Day 357: God, “Our” Father (2786-2793)

• It’s Day 357!!

• Let’s repeat a paragraph from yesterday, shall we?

• Paragraph 2784 says, “The free gift of adoption requires on our part continual conversion and new life. Praying to our Father should develop in us two fundamental dispositions: First, the desire to become like him: though created in his image, we are restored to his likeness by grace; and we must respond to this grace. We must remember…and know that when we call God ‘our Father’ we ought to behave as sons of God. You cannot call the God of all kindness your Father if you preserve a cruel and inhuman heart; for in this case you no longer have in you the marks of the heavenly Father’s kindness. We must contemplate the beauty of the Father without ceasing and adorn our own souls accordingly.”

• “OUR” FATHER

• The primary thing is do we know to whom we are speaking?

• Do we know to whom we are praying?

• WE NEED TO KNOW GOD!!

• As Christians, we need to know God as FATHER

• “Our” makes sense if we are praying the Our Father in Latin, which is called “Pater Noster”

• We do not pray to “my Father”

• We pray to “Our Father who art in heaven…”

• Paragraph 2789 says, “When we pray to ‘our’ Father, we personally address the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By doing so we do not divide the Godhead, since the Father is its ‘source and origin,’ but rather confess that the Son is eternally begotten by him and the Holy Spirit proceeds from him. We are not confusing the persons, for we confess that our communion is with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, in their one Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity is consubstantial and indivisible. When we pray to the Father, we adore and glorify him together with the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

• People may think they give too much attention to one Person of the Trinity to the neglect of the others

• That could be the case

• When we pray to the Father, we adore and glorify Him, together with the Son and the Holy Spirit

• Whenever we are talking to the Lord God, we are talking to the Trinity but also personally to the Father, to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit

• Let’s pray!!

Prayer by Fr. Mike: “Father in Heaven, we give you praise and glory. We ask that you please receive that. Be glorified now and always. Be glorified in our words, in our works. Be glorified just by the very fact that our heart is beating, the very fact that we breathe. And we know that we live and breathe in and because of you. Let every breath we take, let every thought we have, every word we utter, everything we do, let it all-even our rest, Lord God, let it all be for you. Let it all be done in you. May it glorify you, and may all of it be used to sanctify our brothers and sisters, those around us. Lord God, may you be known and loved. And may our neighbor and everyone in this world come to know and to love you as well. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen”

• So there we have it!!

• Paragraph 2786 says, “‘Our’ Father refers to God. The adjective, as used by us, does not express possession, but an entirely new relationship with God.”

• Have you ever thought of that?

• Paragraph 2790 says, “Grammatically, ‘our’ qualifies a reality common to more than one person. There is only one God, and he is recognized as Father by those who, through faith in his only Son, are reborn of him by water and the Spirit. The Church is this new communion of God and men. United with the only Son, who has become ‘the firstborn among many brethren,’ she is in communion with one and the same Father in one and the same Holy Spirit. In praying ‘our’ Father, each of the baptized is praying in this communion: ‘The company of those who believed were of one heart and soul.’”

• Paragraph 2787 says, “When we say ‘our’ Father, we recognize first that all his promises of love announced by the prophets are fulfilled in the new and eternal covenant in his Christ: we have become ‘his’ people and he is henceforth ‘our’ God. This new relationship is the purely gratuitous gift of belonging to each other: we are to respond to ‘grace and truth’ given us in Jesus Christ with love and faithfulness.”

• YOU belong to God

• God belongs to YOU

• Not possession, but this entirely new relationship

• We also belong to each other

• Because He is OUR God

• Paragraph 2789 says, “When we pray to ‘our’ Father, we personally address the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By doing so we do not divide the Godhead, since the Father is its ‘source and origin,’ but rather confess that the Son is eternally begotten by him and the Holy Spirit proceeds from him. We are not confusing the persons, for we confess that our communion is with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, in their one Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity is consubstantial and indivisible. When we pray to the Father, we adore and glorify him together with the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

• Paragraph 2792 says, “Finally, if we pray the Our Father sincerely, we leave individualism behind, because the love that we receive frees us from it. The ‘our’ at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, like the ‘us’ of the last four petitions, excludes no one. If we are to say it truthfully, our divisions and oppositions have to be overcome.”

• Paragraph 2793 says, “The baptized cannot pray to ‘our’ Father without bringing before him all those for whom he gave his beloved Son. God’s love has no bounds, neither should our prayer. Praying ‘our’ Father opens to us the dimensions of his love revealed in Christ: praying with and for all who do not yet know him, so that Christ may ‘gather into one the children of God.’ God’s care for all men and for the whole of creation has inspired all the great practitioners of prayer; it should extend our prayer to the full breadth of love whenever we dare to say ‘our’ Father.”

• We are ultimately saying, “God, this is my relationship with you.”

• Which is true

• BUT…

• It is also too small

• God’s love has no bounds and neither should our prayers

• St. Teresa of Avila might have said that she could meditate on each word of the Lord’s Prayer for the rest of her life 

• “God, bring everyone into the banquet. Bring everyone in that net of your love that you poured out on the world in sending your Son and poured out on the whole world in giving us your Holy Spirit. What an incredible gift. Lord God, can you pour out into my heart that same depth, that same full breadth of your love whenever we dare to say Our Father?”

• This is a great prayer to pray and a great thing to long for

• We desire to become like Him and we want to have humble and trusting hearts

• So we pray the Our Father

• “Our Father, God, make my heart like yours. Make my heart like yours, excluding no one because your love excludes no one.”

• Fr. Mike is praying FOR YOU!!

• Please pray for Fr. Mike and for each other….

• Kicking the can down the road…