"Daily" is the qualifying word our Lord places before the word "bread" in his model prayer. It is interesting that he does this since it might be considered redundant, and the petition renders almost the identical meaning without it: "Give us this day our bread." Perhaps it is only because of habit, but it is difficult to say the petition this way and the prayer does seem to miss something without it. This notion of daily is reassuring and comforting, something that speaks to me of regularity and sufficiency without excess or waste. I am not at all put off that it may as well suggest what is just weekday fare, the usual, common place, or humdrum.

My attraction to it may have something to do with its monastic quality. The Rule of St. Benedict is concerned with the daily cycle and with the sanctification of the ordinary daily activities in life: the daily office, the daily manual labor, the weekly reader, the times for meals and the amount of food and drink. All of this serves his pervasive concern for faithfulness and good habit. Our Christian discipleship is authentic only when it has about it the consistancy and integrity that is indicated by the word "daily." The sporadic and erratic are the enemies of progress in discipleship.

This little word "daily" thus invites us to a great spiritual struggle. To receive bread from the Father the first time might seem a great miracle which would easily fill us with amazement and gratitude. But about daily bread it is not nearly so easy to be amazed or even to remain interested. The Israelites were given the miraculous manna in the wilderness. How exciting it must have been that first morning to gather this mysterious, sweet tasting bread from heaven. But when this bread became their daily fare soon the complaint was heard, "there is nothing at all but this manna to look at" (Num 11:7)

In our spiritual journey we too may remember a time like that when we first gathered a spiritual manna. How exiting and fulfilling it was to live in Jesus Christ our true bread from heaven, how beautiful were the courts of his living temple the Church. The mercies of the Lord are new every morning, or so it seemed for a while. But as we settle into our Christian vocation soon enough there arises the murmuring voice, "there is nothing at all but this faith, hope, and charity to look at."

And day after day there are always only the same companions with whom to share the journey and its daily bread. Most of the faces we must deal with are the same, the demands upon our patience and the sacrifices are the same. It takes a lot of days to forgive seven times seventy. How distressingly true Mother Teresa's simple maxim can be: "Love begins at home." The essential vocation of the Christian does not change much from day to day. There is not often a new mission or a strikingly different path to follow. We are mostly called morning after morning simply to accept the old vocation with greater fidelity, to do more of what we did yesterday only with greater love, to pray and practice what we have said we believe, to be more and more what we already are through the grace of Baptism.

Yet precisely here we can also discover the little secret of the daily bread of the Christian life: it is sufficient, it contains everything needed. One cannot depend upon the exciting sporadic bread but daily bread will carry us through to the journey's end. Within the common soil on which falls the daily bread there unfolds the parable of the hidden growth of the seed. "The Kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed upon the ground, and should sleep and rise night and day, and the seed should sprout and grow, he knows not how" (Mark 4:26). Although the Israelites in the wilderness complained of the plainness of their daily manna, later generations saw more clearly: "You supplied them from heaven with bread ready to eat, providing every pleasure and suited to every taste" (Wis 16:20).

The day in which daily bread is given and received is a perpetual day of salvation. To receive this daily bread with humility and gratitude is to realize that this day is not a common day at all but it is the day, the day of Christ, the third day of His Resurrection which is the era of salvation to eternal life. This is the deeper meaning of St. Paul's calling us "sons of the light and sons of the day" (1 Thes 5:5). In his interpretation of Psalm 95 St. Benedict perceives the enlivening invitation and critical possibilities contained in each day. "Let us open our eyes to the light that comes from God and our ears to the voice from heaven that every day calls out this charge: If you hear his voice today, do not harden your hearts" (Prol. 9)

In this long green season after Pentecost which is sometimes called (and it is not such a bad description, after all) the Ordinary Time of the Church year may we discover again the greatness of that which is daily and the many possibilities that lie before us if only we will receive Gods daily bread as the mysterious and good gift that it is.

Sincerely,
Fr. Richard G. Herbel