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Friday, June 03, 2005

More on the Lord's Prayer from Neil Dhingra

I would like to further deepen our experience of the Lord’s Prayer by looking at several recent commentaries. The following reflections come from a book by Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini, the Archbishop emeritus of Milan.

The Lord’s Prayer begins with the exclamation “Father,” an address that is not found in any of the Psalms. But Jesus, at the age of twelve, already spoke of “my Father’s house” (Lk 2:49). And from the cross, Jesus prayed, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Lk 23:46). The name “Father” evokes an intense affection, trust, and surrender. We must always address God with a resolute confidence that, in his mercy, the Father will not abandon us. Cardinal Martini even says, “This mystery of the Father goes beyond, therefore, any thought or concept, it is not bound by mere words, it is always ‘beyond.’” There can be no pretense before the mystery of such a Father, and the Lord’s Prayer “stands in opposition to prayer recited without conviction, distrustful prayer that drags itself along in a monotonous and arid way.”

We then pray “hallowed by thy name,” remembering that the Father told his people that they had profaned his name “among the nations to which you came” (Ez 36:23). We now ask him, “Prove the holiness of your name, O Father, make known that you are good, that you are strong, that you love us!” We ask for nothing less than that “thy kingdom come” – we pray for the Father’s sovereignty, for the land in which he will manifest his dominion, for his activity in taking possession of this world, and, finally, for Jesus himself. Cardinal Martini quotes Cyprian, “It is also possible that the kingdom of God might mean Christ in person, he whom we invoke with our everyday wishes, he whose coming we insist should hasten with our expectation. Since he is our resurrection and because in him we are resurrected, so too can be the Kingdom of God, because in him we too will reign.” We look in expectation for the end, when Jesus will hand “over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power” (1 Cor 15:24).

Even now, the Kingdom draws nearer whenever someone, prompted by the Spirit, fulfills the will of the Father. “We must begin by doing the will of the Father so that heaven might come to the earth, so that the Kingdom already realized in the Risen Christ, in the angels and saints, might come, might be realized again among us, until the salvific plan of God is completely fulfilled.” “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”: this is the prayer of one who hungers and thirsts for the justice that she knows is the Father’s will, this is also the prayer of one who rejoices as she contemplates “the realization of some aspect or expression of the will of God in us or in the world.” St Francis prayed:

“Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven: so that we love you with all our heart, always thinking about you, always desiring you with all our soul, orienting ourselves to you so that every intention of our mind is directed to you, seeking in everything your honor with all our strength, expending all the energies and senses of our body and soul to the service of your love and for nothing else, and so that we love our neighbor as ourselves, carrying everyone with all our power to your love, taking pleasure in the well being of the other as in our own, suffering along with them in their suffering, not offending anyone, seeking never to hurt anyone.”

The Cardinal initially gave these reflections as catechetical lessons in Milan. He spoke of the petitions, “Give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses,” at the Prison of San Vittore, where the “bread” of freedom and familial affection is very hard to find. To continue praying the “Our Father” with authenticity, we must realize that we still need to ask for bread and are very far from self-sufficient. But we must know that we can address our need to the Father who cares deeply about us, and we must strive to keep the Kingdom of God and God’s will before us always, even when we are in distress. “In other words, the one who bets his life on the Kingdom of God recites this prayer profoundly and knows that he can ask everything of God and expect everything from God.”

And we are not yet finished. As Simone Weil said, “With the word ‘Father’ the prayer has its beginning, with the word ‘evil’ it has its conclusion. One must pass from trust to fear, only trust gives sufficient strength so that fear does not cause downfall or failure.” We must pray “deliver us from evil,” knowing that evil refers not only to our own wickedness and failure, but, as the Fathers of the Greek Church translated the end of the Lord’s Prayer, “the evil one.” “The invocation ‘deliver us from evil,’ in its most profound meaning, makes an appeal to the death and resurrection of Jesus. The Lord does not prevent us from feeling the impact of evil in the world; rather, he helps us to enter into it with the faith and hope of one who is certain of victory.”

Despite our loss of hope, fear of the future, and blindness to the common good, may our prayers to the Father - whose mystery is always ‘beyond’ our thoughts and concepts - bring us to “the faith and hope of one who is certain of victory.” Even when our bread is scarce, may we always remember that the Father “destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ, in accord with the favor of his will, for the praise of the glory of his grace that he granted us in the beloved” (Ep 1:5). All things will be summed up in Christ, “in heaven and on earth” (Ep 1:10).


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