Calling on the name of Father
Jesus said to his apostles: “When you pray, say: Father.” That is, call on the Father first of all. Speak, not just with your voice but with your heart also for fear it should be said about you as Isaiah said: “This people honors me with their lips alone though their hearts are far from me” (Is 29:13). Don’t just speak with your heart but also with your mouth because vocal prayer is accepted by God according to the psalm: “I will give fervent thanks to the Lord with my voice” (Ps 108[109]:30). And this because it serves both to awaken the memory, stir up from drowsiness, inflame desire, prepare one to obey, express joy, and give an example.
So let us call on the name of the Father. For he is Father according to the condition of his nature, according to Ephesians: “from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named” (Eph 3:15). About whom Malachi says: “Have we not all one Father?” (Mal 2:10). He is also Father because of the gift of grace whereby, in Romans: “You all received a spirit of adoption through which we cry, “Abba, Father!” (Rom 8:15) and in Galatians: “As proof that you are children, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” (Gal 4:6). And he is Father because of the realization of glory, according to Jeremiah: “You would call me “My Father,” I thought, and you would never stop walking with me” (cf. Jer 3:19).
Since, then, under the name of Father, God is grasped as being the foundation of nature, giver of grace and realization of glory, by this alone we are enabled to grasp that he is the one to whom alone we are to pray.
Matthew and Luke agree about addressing the name of Father in prayer, so that in this name alone we might be stirred up to reverence and trust, those two wings without which there is no effective prayer.