Article 181 - Catechism of the Catholic Church Series
Paragraphs 2786-2796
What keeps you going when challenging, confusing, or even tragic things happen? In nature, sunflowers turn toward the sun, symbolizing unwavering faith and constant orientation toward the light. This is why they are often associated with positivity, happiness, and optimism. Sunflower seeds also have nutritional value and the capacity to remove toxins from the soil. Toward the end of their existence, they bow down, almost in adoration and appreciation for the gift of life. As baptized Catholics, we turn toward the Light of the world, to the Son of God, and bow down in adoration at Holy Mass – regularly, even daily – for the gift of our lives as we receive Christ for our spiritual nourishment in Holy Communion. And, just before receiving Holy Communion, we prepare by praying the words of the Our Father.
The Catechism explains: “Our” Father refers to God and connotes “an entirely new relationship with God” (ccc 2786). This new relationship “is the purely gratuitous gift of belonging to each other: we are to respond to ‘grace and truth’ given us in Jesus Christ with love and faithfulness” (ccc 2787). When praying the Lord’s Prayer, “we personally address the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By doing so we do not divide the Godhead, since the Father is its ‘source and origin’, but rather confess that the Son is eternally begotten by him and the Holy Spirit proceeds from him…When we pray to the Father, we adore and glorify him together with the Son and the Holy Spirit” (ccc 2789).
The first word of the Lord’s Prayer, “Our”, recognizes that all God’s “promises of love announced by the prophets are fulfilled in the new and eternal covenant in his Christ” (ccc 2787). In other words, “we have become ‘his’ people and he is henceforth our God” (ccc 2787). In addition, this word “Our” likewise “expresses the certitude of our hope in God’s ultimate promise” (ccc 2788). Each time we pray the Lord’s Prayer “we personally address the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (ccc 2789). The Catechism elaborates: “…for we confess that our communion is with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ, in their one Holy Spirit. The Holy Trinity is consubstantial and indivisible” (ccc 2789). We are reminded that in addressing God as “Father”, we are using the name with which God prefers to be called. Some have sought, even in theological circles, to re-name our Creator as mother or superpower or other such names. Sacred Scripture reminds us though, especially when Jesus teaches us the “Our Father”, that God prefers or chooses to be called upon in our prayers as Father! We, thus, use this name in liturgical events or otherwise when requesting His blessing with the sign of the Cross: “In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.”
In praying the Lord’s Prayer, we recall that God is One and God is Three, beginning this prayer with the Sign of the Cross. The instructive words of fourth century Italian bishop and theologian Saint Gaudentius help here: “Let the sign of the cross be continually made on the heart, on the mouth, on the forehead, at table, at the bath, in bed, coming in and going out, in joy and sadness, sitting, standing, speaking, walking…in all our actions…that we may be entirely covered with this invincible armor of Christians.”
The next paragraph of the Catechism begins by making this point: “Grammatically, ‘our’ qualifies a reality common to more than one person” (ccc 2790). Therefore, in praying the Lord’s Prayer, “each of the baptized” is praying as a member of the Church “united with the only Son…in communion with one and the same Father in one and the same Holy Spirit” (ccc 2790). As such, “this prayer to ‘our’ Father remains our common patrimony and an urgent summons for all the baptized” regardless of the various divisions among Christians (ccc 2791).
Finally, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer with sincerity, “we leave individualism behind, because the love that we receive frees us from it. The ‘our’ at the beginning of the Lord’s Prayer, like the ‘us’ of the last four petitions, excludes no one” (ccc 2792). Why? Because “God’s love has no bounds, neither should our prayer” (ccc 2793). When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are “praying with and for all who do not yet know him, so that Christ may ‘gather into one the children of God’” (ccc 2793).
The opening line of the prayer, “Our Father, Who art in Heaven”, does not mean that God is in heaven, in the sense that he occupies “a place (‘space’), but a way of being; it does not mean that God is distant, but majestic” (ccc 2794). He is “not ‘elsewhere’: he transcends everything…[and] is in the hearts of the just, …as in his holy temple” (ccc 2794). As fourth century theologian, Saint Augustine (354-430) puts it, it means that those who pray should desire the one they invoke to dwell in them.
In short, God Our Father “is in heaven, his dwelling place; the Father’s house is our homeland. Sin has exiled us from [heaven], the land of the covenant, but conversion of heart [in Christ] enables us to return to the Father, to heaven” (ccc 2795). When we the Church “prays ‘Our Father who art in heaven,’ [we are] professing that we are the People of God, already seated ‘with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus’ and…yet at the same time…we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling” (ccc 2796). “We Christians are in the flesh, but do not live according to the flesh. We spend our lives on earth but, in the words of Saint Paul, ‘our citizenship is in heaven’” (Philippians 3:20) (ccc 2796).
The house of God, our Father, which is Heaven, is the true homeland toward which we journey. For those who are faithful, this is also the homeland to which we already belong.
Father Hillier is director, diocesan Office of Pontifical Mission Societies, the Office for Persons with Disabilities and Censor Luborum.