alled day by day, when one day
passes away, and another day succeeds. Will it be called day by day
when there will be one eternal day? This petition for daily bread
is doubtless to be understood in two ways, both for the necessary
supply of our bodily food, and for the necessities of our spiritual
support. There is a necessary supply of bodily food, for the
preservation of our daily life, without which we cannot live. This
is food and clothing, but the whole is understood in a part. When
we ask for bread, we thereby understand all things. There is a
spiritual food, also, which the faithful know, which ye, too, will
know when ye shall receive it at the altar of God. This also is
"daily bread," necessary only for this life. For shall we receive
the Eucharist when we shall have come to Christ himself, and begun
to reign with him forever? So then the Eucharist is our daily
bread; but let us in such wise receive it, that we be not refreshed
in our bodies only, but in our souls. For the virtue which is
apprehended there, is unity, that gathered together into his body,
and made his members, we may be what we receive. Then will it be,
indeed, our daily bread. Again, what I am handling before you now
is "daily bread"; and the daily lessons which ye hear in church are
daily bread, and the hymns ye hear and repeat are daily bread. For
all these arc necessary in our state of pilgrimage. But when we
shall have got to heaven, shall we hear the Word, we who shall see
the Word himself, and hear the Word himself, and eat and drink him
as the angels do now? Do the angels need books, and interpreters,
and readers? Surely not. They read in seeing, for the truth itself
they see, and are abundantly satisfied from that fountain, from
which we obtain some few drops. Therefore has it been said touching
our daily bread, that this petition is necessary for us in this
life.

"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Is this necessary
except in this life? For in the other we shall have no debts. For
what are debts, but sins? See, ye are on the point of being
baptized, then all your sins will be blotted out, none whatever will
remain. Whatever evil ye have ever done, in deed, or word, or
desire, or thought, all will be blotted out. And yet if in the life
which is after baptism there were security from sin, we should not
learn such a prayer as this, "Forgive us our debts." Only let us by
all means do what comes nex