Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished,
one of his disciples said to him,
"Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples."
Imagine Jesus praying. No one before or since had such a prayer life, or so close a connection to the Father. It must have been the case that the prayer practiced by others seemed lifeless and routine by comparison. We sometimes hear people speak of Christians who live and pray 'like Jesus is actually alive' which, of course, he is. Yet even this dynamism must pale compared to the intimacy that obtained between Jesus and his Father. And though this example will always surpass what is possible for us it is precisely into this intimacy that we are invited by Jesus. And it is by accepting this invitation that we too may come to live as though God is truly alive among us.
He said to them, "When you pray, say:
Father
The prayer Jesus taught was a prayer for those who were made to be daughters and sons of the Most High. This is the identity of all who have been baptized, filled with the Holy Spirit, and made to "cry, “Abba! Father!”" (see Romans 8:15). We might have expected Jesus to teach us to pray to God under some other title befitting his majesty, at least first and primarily, and then may as Father in some secondary sense. It almost seemed reckless to invite fallen individuals to think of God as their Father. Wouldn't that risk creating a sense of entitlement and also not creating a sufficient holy fear? Yet we see here the primacy of mercy and of the gift of grace. It is by first recognizing the love by which God has made himself our Father that we have the proper context to pray "hallowed be your name".
We are meant to see that God as Father is entirely good, nothing other than pure gift of self. But we are called to recognize that this goodness is utterly transcendent, not to be contaminated by our flawed human images of fatherhood, which have been tainted by our own imperfect experiences. His power is not like the power that we find in our own world because the source of his power is love, to the degree that it is made the most perfectly manifest in our own weakness. His identity is meant to be held up to the world as the greatest and highest good, that for which ever heart longs, worthy of anything we might have to endure for his sake.
hallowed be your name
We pray that we will treat God as set apart and transcendent in this way so that the world is able to recognize his holiness even through our reverence. If the world is not afraid to make a joke of God and to use his name as a curse we might hope that our prayer and example would at least cause second thoughts before doing so.
your Kingdom come.
The Kingdom comes wherever Jesus is present. So we pray that he will come to reign more completely in our own lives and that the Gospel of the Kingdom will spread throughout the world. It is a Kingdom that is not based on race, class, gender, or national boundaries. All peoples are a meant to become a part of this Kingdom of priests, to become living stones in this new and spiritual temple. In praying for the Kingdom we are praying, fundamentally, for the conversion of hearts; first our own, then those of the world. In this petition we also pray for those who cooperate in evangelism and spreading the message of the Kingdom, even that we ourselves will not be afraid to do so when we are called.
Give us each day our daily bread
We are meant to rely on God in everything, just as Israel depended on God for their daily manna in the desert during the exodus from Egypt. But even more than our physical needs we pray that we would recognize our dependence on the bread of life, the Eucharist, and on the hidden bread of doing God's will in all things.
have food to eat that you do not know about.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work (see John 4:32-43).
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and forgive us our sins
for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us
If we are to enter into the great Jubilee celebration of eternity it means that all debts must first be remitted. We ourselves need the mercy of God, constantly, daily, in all things. And in turn we know we are not free to withhold mercy from others, we who so completely depend on mercy.
and do not subject us to the final test.
We may sometimes speak of life as a test of our willingness to be faithful to God and to cooperate with his revelation. But this way of thinking has the risk of making us believe that our own effort is the main factor in our salvation. We must be strong to use our graced free will in order to resist sin, mustn't we? And yes, we must do what God empowers us to do. But even then we must realize that when we do not fall it is because God is provident in providing protection. And when we do sometimes fall in spite of giving our all we may still hope that it is not our "final test", that God is still orchestrating our rising again in repentance so that we may be found in him at the hour of our death. His testing is carefully calibrated not so that we can demonstrate our strength or skill but so that we can learn our weakness and our need to depend on him.
Have mercy on me, O Lord,
for to you I call all the day.
Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
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