A disciple of Jesus lives a life of service reaching out to anyone in need, loving God with one’s whole self and others as oneself. Such apostolic life flourishes in the context of a prayerful existence, in a life of communion with God in Jesus. (Luke 11:1-13).
The prayerful Jesus
St. Luke loves to portray Jesus in prayer. A prayerful man, Jesus prayed right after His baptism at the Jordan (Luke 3:21), before selecting close friends and apostles (6:12), before asking for the confession of faith from Peter, and before predicting His own passion (8:18), at His transfiguration on the mountain (9:28), during His agony in the garden (22:41), and as He was dying on the cross (23:46). Jesus at prayer personified dependence and total trust in God. A man of faith and deep hope, in praying Jesus stands in the presence of His loving Father. “The Lord’s Prayer” illustrates how Jesus prayed and what He prayed. That is why it is a summary of the Gospel, the prayer that Jesus wanted His own people to be characterized with. In it they are on the same wavelength with Him and aligned with His priorities. St. Luke’s shorter and probably more original (than St. Matthew’s longer) version of the prayer starkly highlights in its only five petitions the essentials of Christian existence.
The opening direct address “Father” is the very heart of the entire prayer. Abba in Aramaic corresponds to our tatay or papa, revealing a familial loving relationship between Jesus and His Father. He invites His followers to join Him in this intimacy. This communion entails absolute confidence and trust in God. Expounding on this, Jesus says we are to pray because God is love and is so good. If an earthly imperfect father knows how to give good things to his children, how much more will our heavenly Father give His love and blessings to those who believe in Him. Our faith in God cannot go unfulfilled or unanswered: “Ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
With and for others, glorifying God
Such deep adherence to God explains the two initial petitions, “hallowed be Your name, Your kingdom come.” Where God’s name is glorified and held holy, there His reign comes into our human reality; where His kingdom is come in the world, there His name is hallowed and He is adored. In God’s presence, the Christian affirms God’s primacy and asks for the fundamental shift of the ages: the advent of the divine reign in fulfillment of God’s own design for the world. And this is something certain and definitive, like in Jesus’ parable of the importuning “friend at midnight” who gets what he needs because of his shameless persistence, not merely because of hospitality; he believes that his friend inside would not deny him.
St. Luke emphasizes that Jesus assures His disciples that the Father in heaven will actually give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him. The Spirit is the greatest gift of the Father and the Son to us. With the Spirit sent into our hearts, we cry out “Abba, Father!” and so we are God’s children and heirs (Galatians 4:6-7), joint heirs with Christ (Romans 8:16), and therefore together with Jesus a prayer full of confidence before God. The Holy Spirit empowers Jesus’ followers to believe and love God with their whole self, and to love others as themselves. In the unity of the Holy Spirit, the believers survive the temporal problems of life, and in compassion and forgiveness preserve their communion with each other, aware of “their Father’s” mercy toward their own sins.
Alálaong baga, in the Holy Spirit the reign of God is already present and presses on to its fullness. In prayer before God, the Christians as followers of Jesus already live in joy and in the hope of His return, assured that “their Father” in heaven would not allow them to be vanquished by the trials of faith. In “the Lord’s Prayer” we realize that the Christian’s essential and first vocation is to be a “prayer” before God. In the firm conviction that God is our loving Father, we are challenged to believe and live what we pray.
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