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The Invocation:

“

Our Father, Who Art in Heaven”

We open the Lord’s Prayer by addressing God as Father. The Pater Noster is addressed to the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But we speak to Him as Father because God is our Father by every possible title.

He is our Father because He is our Creator, who brought us into existence out of nothing.
He is our Father because He is our Redeemer and therefore the source of our supernatural life.
He is our Father because we are His children by adoption, sharing already on earth in His own divine life by the grace He has given us.
He is our Father because by His Providence He cares for us and provides us with everything we need.
He is our Father because He has prepared for us a share in the inheritance that awaits us if we are faithful to the inspirations of His grace.

Christ made sure that from the opening invocation to the closing petition, we realized our solidarity with others. The collective words “we,” “our,” and “us” occur nine times in the Lord’s Prayer. This emphasizes the fact that the followers of Christ form a spiritual family, that we are members of the human race, and that when we pray we should recognize our kinship with others and other people’s need of our prayerful help.

Whenever Christ spoke to His heavenly Father, He always said “My Father.” There is only one natural Father of the Second Person of the Trinity. To bring this truth home, Christ also had no natural father of His human nature. But when Jesus taught us to pray, he told us to address God as our Father.

Saying to God, “who art in heaven”, does not mean that somehow He is not on earth. But He is in heaven as the Destiny to which He is calling us and for which we were made.

In a mysterious sense, heaven is wherever the experience of God’s presence is enjoyed. On earth we have a foretaste of heaven in the joy that God gives to those who serve Him, even while they carry their daily cross. In eternity this joy will be unalloyed and without sorrow or any trial.

The visible “heavens” of sky and sun, moon and stars are the biblical symbol for “heaven” as the home where God dwells and where Christ is preparing a place for us. The opening words of the Lord’s Prayer are, therefore, a reminder to raise our minds and hearts from the things below to those which are above. Everything on earth should be seen as a means to the end, or goal, which is our heavenly reward.

First Petition:

“

Hallowed Be Thy Name”

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The Latin words of the first petition bring out clearly what we are here asking for: “Sanctificetur Nomen tuum.”

What we are asking is that the Name of God may be sanctified. This calls for some explanations. We are not asking that God might become more holy. That would be blasphemy. He is the All-Holy One because He is the Totally Other. He alone is the Necessary One, the Infinite One; there is no other God than He.

Our petition is rather that God might be recognized and served as God by us and in us. He is all powerful, all wise, and all good. He is the Creator and the Destiny of the human race. But not everyone either acknowledges Him for who He is, or serves Him as He deserves.

Yet that is the main reason why God created rational human beings. He wants them to know Him – love and serve Him in time – as the condition for possessing Him in eternity.

In biblical language, “name” means the being who is named. When we pray that the name of God may be sanctified, we are asking that He may be glorified by His human creatures because they are His children and He is their God.

In the Church’s understanding, the comparison which occurs in the third petition, “on earth as it is in heaven,” refers to all the first three petitions. Consequently, in asking that the name of God be hallowed – that God may be known and loved – we are really praying that His name may be as hallowed on earth as it is in heaven.

If we ask, how is God’s name hallowed in heaven? the answer is clear. He is hallowed in heaven perfectly. The angels and saints in heaven know Him to perfection and they love Him to the limit of their created power.

Our petition, then, is that we on earth might grow in our knowledge and love of God. Every day, and in fact, every moment, our loving knowledge or intelligent love of Him should become more and more like the beatific vision of the hosts of heaven.

One more observation. The more we sanctify the name of God, by our devoted service, the more He will sanctify us. Indeed, we may say that our sanctity depends on how devotedly we hallow the name of God.