Pope Francis recently approved a new translation in French and Italian of the Lord’s Prayer that offers a re-translation of the petition “lead us not into temptation.” The Holy Father has repeatedly expressed his concern that the phrase as it is translated is misleading, making it seem like it is God that actually leads us into temptation. Whether or not this is theologically correct or even prudent, I will leave to others to argue. But this new translation business certainly opens up the question whether there are other phrases in the current translation that need to be amended. In particular, I have in mind the petition “Give us this day, our daily bread…”
Familiarity can create a blind spot, but if we come to the petition afresh, we must admit that it is awkwardly worded. In particular, it is the repetition of this day and daily that strikes us as odd. Why don’t we pray simply “this day for our bread” or, more succinctly, “give us our daily bread”? Either one would seem to be more in line with conventional usage. But to see why this wouldn’t work and why the current translation doesn’t quite capture its meaning we should return to the original Greek.
A Faulty Translation?
Obviously, Our Lord did not give the Apostles the prayer in Greek, but the Holy Spirit did when He inspired the sacred authors to include it within the gospels. So, we can assume that any mis-translation would occur from Greek to (in our case) English. The word that we translate as daily is epioύsios in Greek. This word is utterly unique to Sacred Scripture and is not found anywhere else in the Greek language prior to its appearance in the gospels. This created a historical difficulty in defining exactly what it means (let alone translating it). None of the Fathers agreed upon its exact meaning, although a number of them settled upon the in literal meaning— epi meaning super and oύsios meaning substance—from which we would derive with the English term supersubstantial. This is hardly a word that is found in the English vernacular, but its meaning is “above material substance”.
The use of the term supersubstantial led the Fathers of the Church to teach that the petition relates “not so much to the material bread which is the support of the body as the Eucharistic bread which ought to be our daily food” (St. Pius X, Sacra Tridentina). Why then do we say “daily”? After all supersubstantial hardly has the same connotation as daily. Until, that is, we put on a Biblical mindset. There is one place is Sacred Scripture in which God provides “daily bread”. It is the giving of the manna in the desert. This same bread was in a very real sense supersubstantial as it just appeared with the dew fall and spoiled as quickly as it came the next day. But Our Lord said the manna was but a prefigurement of the True Bread come down from heaven, the true “daily bread” that can only be described as supersubstantial—the Eucharist.
When the emphasis is placed upon the Eucharist the context of the petition is thrown into relief. We pray to Our Father as His adopted children, brought into the family of the Trinity and united as one family on earth. We pray that He feed us with the family meal because the Eucharist is only for us, it is Our daily bread. But there is another sense in which we must deal with the current choice of translation as daily.
Receiving Our Daily Bread
Like the manna in the desert, the petition is meant to remind us that the Eucharist is something that is given to the Church daily, a gift that we both express gratitude for and petition God to continue blessing us with. For there will come a time, at least according to some of the Fathers of the Church like St. Augustine, in which the persecution will be so bad that the celebration of the Eucharist will cease. Whether it was to cease completely or not, one can still imagine how difficult it would be to receive the Eucharist during that time. There are plenty of places in the world where it already is. We risk, especially in times like our own in which belief in the Real Presence of the Eucharist is in decline, becoming like the Israelites in the desert, taking the manna for granted and grumbling in disbelief. “The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me” (Mt 26:11).
Over a century ago, Pope St. Pius X made this connection between the manna the Eucharist in a decree that encouraged the “Frequent and Daily Reception of Holy Communion”. The saintly Pontiff said that given the correct dispositions for worthy reception, all Christians “should be daily nourished by this heavenly banquet and should derive therefrom more abundant fruit for their sanctification.” He states unequivocally that it is “the desire of Jesus Christ and of the Church that all the faithful should daily approach the sacred banquet.” He encourages the Faithful to make use of the Sacrament for the purpose that Christ intended—extending the Incarnation in time in order to enable those who touch Him to receive His healing touch. That is, “the faithful, being united to God by means of the Sacrament, may thence derive strength to resist their sensual passions, to cleanse themselves from the stains of daily faults, and to avoid these graver sins to which human frailty is liable…Hence the Holy Council calls the Eucharist “the antidote whereby we may be freed from daily faults and be preserved from mortal sin.”
St. Pius X also declares that the person “who is in the state of grace, and who approaches the Holy Table with a right and devout intention” should approach the Holy Table often. This “right intention consists in this: that he who approaches the Holy Table should do so, not out of routine, or vain glory, or human respect, but that he wish to please God, to be more closely united with Him by charity, and to have recourse to this divine remedy for his weakness and defects.”
In short then, the Our Father ought to express a desire that Christ “give us always this bread” (John 6:34). This of course assumes we understand what we are asking for. One will be surprised how, once they commit to receiving Our Lord frequently, even daily, and prays as such, daily Mass begins to “work out” and they find their schedule opening up. This is why a re-translation might lead not only to a re-education, but a re-invigoration of desire for the Eucharist. This will start with the commitment to personally make this supersubstantial bread our daily bread. If we nourish our bodies daily, then how much more do we need to nourish our souls?