Your kingdom come. Your will be done

On Wednesday of the Eleventh week in Ordinary Time our Church invites us to reflect on a Scripture passage from the book of Judges (6:33-40; 7:1-8, 16-22a), entitled "Gideon conquers with a smaller army". Our treasure, which follows, is from a treatise on the Lord's Prayer by Saint Cyprian, bishop and martyr. Saint Cyprian's Treatise on the Lord's Prayer written around A.D. 252, is one of the earliest and most influential explanations of the Our Father in Christian history. In it, Cyprian teaches that Jesus Himself gave us the perfect prayer, containing everything necessary for our relationship with God. He explains each petition of the Lord's Prayer, showing how it teaches us to honor God, seek His will, trust Him for our daily needs, ask forgiveness, forgive others, resist temptation, and persevere in faith. The treatise is important because it reveals how the early Church understood prayer and Christian discipleship. Cyprian emphasizes that when we pray "Our Father," we pray not as isolated individuals but as members of God's family and the Church. He teaches that the Lord's Prayer forms both our hearts and our lives, leading us to humility, charity, unity, and trust in God. His work has influenced Christian spirituality for centuries and remains a valuable guide for understanding and praying the prayer that Jesus taught His disciples. In his treatise on the Lord's Prayer, Saint Cyprian teaches that Christians should long for the coming of God's Kingdom and strive to conform their lives to His will. The Kingdom is ultimately fulfilled in eternal life with God, and so this prayer expresses the believer's hope for Christ's return and the completion of God's plan of salvation. Saint Cyprian explains that praying "Your will be done" is not because God needs to be persuaded to act, but because we need the grace to obey Him faithfully. The main takeaway is that true discipleship consists in surrendering our own desires to God's wisdom and trusting that His will leads to our greatest good. By seeking God's Kingdom above all else and striving to do His will each day, we grow in holiness and prepare ourselves for the fullness of life with Him. Our first reading, from Judges (6:33–40; 7:1–8, 16–22a), teaches that victory comes from God's power, not from human strength or numbers. God deliberately reduced Gideon's army from thousands of men to only three hundred so that Israel would not be tempted to claim the victory as its own achievement. Through faith and obedience, Gideon followed God's unusual instructions, and the much larger Midianite army was thrown into confusion and defeated. The central lesson is that God often works through what appears weak, small, or insufficient in human eyes so that His power and glory may be clearly seen. When we trust God and follow His guidance, He can accomplish far more than we could ever achieve by relying solely on our own resources. The story encourages us to place our confidence in God's strength rather than in our own abilities, knowing that He is able to bring success even in situations that seem impossible.