Today, the July letter from the C.S. Lewis Institute arrived. I’m going to quote it at some length because the excerpt from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer is so helpful. But before I do, I want to provide a link to an index for the book that readers might find helpful as well. This particular index is good for all 124 page versions of the book no matter what the cover.
Lewis gives counsel to “Malcolm” on not “festooning” our prayers. “Festooning” is not a common word, so let me supply a definition. The Oxford dictionary supplies a basic definition of “to adorn (a place) with ribbons, garlands, or other decorations”. In Lewis’s thought, he is suggesting that we never “decorate” our prayers as if flowery language paves a more winsome road for our prayers. At the same time, we ought to attach to the basic phrases of the Lord’s prayer our own similar prayers within the category. For example, . . . [on second thought, I’ll let Lewis give his own examples.]
Excerpt from Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer
I expect we all do much the same with the prayer for our daily bread. It means, doesn’t it, all we need for the day—“things requisite and necessary as well for the body as for the soul.” I should hate to make this clause “purely religious” by thinking of ‘spiritual’ needs alone. One of its uses, to me, is to remind us daily that what Burnaby calls the naïf view of prayer is firmly built into Our Lord’s teaching.
Forgive us . . . as we forgive. Unfortunately there’s no need to do any festooning here. To, forgive for the moment is not difficult. But to go on forgiving, to forgive the same offense again every time it recurs to the memory—there’s the real tussle. My resource is to look for some action of my own which is open to the same charge as the one I’m resenting. If I still smart to remember how A let me down, I must still remember how I let B down. If I find it difficult to forgive those who bullied me at school, let me, at that very moment, remember, and pray for, those I bullied. (Not that we called it bullying, of course. That is where prayer without words can be so useful. In it there are no names; therefore no aliases.)
I was never worried myself by the words lead us not in to temptation, but a great many of may correspondents are. The words suggest to them what someone has called a “a fiend-like conception of God,” as one who first forbids us certain fruits and then lures us to taste them. But the Greek word ([ Greek: peirasmos ]) means “trial”—“trying circumstances”—of every sort; a far larger word than the English “temptation.” So that the petition essentially is, “Make straight our paths. Spare us, where possible, from all crises, whether of temptation or affliction.” By the way, you yourself, though you’ve doubtless forgotten it, gave me an excellent gloss on it: years ago in the pub at Coton. You said it added a sort of reservation to all our preceding prayers. As if we said, “In my ignorance I have asked for A, B, and C. But don’t give me them if you foresee that they would in reality be to me either snares or sorrows.” And you quoted Juvenal, numinibus vota exaudita malignis, “enormous prayers which heaven in vengeance grants.” For we make plenty of such prayers. If God had granted all the silly prayers I’ve made in my life, where should I be now?
I know that some people have discarded the use of the Lord’s Prayer as too formal for their modern patterns. I know that others pray it so ritualistically that prayer becomes (in their mind) some type of mystical formula or grace-meriting behavior (foolishness). But it is two things at least:
- The very words of Christ given to the disciples when they asked Him to teach them to pray.
- And, the first pattern for prayer that all believers for 2000 years have adopted as a part of their discipleship, their followship of the Risen One.
On both of those scores, surely it is wise to NOT abandon but to instead, deepen our meditation upon and strengthen our assumption that this prayer in its original form and as a pattern is helpful for the advancement of our souls. Lewis thought so, and he has a lot of good company.
I’ve written about the Lord’s Prayer many times
here Choosing Us Over Me and My
and here How Teaching Men to Pray May Be the Secret to Making Disciples
and here Delusions and Twelve Miles of Sorrowful-Joy
and probably a half a dozen other places. I really don’t think we could ever exhaust all of the benefit of meditating on and using the Lord’s Prayer as our pattern for taking our requests to God.
ChosenRebel's Blog 