Our Father Who Art In Heaven

We say the Lord’s Prayer hundreds, maybe thousands, of times over our lifetimes, but how often do we spend time contemplating the words of this powerful and beautiful prayer that our Lord Jesus himself gave us? What is this relationship that it expresses? How is it a guide to the way we ought to live our lives within that relationship with our Father in Heaven and our relationships with all of His children? How is it a lesson in not just what to pray, but how to pray?

The word that Jesus uses to teach us how to address our Father in Heaven is the Hebrew word ‘Abba,’ which bears a much more intimate sense of the Father. Its tone and meaning are more childlike. It is like the English word ‘daddy.’ What is Jesus revealing to us here, then? He is telling us that we are God’s children, that He loves us as a father loves his children, and that we can speak to Him, ask questions of Him, and respond to Him in that intimate, familiar way that a child can speak to its father. As our Father, we can trust in his love, his patience, and his tenderness when we need them. Like children in the presence of a loving, doting father, we can expect both his care and his guidance. We can go to him whenever we need his aid. We can go to him just to be with him in his comforting presence.

“Hallowed be thy name.” In this phrase, Jesus teaches us that our Father’s name is holy, that it is sacred, that when we use his name, it should always be used only with the deepest respect. It is a name that is to be spoken with awe, in the humble recognition that it is the name of the One who is Love itself. It is the sacred name of the One who is the very Ground of Being from which all things seen and unseen take their being and from which all good things come.

“Thy kingdom come.” This part of the Lord’s prayer we are to pray in deep faith and hope for the coming of the promised kingdom, where we will always be in the presence of Love, where there will be no more tears, no more suffering, and no more death. In that kingdom, we will experience no mere, fleeting moments of happiness, but more than that, we will enjoy nothing less than eternally present, pure, and perfect joy.

When we pray, “Thy will be done,” we are praying for the graces we need to come to know, to love, and to willingly serve God’s will more intently, more purposefully in our daily lives so that we might become worthy of entering that blessed kingdom. We are praying to be able to understand and know his will and to do it as it is done in heaven by the angels and saints. We pray this because we know that we cannot do this without God’s grace. And so we pray earnestly for this grace when we say, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Because we know our weakness and our sinfulness, we ask the Father to “forgive us our trespasses.” We can pray this with the confidence of faith because we have come to know that God truly is love and that He desires to heal our wounds, relieve our fears, and strengthen us where we are weak. We know this in and through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. But, and here is the real kicker, we also pray for something much harder for us. We pray that we be forgiven “as we forgive those who have sinned against us.” It is easier to pray to be forgiven of our sins, but it is another thing altogether to pray for the wisdom, the compassion, the empathy, and the strength to forgive those who have sinned against us. This is the part of the Lord’s Prayer that connects us directly to Jesus’ command to love one another as he loves us.

Finally, we ask the Father to “Lead us not into temptation, but to deliver us from evil.” This final petition asks for God’s protection from temptation and deliverance from the forces of evil that assault us all the time. It emphasizes the constant struggle that we are engaged in against sin. It also recognizes our need for divine guidance. In the end, the Our Father is a prayer of perfect and unselfish love, taught to us by Jesus himself. It invites us into an ever-deepening relationship with God. It fosters the virtue of humility in us. It helps us to trust in God’s love and to desire to become more like the persons he made us to be. Amen.