this bread is “ours.” The apostle teaches that “whether life or death or things present or things to come, all” belong to the saints; about which it is not necessary to speak at present.