Say the Lord's Prayer. You have said it ten thousand times. Now stop at one line.
Give us this day our daily bread.
(Matthew 6:11)
Theologians Bible
Daily bread. Simple. You have never once stumbled over it.
Here is the thing. That word "daily" is translating a Greek word that occurs in the Lord's Prayer and essentially nowhere else in the body of Greek literature that has come down to us. Not in the classical authors. Not in the ordinary business papyri. It shows up here, in Matthew and in Luke, and then it stops.
The word
Open Matthew 6 and look at the Greek under verse 11:
τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον.
ἐπιούσιος. And in Luke 11 verse 3 the same word appears, so it is not a copyist's slip in one manuscript.
When a word is this rare you cannot do what you normally do. Normally you find it in a hundred other places, watch how people used it, and work out the range. Here there is almost nothing to compare it against. So translators have had to take it apart and reason from its pieces, and there is more than one way to take it apart.
The possibilities
For the coming day. Take it from ἐπί plus a form meaning the day that is coming, and the prayer asks for tomorrow's bread today. That fits the rhythm of a household. Give us now what we will need to get through.
Necessary for existence. Take it from ἐπί plus οὐσία, being or substance, and it means the bread we need in order to be. Not luxury. Not surplus. Enough to live.
Supersubstantial. That second reading can be pushed further. Bread that is above substance, beyond ordinary bread. This is where the Fathers get interested, because if that is the sense then the petition is not primarily about the loaf on your table at all.
All three have serious history behind them. Ancient translators into other languages split on it. That should tell you how genuinely hard it is.
What the Fathers heard
Here is what I find remarkable. The Fathers do not treat the ambiguity as a problem to be solved and closed. They preach both ends of it.
Yes, it is your food. Christ tells you to ask God for lunch. That is not beneath Him and it is not beneath you. He made your body and He knows you have to eat, and He wants you to ask, every day, so that you never once mistake yourself for the source of your own life.
And yes, it is the Eucharist. The Church has heard this petition eucharistically for a very long time, and once you have heard it that way you cannot unhear it. Give us this day the Bread which is above all substance. Give us Christ.
Read John 6 sometime right after praying this line and see whether you can keep the two apart.
Why I love this word
Because it will not let you be lazy.
Most of the Lord's Prayer you can say on autopilot. This one word is a stone in the road. The moment you know it is there you cannot glide over the line anymore. You have to decide, every single time, what you are asking for. Bread for the body. Bread for the soul. Both.
And I think that is the point. St. John Chrysostom's instinct throughout his preaching is that Christ does not waste words on His disciples. If the Lord reached for a word that had no ordinary equivalent, He meant something that had no ordinary equivalent.
His Homilies on the Gospel of Matthew are in the Fathers Library in full. Not excerpts. The whole thing. Go read what he does with the Prayer.
A practical suggestion
Tomorrow morning, pray the Lord's Prayer slowly. When you get to that line, stop for two seconds and ask for both. Ask for the food you actually need today, plainly, like a child asking a father. Then ask for the Bread that is not food.
Then go do the work. All education is for application, and that includes the education you get from a Greek word.
- Read the whole prayer in context in Matthew 6 and in Luke 11.
- Find ἐπιούσιον in the Greek line and open it in the Greek Lexicon.
- Read what the Fathers say on the passage in the Church Fathers section.
One word, once in all of Greek, and you say it every day of your life.