Posted on 01/02/2003 7:57:17 AM PST by el_chupacabra
If we want to be Christians, we have no choice but to pray "Our Father." When the first disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, He taught them using those very words. To pray as a Christian means to pray "Our Father."
The Power of One
Yet, as I learned in my first days of ministry, the word father has become a stumbling block for some people. Divorce is common, as is birth outside wedlock. I live in a country that one popular book described as Fatherless America. So, for a growing number of people, father has never meant "provider," "teacher," or "guardian." It has meant only an aching absence.
Moreover, even children who have grown up with a good father are all too aware of his defects, problems, and sins. The best intentions of the most virtuous dads too often get botched in execution. What we human fathers wouldn't give our kids! But we don't always have what they want or need, and when we do have it, we don't always know how to give it to them without spoiling them.
This is why Tradition tells us to go beyond our earthly experiences and memories of fatherhood when we pray "Our Father." For, though He is a provider, begetter, and protector, God is more unlike than like any human father, patriarch, or paternal figure. The Catechism puts it this way: "God our Father transcends the categories of the created world. To impose our own ideas in this area 'upon him' would be to fabricate idols to adore or pull down. To pray to the Father is to enter into his mystery as he is and as the Son has revealed him to us" (no. 2779).
How has Jesus, God the Son, revealed the Father to us? As "Our Father, who art in heaven." By adding that prepositional phrase, "in heaven," Jesus highlights the difference in God's fatherhood. The Father to whom we pray is not an earthly father. He is "above" us; He is the one we profess in the creed as "Father Almighty" — that is, all powerful. Though we are weak, limited, and prone to mistakes, nothing is impossible for God (cf. Lk. 1:37).
God's power, then, sets His fatherhood apart from any fatherhood we have known or imagined. His "fatherhood and power shed light on one another" (Catechism, no. 270). Unlike earthly fathers, He always has the best intentions for His children, and He always has the ability to carry them out. Jesus wants us to know this, so that we could always approach Our Heavenly Father with childlike trust and confidence. "[W]hatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith" (Mt. 21:22).
The Catechism concludes that "God reveals his fatherly omnipotence by the way he takes care of our needs" (no. 270). We know God as Father because, over a lifetime of prayer, we experience His care for us. We come to see for ourselves that He is mighty and that He will deny us nothing that is good for us.
From Heir to Paternity
Earthly fatherhood at times reflects these characteristics, as do those offices that assume "fatherly" roles in society: the priesthood, for example, and the government. Yet earthly fathers can perfect their fatherhood only by purifying themselves of earthly motives — such as greed, envy, pride, and the desire to control. They can become true fathers only by conforming themselves to the image of their Heavenly Father, and that image is His first-born Son, Jesus Christ.
In governing, in parenting, or in priesthood, we come to exercise a more perfect fatherly role as we "grow up" in the Family of God: "We are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ" (Rom. 8:16-17). This process is a divine corrective to the world's distorted notions of patriarchy and hierarchy.
An ancient Christian writer, Dionysius the Areopagite, described hierarchy as something that originates in heaven, where divine light passes through the angels and the saints as if all were transparent. God's gifts, then, are passed from one person to the next, undiluted. Those who are closest to God — and so "higher" in the hierarchy — serve those who are lower. At each stage, they give as God gives, keeping nothing to themselves.
For this to take place "on earth as it is in heaven" requires the perfection of earthly fatherhood, which can take place only if we earnestly pray "Our Father, who art in heaven." God is the primordial Father, "from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named" (Eph. 3:15). He is the eternal model by which all human fathers must be measured.
Why in the Sky?
Down through the ages, skeptics have asked whether praying to "Our Father . . . in heaven" is consistent with our belief that "God is everywhere" and that He dwells within us (see Jn. 14:16, 23).
Yes, God is everywhere, on earth as He is in heaven. He is always present with us, and He lives within us when we are in the state of grace, free of mortal sin. Yet Jesus teaches us to pray to "Our Father . . . in heaven" because He wants us to lift our sights from our earthly exile to our true home — in heaven. St. John Chrysostom said it well: Jesus taught us to pray this way not in order to "shut God up" in heaven, but rather to lift us up from earth and "set us in high places, and in the dwellings above."
