It is safe to say that, together with the “Hail Mary,” the “Our Father” is the most popular prayer we have in our Christian tradition. Even people who do not practice their faith would recourse to the Our Father, in moments in which, compelled by the circumstances of their lives, they feel the need to pray. I was once in an airport, and seeing me in my clerics, a man approached me and asked me to pray for him. I assured him of my prayers, but I asked him if he would also like me to pray with him at that moment. He confessed that he had abandoned the faith a long time ago, but he agreed to pray an Our Father with me, since that was the only prayer, he remembered. For me it was amazing to see that, even if he had been far away for so long, he still remembered that he could call God “Father.”
Unaware?
I wonder if the fact that the Our Father is such a popular prayer, which most of us know so well and can say almost automatically, makes us somewhat unaware of what we have received from the Lord through that prayer. In today’s Gospel, the Lord invites his disciples to pray to the Father in the same way He prays to Him. Affirming that they are not to pray like the gentiles, who use many words to make sure they explain well to God what He is supposed to do for them. Jesus tells His disciples: “Pray then like this: Our Father…” In this way, Jesus reveals that it is His Father’s will that we may address God in the same way He addressed Him. So just as Jesus called God “daddy” when he prayed to Him, so we can call God “daddy.”
Indeed, in Baptism we have received the spirit of God, which makes us His children. No one better than St. Paul explains this, when he says that we received “the spirit of adoption, enabling us to cry out, “Abba, Father (Abba is the Hebrew word that would translate as “daddy” in English). The Spirit himself joins with our spirit to bear witness that we are children of God.” (Rm 8:14-16). When we pray the Our Father, we are addressing God as His real children. And as sharers with Christ in His relationship with the Father. Thus, through this prayer we can experience a real intimacy with the Father. We can trust Him and have the certainty that He will never abandon us. We can surrender to His will and to His plan, knowing that it is a plan of love. And more importantly, we can truly share in His divine life, and be totally transformed.
Led Astray
There are times, however, in which we lose sight of this immense gift. And we live as though everything depended on us, and as though we did not have a Father in heaven. It is interesting how, in the first reading of today, St. Paul shares his concern that, as “the serpent deceived Eve, by his cunning”, the Corinthians may also “be deceived and led astray from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” He also warns them not to listen to false teachers who may lead them “to receive a different spirit from the one they have received.” We are also subject to this danger. If we are sincere, we will acknowledge that often, we are deceived by the “serpent,” that is the devil, through thoughts of fear, anxiety, lack of trust, resentment, discommunion, judgment and even hopelessness. He always comes back to re-propose to us the primordial lie: “God is not love, you are alone, life depends on you.” When we buy into this lie, our whole existential reality collapses and we lose our dimension of children of God. The result is a feeling of deep estrangement and loneliness.
A Father’s Love
How can we fight against this temptation? How can we silence the devil in his lies? Where can we see God’s love in an undeniable and tangible way, and not just through feelings or emotions? Today’s responsorial psalm gives us the answer when it says: “Great are the works of the Lord…He has caused his wonderful works to be remembered…the works of his hands are faithful and just.” In other words, we can see the providential love of God. And, his paternal care in the works he has done in our lives. All of us have plenty of memorials, and events that manifest the action of God in our lives. These works are the solid proof that God has not left us orphans. But, that He truly cares for us with a father’s love. We can defend ourselves from the lies of the devil, by shoving in his face the works of salvation God has done in our lives.
As we meditate on these readings today, and as we are reminded that we can call God “daddy.” Let us take refuge in the paternal love of God and let us entrust to Him all our cares. As a good father, He will surely listen to and give us what we need according to His plan of love for us.
