OUR FATHER IN HEAVEN
THURSDAY, ELEVENTH WEEK IN ORDINARY TIME
2 Cor 11:1-11; Ps 111:1-4,7-8; Mt
6:7-15
Our
Prayer to the Father
The
core of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God in human nature, is
the revelation of the Father in heaven, who is the giver of life and all good
gifts. Understanding the central message of the Gospel and growing in the
corresponding consciousness of the Son is crucial for us as Christians. To miss
this all-important message of the Gospel is to lack the necessary foundation
that would carry the Christian spirituality. Our understanding of the Trinity
is rooted in the revelation of the Father. Once we focus our minds on the
heavenly Father, we easily conceive the revealing of the Son of God as a clear
and distinct Person proceeding from the Father as the origin of all things. The
Son is not well conceived and understood without the Person of the Father from
whom he proceeds, for the Father precedes the Son. Though our shared experience
is of the Son of God in his humanity, our profession of faith in him leads to
the Father he reveals to us. Thus, he tells us that nobody knows the Son except
the Father. We know the Son better the more we understand the heavenly Father
who begot him from eternity. The Holy Spirit is from the Father and the Son and
reveals himself to us by filling our hearts with the love of the Father and the
Son. The revelation of the Son, who is the knowledge of the Father, precedes
and facilitates the outpouring of love of the Father and the Son.
Based
on the understanding of the importance of the deep and solid foundation the
knowledge of the heavenly Father establishes in our hearts, Our Lord teaches us
the prayer to say daily and very often. “So you should pray like this: ‘Our
Father in heaven, may your name be held holy, your kingdom come, your will be
done, on earth as in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our
debts, as we have forgiven those who are in debt to us. And do not put us to
the test, but save from the evil one.” The Lord’s words are both prayer and a
procedure to produce the disposition of the Son in us. It is a prayer because
he gives us the words to use when praying so that his voice may be heard in us
in the communion of our spirits with the Holy Spirit; his words outline the
essential things we need to be conscious of when approaching God; he wants us
to call God ‘our Father’ to evoke the confidence of sons in us in requesting
the essential things from him; he makes us understand that our wills and
prayers must always align with the will of the Father for the coming of his
heavenly kingdom in our lives and on earth; he also reminds us of what the
Father will always do for us if we regard him as our Father: he will provide
our daily bread, he will forgive us our daily failings as we follow the Son to
forgive others, he will not lead us into temptation, and he will deliver us
from evil. All these are due to the passion, death, and resurrection of the Son
of Man, which we must believe.
Subsequently,
the prayer of Our Lord is a procedure to make our hearts to be like the heart
of the Son of Man. Thus, he commenced with the correction of the bad practice
of prayer among the pagans. “In your prayers do not babble as the pagans do,
for they think that by using many words they will make themselves heard. Do not
be like them; your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” Prayer is
not about words; it is not information to the Father in heaven; it is an
attempt to acquire a disposition of the Son. The desired disposition
establishes an effective connection to God the Father, to God the Son, and God
the Holy Spirit in our souls. Therefore, Christian prayer is a Trinitarian
activity in a faithful soul. The effective structure of Christian life is what
Saint Paul was in pain to bring about in the church in Corinth. He struggled to
turn them into brides of Jesus Christ by building Christlike minds in them.
“You see, the jealousy that I feel for you is God’s own jealousy: I
arranged for you to marry Christ so that I might give you away as a chaste
virgin to this one husband. But the serpent, with his cunning, seduced Eve, and
I am afraid that in the same way your ideas may get corrupted and turned away
from simple devotion to Christ.” The Christian prayer is a simple devotion to
Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit, who seeks to reproduce the mind of Jesus
Christ in us, to call God our Father with the confidence of the Son. Every
effort is to this end for ourselves and others under our care.
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