God made us for Himself; He made us for heaven. Heaven is separated from us not by light-years of space, but by our sins. Yet God Himself created our place of exile, and it's a good place. So it's easy for us to get comfortable in our earthly lives and to forget our eternal destiny. Think of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness, and how it was that after a few years of hardship they grew nostalgic for their years of slavery in Egypt, where at least their bellies were filled.
We, too, can think that way. When earthly troubles close in on us, heaven's promises seem unreal and remote. When we fix our gaze on the near horizon, envious thoughts, resentments, and greedy impulses seem to make sense to us. After all, if we follow their enticing logic, maybe we can grab hold of the things we want right now. The remedy to this, of course, is to set our sights on high, to heaven, our promised home. By God's mercy and power — by His fatherhood! — He has promised us great things. Now we live in a state of grace but then, when we are with "Our Father in heaven," we will live in a state of glory. Now we are His temples; but then, He will be our temple. Now He lives in us; but then, we will live in Him.
Though we're not home yet, God the Father is with us and He has the power to lead us through the desert and across the Jordan. Though we have a long journey ahead, He is always in our midst.
Dr. Scott Hahn is professor of theology and Scripture at Franciscan University of Steubenville, OH. He received his M.Div. from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and his Ph.D. in biblical theology from Marquette University. He is a former ordained Presbyterian minister with ten years of ministry experience and a former Professor of Theology at Chesapeake Theological Seminary. He entered the Catholic Church at Easter 1986 and is the author of First Comes Love: Finding Your Family in the Church and the Trinity, Hail, Holy Queen: The Mother of God in the Word of God, The Lamb's Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth, A Father Who Keeps His Promises, Rome Sweet Home: Our Journey to Catholicism (co-authored with his wife Kimberly), and co-editor of Catholic for a Reason: Scripture and the Mystery of the Family of God.
(Unfortunately, I expect this thread, inevitably, will deteriorate into a "Scott Hahn is an unsaved demon" thread)
Of course, any deviation from a line of Scripture in an oral presentation MUST be presumed to be a lie - i.e., intended to deceive. Such is the charity of some Christians...<>
1 God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Saviour. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life.
2 So that this call should resound throughout the world, Christ sent forth the apostles he had chosen, commissioning them to proclaim the gospel: "Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age."[4] Strengthened by this mission, the apostles "went forth and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by the signs that attended it."[5]
3 Those who with God's help have welcomed Christ's call and freely responded to it are urged on by love of Christ to proclaim the Good News everywhere in the world. This treasure, received from the apostles, has been faithfully guarded by their successors. All Christ's faithful are called to hand it on from generation to generation, by professing the faith, by living it in fraternal sharing, and by celebrating it in liturgy and prayer.[6]
Catechism of the Catholic Church
Cordially,
Thanks for posting.
The Prayer To Our Father
(in the original Aramaic)
Abwûn
"Oh Thou, from whom the breath of life comes,
d'bwaschmâja
who fills all realms of sound, light and vibration.
Nethkâdasch schmach
May Your light be experienced in my utmost holiest.
Têtê malkuthach.
Your Heavenly Domain approaches.
Nehwê tzevjânach aikâna d'bwaschmâja af b'arha.
Let Your will come true - in the universe (all that vibrates)
just as on earth (that is material and dense).
Hawvlân lachma d'sûnkanân jaomâna.
Give us bread (understanding, assistance) for our daily need,
Waschboklân chaubên wachtahên aikâna
daf chnân schwoken l'chaijabên.
detach the ropes of faults that bind us, (Karma)
like we let go the guilt of others.
Wela tachlân l'nesjuna
Let us not be lost in superficial things (materialism, common temptations),
ela patzân min bischa.
but let us be freed from that what keeps us off from our true purpose.
Metol dilachie malkutha wahaila wateschbuchta l'ahlâm almîn.
From You comes the all-working will, the lively strength to act,
the song that beautifies all and renews itself from age to age.
Amên.
Sealed in trust, faith and truth.
(I confirm with my entire being)
Mt 6:7-15
BTTT on 06-17-04
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