Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume III/Ethical/On Prayer/The Fifth Clause

Chapter VI.&#8212;The Fifth Clause.

But how gracefully has the Divine Wisdom arranged the order of the prayer; so that after things heavenly&#8212;that is, after the &#8220;Name&#8221; of God, the &#8220;Will&#8221; of God, and the &#8220;Kingdom&#8221; of God&#8212;it should give earthly necessities also room for a petition! For the Lord had withal issued His edict, &#8220;Seek ye first the kingdom, and then even these shall be added:&#8221; albeit we may rather understand, &#8220;Give us this day our daily bread,&#8221; spiritually. For Christ is our Bread; because Christ is Life, and bread is life. &#8220;I am,&#8221; saith He, &#8220;the Bread of Life;&#8221; and, a little above, &#8220;The Bread is the Word of the living God, who came down from the heavens.&#8221; Then we find, too, that His body is reckoned in bread: &#8220;This is my body.&#8221; And so, in petitioning for &#8220;daily bread,&#8221; we ask for perpetuity in Christ, and indivisibility from His body. But, because that word is admissible in a carnal sense too, it cannot be so used without the religious remembrance withal of spiritual Discipline; for (the Lord) commands that bread be prayed for, which is the only food necessary for believers; for &#8220;all other things the nations seek after.&#8221; The like lesson He both inculcates by examples, and repeatedly handles in parables, when He says, &#8220;Doth a father take away bread from his children, and hand it to dogs?&#8221; and again, &#8220;Doth a father give his son a stone when he asks for bread?&#8221; For He thus shows what it is that sons expect from their father. Nay, even that nocturnal knocker knocked for &#8220;bread.&#8221; Moreover, He justly added, &#8220;Give us this day,&#8221; seeing He had previously said, &#8220;Take no careful thought about the morrow, what ye are to eat.&#8221; To which subject He also adapted the parable of the man who pondered on an enlargement of his barns for his forthcoming fruits, and on seasons of prolonged security; but that very night he dies.