10 February 2027 · Syro-Malabar Rite
Open in the Daily Word appAlso: Latin Rite · Syro-Malankara Rite · മലയാളം
“But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Matthew 6:6
Genesis shows us the first thing in creation that God calls “not good”: “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.” The man names every animal, but among them “there was not found a helper as his partner.” So God casts him into a deep sleep, takes one of his ribs and builds a woman, and the man wakes to cry out with joy: “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.” Therefore “a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh”, and they “were both naked, and were not ashamed.” We do not keep the Great Fast alone. In Kerala it has always been a family fast: the whole household gives up meat and fish together, and the evening family prayer becomes a little longer. The calendar notes that weddings are not celebrated from the beginning of the fast until Easter, so that the joy of the wedding feast may wait for the joy of the Resurrection. In many homes, especially in the last weeks, the Puthen Pana of Arnos Pathiri, the old Malayalam poem on the life and Passion of Christ, is sung or read aloud. Today our Latin Catholic neighbours receive their ashes; the Church in Kerala walks through these weeks together.
In the second reading an outsider becomes a believer. Rahab of Jericho hides Joshua's spies on her roof and confesses what she has heard: “The LORD your God is indeed God in heaven above and on earth below.” She asks for mercy on her household, and the sign of her safety is a crimson cord tied in the window through which she let them down. Matthew later names her among the ancestors of Jesus. Paul says something similar: “it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous in God's sight, but the doers of the law who will be justified.” Even those without the law can “show that what the law requires is written on their hearts”, while those who know the law may fail to live it: “you, then, that teach others, will you not teach yourself?” Jesus applies this to prayer. Do not pray to be seen. “Go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.” Do not “heap up empty phrases”, “for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” The Great Fast invites us into that inner room, where no one is watching except the Father who loves us.
Theme: “Your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”
The gift of companionship, Rahab's faith, and the inner room of prayer.
“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” Genesis 2:24
“So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.” Matthew 19:6
Apply: Plan with your family one shared Lenten practice and keep it until Easter.
“She said, “According to your words, so be it.” She sent them away and they departed. Then she tied the crimson cord in the window.” Joshua 2:21
“By faith Rahab the prostitute did not perish with those who were disobedient, because she had received the spies in peace.” Hebrews 11:31
Apply: Put into practice today one word of Scripture you already know well.
“O LORD, you have searched me and known me.” Psalm 139:1
“But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Matthew 6:6
Apply: Make a quiet prayer corner at home this week.
God made us for communion: with one another, and above all with him.
Keep the fast together, live the word you hear, and meet the Father in secret.
Take-home resolution: Pray ten minutes in silence every day of this week.
Dear friends, the first thing in creation that God calls not good is loneliness: it is not good that the man should be alone (Genesis 2:18). So God gives the man a partner, and the two become one flesh. We do not keep the Great Fast alone. We keep it as families, as a parish, as one Church.
Rahab, a woman of Jericho, hears what God has done and believes: the LORD your God is indeed God in heaven above and on earth below (Joshua 2:11). She ties a crimson cord in her window and is saved with her family. Paul reminds us that God wants doers of his word, not only hearers.
And Jesus teaches us how to pray: not to be seen, not with many words, but in the inner room. Go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret (Matthew 6:6). The Father knows what we need before we ask.
This Great Fast, let us find our inner room, and let our families pray together each evening. Then the Father who sees in secret will reward us. Amen.
Children, you can talk to God anywhere, even in a quiet corner of your room. Shut the door, close your eyes and tell him what is in your heart. He is listening!
Lord Jesus Christ, you said it is not good for us to be alone, and you gave us families to walk with us. Make our homes places of prayer during this Great Fast. Give us Rahab's faith, make us doers of your word and not hearers only, and lead each of us into the inner room where the Father sees in secret. Amen.
Today's first reading says that a person is made for another: “It is not good that the man should be alone”. The reading from Joshua tells of Rahab, the foreign woman who protects the spies, and Paul in Romans says that hearing the law is not enough without doing it. Matthew turns to prayer, which is the deepest relationship of all, and asks that it be real: before the Father, not before an audience. The first reading speaks of being unashamed before one another, and the Gospel of being unpretending before God. The key words are helper, one flesh and in secret.
Setting.
In this second account of creation, the man is formed first, placed in the garden, and given his task. Then, for the first time in the Bible, something is “not good”, and it is not sin. It is loneliness. The scene that follows is told like a story for children, with a gentle humour, and it carries one of the deepest teachings of Scripture on marriage.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper as his partner.”” (2:18)
After the seven-fold “good” of chapter 1, this “not good” is a surprise. It teaches that we are made for communion: human beings are not complete alone. This does not diminish the single life, which also knows communion with God and others.
“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh;” (2:23)
“At last”: the man has seen every creature and found no partner. Now he breaks into song. Woman and man recognise each other as equals, of one nature.
“Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.” (2:24)
Jesus quotes this verse when he answers the question on divorce and adds that what God has joined, no one is to separate (Matthew 19:5–6). The Letter to the Ephesians applies it to Christ and the Church: “a great mystery” (5:31–32).
“And the man and his wife were both naked, and were not ashamed.” (2:25)
They have nothing to hide from each other or from God. The Hebrew word for “naked” (‘ārûmmîm) sounds like the word for “crafty” (‘ārûm) in the very next verse, 3:1, where the serpent enters.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism teaches that man and woman were created in perfect equality as persons, and for each other (CCC 369–372), and that this page is the foundation of its teaching on marriage (CCC 1601–1605). The Fathers saw in the man's deep sleep a figure of Christ on the Cross. The Catechism, quoting St Ambrose, says: as Eve was formed from the sleeping Adam's side, so the Church was born from the pierced heart of Christ (CCC 766). At every Holy Qurbana we draw near to that side.
Setting.
Matthew 6:1–18 takes three practices of Jewish piety which Jesus and his disciples kept: almsgiving, prayer and fasting. They are precisely the three works of the Great Fast. Jesus keeps all three, and asks only about the motive: for whose eyes? Today's reading deals with prayer.
Structure.
Key words.
Verse by verse.
“And whenever you pray, do not be like the hypocrites;” (6:5)
Standing was the normal posture of Jewish prayer, and synagogue and street were not wrong places for it. Jesus himself prayed in public. The warning is against a fault found among religious people of every age, including Christians: prayer that looks round to see who is watching.
“But whenever you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret;” (6:6)
This does not cancel the Church's common prayer; Jesus goes on to teach “Our Father”, in the plural. He teaches where prayer starts: in a heart alone with God. The Father is “in secret”, and he is found there.
“Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (6:8)
Then why ask? Because prayer is not information for God. It is a child's trust, and it changes the one who prays.
How the Church reads it.
The Catechism counts prayer to the Father in secret, and not heaping up empty phrases, among the conversions of heart that Jesus asks of those who pray (CCC 2608). In the Syriac tradition, Aphrahat, the Persian Sage, in his treatise on prayer, says that the room is the heart, and the door to be shut is the mouth (in substance). This is the school of the Fast.
Does Genesis 2 make woman inferior, because she comes second and from his rib?
No. The story's point is the opposite: none of the animals is his equal, and she alone is. The Church teaches their equal dignity as persons (CCC 369). Later abuse of this text was never its meaning.