KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 6 May
When you pray, say Our Father
It is known as the Lord’s Prayer at once distinctively Christian and yet profoundly connected to the thinking that is the essence of all prayer. “Prayer signifies all the service that ever we do unto God,” as the theologian Richard Hooker puts it. It signifies an orientation, an outlook and an attitude, a perspective that is unitive and comprehensive. It is about our participation in the essential life of God. As Origen, the great 3rd century theologian of Alexandria observes, “the whole of our life says Our Father.” Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, suggests that all prayer is about “letting Jesus pray in us.” The essential life of God in us is prayer.
We say this prayer at every Chapel service. It is, in that sense, a familiar prayer, even in a post-Christian age, but like so many things that are familiar their real significance is often overlooked. Why the Lord’s Prayer? Because it is the prayer which Jesus himself gives us to pray: “When you pray, say Our Father”. This reminds us of Jesus’ words to Mary, “I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God,” essentially quoting Ruth. As Aquinas says “God himself taught us this prayer,” thus establishing the connection between God and Christ, and arguing that this prayer is “the most perfect” and “the most preeminent” of all prayers, the prayer that underlies and informs all prayer. Simone Weil, the 20th century philosopher of attention, builds on this concept. She notes that “the Our Father contains all possible petitions; we cannot conceive of any prayer which is not already contained in it. It is to prayer what Christ is to humanity. It is impossible to say it once through, giving the fullest possible attention to each word, without a change … taking place in the soul.”
Origen, Augustine, and Aquinas, to name but a few, all note the special character of the Lord’s Prayer in terms of its structure and its unique form of address. We do not find in the Jewish or Hebrew Scriptures the practice of praying to God as Father. “Nowhere is there found a precept for the people of Israel,” Augustine states, “that they should say ‘Our Father,’ or that they should pray to God as a Father, but as Lord He was made known to them.” Few indeed are the references in the Hebrew Scriptures to God as Father and even fewer, to God as Mother. Such terms are metaphors for our relation to God.
Lancelot Andrewes, a 17th century Anglican preacher and theologian, offers a helpful explanation. The Lord’s Prayer begins with “a Father, not a Lord/ One being a name of love./ The other of dignity … One being, a name of Goodness, Comfortable … the other of Power, Terrible” (in the sense of awe and wonder) and grounds its daring use in Christ’s command to us. His Father is Our Father. A powerful and poignant intimacy.