The Lord’s Prayer, also commonly known as the “Our Father” is the perfect prayer of Jesus Christ. When His disciples asked Him how we should pray, Jesus did not give a vague subjective answer. He said, “This is how you are to pray.” (Lk 11:1) The prayer is so powerful and profound that that it is the only penance that Fr. Larry Richards every gives after confession. One Lord’s Prayer prayed well can be more spiritually effective than many heaped on devotions. It is the prayer that we recite word for word at each mass, with every decade of the rosary, and many other times throughout our lives.
This article will be the first in a series, unpacking the theology of this prayer and hopefully understand its perfection a bit more.
(There are two versions of the prayer found in Matthew and Luke’s Gospel. Since Matthew’s version is the more expanded, traditionally used version, we will focus on that one.)
“OUR FATHER WHO ART IN HEAVEN…”
Right from the beginning, Jesus teaches us something incredibly important about who we are in this prayer. Notice that the prayer does not begin as “My Father” but “Our Father.” Yes, we all must individually convert our hearts to the Lord. But the activity of being a Christian is communal. Whenever Jesus called someone to follow Him, He would place them in the community. The very first words of the prayer call to mind other people as well as the Lord. This is fitting since love draws us outside the self and into communion with the other.
And the relationship we have to each other is that we are family. That is because we all have the same Father: God. No human person is an “other” to us. There is a unity and a oneness to the human family. And this bond is even stronger when we share it in faith. I am often taken aback during mass when I hear the entire congregation praying this prayer together and I can feel our unity. And I think about the billions of people in the world today who also pray this same prayer with us and the billions who came before through history who did the same. And even though there are real differences between us and our Protestant brothers and sisters, we can be united in this same prayer too. That gigantic symphony of human prayer should expand our perceptions and see the largeness of our faith community.
And the word that Jesus would use for “Father” in His native language was “Abba.” In modern English, Father is accurate, but we have created a relation distance in the word. It can be too formal. I remember when I was a snotty teenage and my dad asked me to do something I sarcastically replied “Yes, father.” The formality in the name emphasized my emotional distance from him.
But “Abba” is a much more informal endearment. It is much closer to “poppa” or “daddy.” It is a word of tenderness and emotional closeness. It is the word that children use or adults use when they are in child—like need. I have the most adorable nieces and nephews in the world. And I remember one of them, a 2-year-old, came running away from something that frightened her. She ran up to my brother-in-law and shouted, “Daddy! I SCARED!” And that word “Daddy” was just an unvarnished plea for help. She knew that Daddy would make everything better.
This is the same word Jesus Himself used in the Garden of Gethsemane. When faced with the utter torture that lay before Him, He cried out “Abba, if it be Your will, let this cup pass me by.” (Mt 26:39) In that moment, Christ returned to that primal need for comfort, essentially calling out, “Daddy! I SCARED!”
And we should never think ourselves better than Christ. We all need our “Abba.” As we get older, we gain more and more independence from our earthly parents. But we never outgrow our need for God as our Father.
This is because His reign is in Heaven. St. Augustine of Hippo once wrote, “We had a father and mother on earth, that we might be born to labors and to death: but we have found other parents, God our Father, and the Church our Mother, by whom we are born unto life eternal. Let us then consider, beloved, whose children we have began to be; and let us live so as becomes those who have such a Father. See how that our Creator had condescended to be our Father! “
So while we have an earthly family, we are adopted into a higher, heavenly one. This does not denigrate our natural parents. Instead it raises all of us up to new heights.
I think of the billions of dollars that Disney has made marketing to little girls to think of themselves as princesses and I don’t think they realize how profoundly correct they are. God is the King of the Universe. It makes all women princesses. That makes me a prince.
And it reminds us that our true kingdom, our true home is where the King is: heaven.
The King is our “Abba.”
Now some people object to the use of “Father” as too masculine. Of course all masculinity and femininity comes from God. But God has revealed Himself as “Father” and not as “Mother.” Some have said to me that this is problematic because many people have poor relationships, maybe even abusive relationships, with their earthly fathers. If that is the case, then how does robbing these people of the Fatherhood of God help them? Why not give them the experience of the good, true, and perfect Fatherhood that they missed out on in nature?
Of course God is transcendent and far above us. We never want to make the mistake of bring God down to our level. This would cause us to lose reverence.
But it was Jesus who taught us this prayer. We did not deem equality with God something to be grasped. Instead, God reached out to us and invited us into relationship and adopted us as His own children. He wants this closeness.
In the next article, we will explore what it means for God’s name to be “hallowed.”
Copyright 2015, W.L. Grayson
W.L. Grayson
I am a devoutly Catholic theology teacher who loves a popular culture that often, quite frankly, hates me. I grew up absorbing every movie, TV show, comic book, science fiction novel, etc. I could find. As of today I’ve watched over 2100 movies and tv shows. They take up a huge part of my life. I don’t know that this is a good thing, but it has given me a common vocabulary to draw from in order to illustrate whatever theological point I make in class. I’ve used American Pie the song to explain the Book of Revelation (I’ll post on this some time later) and American Pie the movie to help explain Eucharist (don’t ask). The point is that the popular culture is popular for a reason. It is woven into the fabric of our lives and imaginations, for good or ill. In this blog I will attempt to bring together the things of heaven with the things of earth. Of course this goal may be too lofty for someone like me.
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