ADVENT 2 - ODD OPTATIVES

While it is tempting to write about St Nicholas – because the Eve of his feast is a traditional Dutch version of Father Christmas, when children get a visit from the Saint in episcopal robes and receive their presents --, I did promise to pursue the odd optatives in the Lord’s Prayer for a bit.

It has always struck me as peculiar that the first three petitions are couched in the language of a wish rather than in that of a prayer. ‘Hallowed be thy Name, thy Kingdom come, thy Will be done’: may all this happen, we appear to be saying, rather than putting a direct request as is normal in a prayer.

Since I never have an original idea, I assumed that others must have noticed the same thing; and, indeed, when I started looking I found a rich literature on the subject, which I will only touch on lightly here, on the Second Sunday in Advent. Let’s begin with the Catholic Catechism, which is (as one would expect) stoutly declarative on the topic:

2807 “The term ‘to hallow’ is to be understood here not primarily in its causative sense (only God hallows, makes holy), but above all in an evaluative sense: to recognize as holy, to treat in a holy way. And so, in adoration, this invocation is sometimes understood as praise and thanksgiving.⁶⁶ But this petition is here taught to us by Jesus as an optative: a petition, a desire, and an expectation in which God and man are involved. Beginning with this first petition to our Father, we are immersed in the innermost mystery of his Godhead and the drama of the salvation of our humanity. Asking the Father that his name be made holy draws us into his plan of loving kindness for the fullness of time, "according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ," that we might "be holy and blameless before him in love."⁶⁷

2808 “In the decisive moments of his economy God reveals his name, but he does so by accomplishing his work. This work, then, is realized for us and in us only if his name is hallowed by us and in us.”

This is interesting, but no reasoning is given (normal, in a catechism), and no. 2808 seems rather circular.

For a 20^th-century Calvinist view, I went to Karl Barth. In The Christian Life he wrote extensively and brilliantly on the optatives. About these petitions, especially the first, Barth says that a) we can, when praying ‘Hallowed be thy name’, only fold our hands and trust God to fulfil it; yet at the same time b) we cannot escape our own responsibility, as really pressing God with this petition involves being ‘startled and disquieted’ and involving ourselves both in earnest prayer and committed ethical action.

This too is interesting and ethically admirable, but I am not sure why the petition is startling and disquieting, nor why the consequences he lists follow logically.

By this time, I was starting to wonder about the optative, and thought I would pursue it in terms of the New Testament’s Greek. So I found a fascinating and lively Hellenist blog (BGreek), where the subject had also been discussed. The Hellenists concluded that it was not an optative but an imperative (as in ‘Let there be light!’). That, as one of them pointed out, makes the petitions extremely powerful. Then another said that the 3^rd person aorist imperative was standard in Greek prayers. And a further person then pointed out that Jesus uses the same form when he is healing someone (e.g. Mt 8:13). NB: As someone else pointed out, the aorist implies that the object of the prayer is a one-time happening rather than an ongoing process.

This was exciting, though it didn’t really clear up my confusion: the imperative, again, is not obviously a prayer.

However, a Church Father agreed: Origen, in De Oratione (‘Origen On Prayer’ CCLE) in his 2^nd chapter on the Lord’s Prayer (ch. 14), also claims – arguing against Tatian -- that it is an imperative on the order of ‘Let there be light!’.

In the case of the First Petition, there is also the whole subject of the Name, on which the consensus seems to be that God’s Name is coextensive with His nature. Matthew Henry refers to ‘God’s Name, that is, God Himself’. There is also a passage from Ezekiel 36:22ff.: ‘Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord GOD: It is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name, which you have profaned among the nations to which you came. I will sanctify [= hallow] my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them; and the nations shall know that I am the LORD, says the Lord GOD, when through you I display my holiness before their eyes. I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land.' (NRSV) This led someone to write that ‘we are making a virtue of necessity’ when we pray this, as God has said He will do it Himself anyway.

Why Jesus put them in the optative we will never know; not down here, anyway. That he did so is, I think, beyond doubt: someone on the Hellenist blog pointed out that Matthew was a Mokhes, or douanier, an excise man, and that as such he was used to making shorthand notes, which he would then later elaborate in Greek and send to Rome with the tax receipts; hence his version of Jesus’ words has good authority, whereas Luke confessedly wrote from hearsay.

So where does this leave us, and the optatives? All the answers above are enlightening in some ways, but do not seem to me to answer the original question: how can such optatives be a prayer? The slightly circular no. 2808 of the Catholic Catechism, I think, comes closest. Perhaps the way in which this first half of the Pater Noster can be a prayer, a beseeching, is in the following sense: ‘Father, grant us the grace to hallow thy Name; grant us the strength to help thy Kingdom come; grant us the discernment to do thy Will on earth -- as the angels and saints do it in Heaven.’