Don’t Mess With the Lord’s Prayer

Pope Francis has decided to change to the wording of the Lord’s Prayer. Instead of saying “lead us not into temptation”, Catholics will now say “do not let us fall into temptation”. At least in Italy. I don’t know how widely it will be adopted in Catholic churches around the world in their own languages. I hope it won’t. “It [meaning the existing translation] is not a good translation because it speaks of a God who induces temptation,” Francis told Italian TV. “I am the one who falls. It’s not him pushing me into temptation to then see how I have fallen. A father doesn’t do that; a father helps you to get up immediately. It’s Satan who leads us into temptation – that’s his department.” Francis shows immense ignorance of the Bible.

A lot of nonsense about nothing, quire frankly. The matter comes down to a choice of translation – not changing the words of the prayer! Sorry, Francis but Jesus did not give you authority to change the prayer he gave us! The verb εἰσενέγκῃς is simply a form of the verb εἰσφέρω – which usually means to bring, to cause, to lead into a certain state. The noun πειρασμός does mean temptation; but more often in the New Testament it means a test, a trial – not a jury trial, of course, but trial in the sense of hardship. The customary translation choice that has been made is just that, a choice. An equally correct – and theologically and spiritually more acceptable – translation would be something like “do not bring us to the test”…. and then? “But deliver us from the evil one.”

πονηρός is an adjective, and it means “evil, wicked, worthless”. But πονηρός also becomes a title – ὁ Πονηρός, the Evil One. τοῦ πονηροῦ is simply the genitive form of ὁ Πονηρός and also of πονηρός. So a choice again!

I usually like Pope Francis and his efforts to change the church, but in this instance he is simply wrong. The Bible is full of instances of God testing his people. The Book of Job is an extreme example when it tells us God handed Job over to Satan for some really big-time testing.

But there is a difference between testing and tempting. If God tempts us it would mean that he would cause us to sin, and God never causes anyone to sin. In that, Francis is correct. But testing is definitely within the realm of what God has been shown to do in the Bible. It is biblically correct to say that God can lead us to a place or an experience of testing. As a matter of fact, Jesus might even mean THE test:. the big falling away, the one that comes at the end of times. Jesus knew that we are cowards and weak. And so he taught us to pray: Bring us not to a test, but deliver us from the evil one. In other words, Don’t do with us what you did with Job. No, no, that was a once-only thing. You don’t do that sort of thing with your people, O God. Don’t hand us over to Satan to test us, but deliver us from him, from the evil one. Don’t test us, because we will fail. Spare us, O God. Jesus taught us a beautiful prayer, but the conclusion of the prayer is an acknowledgment that we are weak.

The Pope’s version makes nonsense of what Jesus taught, and I hope most Catholic churches will reject his version – though the Italians might be stuck with it.

Unfortunately our reading today from the 17th chapter of John’s Gospel stops at verse 13. Just two verses later we read: “I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one.” ἐκ τοῦ πονηροῦ – ἐκ a prepositions just like ἀπὸ. Jesus is praying to his Father not to take us out of the world, out of this world of testing and trials, but to protect us from the evil one. And the key is the phrase Jesus uses more than once in this chapter 17: “that they may be one, as we are.”

Jesus did not make it easy for us to be ‘one’! He prays for us to be one; He sent the Holy Spirit to guide us; but he leaves the work to us. There is no magic prescription. No three or four rules or practices that we have to perform every day or in our lifetime. He knows we are weak and easily fall, so he tells us to pray “bring us not to the test”. But Jesus also knows that we are capable of great things, if we stay close to him and if we “are one” with each other and with Him. Jesus ascended in glory and he is at the “right hand” of God the Father. The right hand of God is simply a metaphor for the power and authority of God. 

Further down in this 17th chapter Jesus prays: “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me….And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”

What more do you want? He has given us everything: glory, sanctification, love, oneness with God! And all this on top of keeping us from any testing that will break us, keeping us safe from the evil one. That’s a lot to take home with you today. So go with the fullness of joy that Jesus also proclaimed in today’s Gospel reading. From his fullness may you have fullness every day in your lives. Amen.