Friends, the Gospel for today is of great moments, for in it the Son of God teaches us to pray. Our teacher is not just a guru, a spiritual sage, or a religious genius, but the Son of God. This is why the Our Father is the model of all prayer. A desire to pray is planted deep within us, the desire to speak to God and to listen to him. We can forget to pray, neglect to pray, become lazy in prayer, but we can never really lose the desire to pray.
And so let us attend carefully to the first words of Jesus’ great prayer: “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Our basic problem is getting our priorities mixed up. We seek all kinds of worldly things – money, pleasure, power, honor – all of which are unsatisfying.
What we should desire, first, is God. This is precisely what the prayer to hallow the name of God is all about. It’s not that God’s name isn’t, in fact, hallowed, but we’re praying that we might keep it that way, that we might honor God in all things. We’re praying for a radical reorientation of our consciousness.
If you have a prayer nugget you’d like to share with the parish, email Bill Marty, bill@takenroad.com. Thanks!
