The Our Father is a simple yet complex prayer, in which each petition has multiple layers of meaning.
This is especially the case with the petition “Give us this day our daily bread.”
While in one sense we are asking God to provide for our physical needs, at the same time we are also expressing our desire for our spiritual needs to be met.
Spiritual hunger
The Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this aspect of the Lord’s Prayer:
This petition, with the responsibility it involves, also applies to another hunger from which men are perishing: “Man does not live by bread alone, but . . . by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” that is, by the Word he speaks and the Spirit he breathes forth. Christians must make every effort “to proclaim the good news to the poor.” There is a famine on earth, “not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the LORD.” For this reason the specifically Christian sense of this fourth petition concerns the Bread of Life: The Word of God accepted in faith, the Body of Christ received in the Eucharist.
CCC 2835
Being fed with physical food is certainly important, but having a full stomach is not the end goal in life.
What is more important, in Jesus’ eyes, is the state of a person’s soul.
A person can be physically hungry or completely satisfied and yet still be far from God.
Even the phrase “this day” has a deeper spiritual meaning:
“This day” is also an expression of trust taught us by the Lord, which we would never have presumed to invent. Since it refers above all to his Word and to the Body of his Son, this “today” is not only that of our mortal time, but also the “today” of God.
CCC 2836
The next time you pray the Our Father, intentionally ask God not only for food, but also for the bread that will last eternally.
And today we celebrate...