7/31/2022

Alice Schieffer is taking over the organization of the Nursing Home & Sick and Homebound Ministry. Please be generous in helping her with this important work.
The first three petitions of the Our Father focus on God the Father: His name, His kingdom, His will. And so it should be. We pray NOT just to re-enforce our egos as the center of reality, but to broaden our vision, our horizons, to place God at the center of what we perceive as reality, which will place ourselves somewhere between the center and the periphery. It is a huge undertaking to place His Name, Kingdom, and Will above our own. But we begin by structuring our prayer after our goal, acknowledging the font of our faith, hope, and charity – God the Father who sent His Son and the Holy Spirit to transform us into a people capable of entering into the community of the Trinity. To bring fallen humanity into a more perfect image and likeness of God, it is we who must change, not God.
“Hallowed be thy name” refers not to asking God to make his name holy – it already is – but that humanity may recognize God’s name as holy. We do that by becoming “holy and blameless before him in love.” (Eph 1:9,4) We are made in God’s image and likeness, have fallen, and now want to have that image and likeness restored. In so doing, we “hallow” God’s name, become more like Him, honoring God. Jesus Christ came to show us what that looks like in human form – the humility, the obedience, the sacrificial love of which we are capable, especially through Baptism. In becoming holy, we demonstrate to all peoples what it might mean to “hallow” God’s name – by imitating Christ, who showed us what holiness looks like human flesh. When we live holy lives, we “hallow” God’s name; when we live wicked lives, we blaspheme His name. The goal for which we pray is to have God’s name hallowed in all men and women. God is, after all, not just one value among many, but THE SUPREME VALUE, the Creator, the Source of all Goodness. How could His name NOT be hallowed?
“Thy Kingdom come” refers to the new creation which Jesus Inaugurated while on earth, most dramatically with His Resurrection. The Eucharist is a foretaste of the coming Kingdom, the presence of the Reign of God among us. Those who understand that the coming of the Kingdom of God means the end of death, of sin, of evil, of all that causes us to suffer – those who understand or even have an inkling of the new creation, can’t wait for it to come among us. We anticipate Christ’s second coming with some anxiety because of judgment, but also with excitement because of the gifts and fruits of the Holy Spirit, because of the implementation of the Beatitudes, because of the union which the Holy Spirit will bring about between God and humanity.
“Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven” refers to God’s desire that all humans be saved and come into the knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim 2:3-4). This is the new creation. We, too, long to be part of this new creation where we love one another as Christ has loved us. (Jn 13:34). Christ, in coming into this world and redeeming us, did the Father’s will. As he said in Gethsemane when asking the Father to take this cup from Him, “Not my will, but yours be done.” (Lk 22:42) Jesus came to do the Father’s will, not his own, and in so doing showed us what it meant to truly desire “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” In the end when Christ comes in glory it will happen, and the earth will pass away and there will be only the new creation. We pray for that to happen at the beginning of the Our Father, and we vote for it to hasten its coming by seeking to do God’s will, not ours, while we are still here on earth.
Next week I will do the last four petitions of the Our Father. If you want to read more, look at the Catechism of the Catholic Church, CCC 2777 – 2865.
It is a joy to be your pastor.

Father Albert, O.S.B