Friday, March 21, 2014

Everyday Prayers – The Our Father – Part 2

Let's continue our exploration of the prayer Jesus taught us, the Our Father. 

Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

1. Thy kingdom come – What are we really praying for here? What is God's kingdom? There are several possibilities. We might be praying for the coming of the end times when God's kingdom will be fully established in a new Heaven and a new earth. That is certainly a meritorious request! We should all be looking forward to the end of time when God will be all in all and His reign will extend without limits. We might also be praying that God's kingdom will further permeate this world. This, too, is an excellent desire. This broken world needs the truth, beauty, goodness, and love that only God's reign can bring. Third, we might be praying that Jesus Himself will come into our lives, into our hearts, into our homes, into our schools and workplaces, into our relationships, into everything we have and are. Jesus is the kingdom of God in the flesh, so asking for the kingdom means asking for Him. Isn't it amazing how three little words can express such a depth of meaning?

2. Thy will be done – God's will sometimes seems very mysterious to us, and indeed it is. But we can know one thing for sure about God's will. The First Letter to Timothy tells us that God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2:4). The Greek verb translated here as “desires” derives from thelō, which also means “wills.” God wants everyone to know the truth, and He wants everyone to be saved, to be in an intimate relationship with Him and ultimately to be with Him in Heaven forever. This is the bottom line of God's will, and we do well to pray for it.

3. God's will also encompasses the moral law. God wills that we human beings act according to the objective set of rights and wrongs that is pre-programmed into our very beings, revealed in His Word, and taught by the Holy Church. This, too, is His will, and we need to pray that we follow it.

4. Unfortunately, we human beings, with our free wills, often choose to act against God's will, to sin, risking our intimacy with God and our eternal happiness. We must pray that God's will takes control of our minds and our hearts so that we may make good, solid moral choices and combat temptation and sin.

5. People sometimes don't realize that God has an ordaining will and a permitting will. His ordaining will decrees events. His permitting will allows us to experience things that might be painful to us, not because He wants to hurt us but because they are consequences of our sins or perhaps experiences we need in order to grow.

6. on earth as it is in Heaven – Here we are acknowledging that the saints and angels in Heaven are perfectly aligned with God's will, and we are asking that we, too, may accept both His ordaining will and His permitting will, knowing that He loves us and desires us to be with Him.

Once again, we'll pause here and continue our examination in another post. Now, let's pray once again.

Our Father, Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name; Thy kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen.

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