The Lord's Prayer

Homily for Wednesday of the Twenty-seventh Week in Ordinary Time

Every priest and every consecrated religious prays the Liturgy of the Hours and celebrates or attends the Eucharist on a daily basis prays the “Our Father” at least three times a day. Those who pray five decades of the rosary add another six. This means that we pray this prayer over 1,000 times a year. The danger is it becomes so routine that we fail to really appreciate what we are saying.

I have long believed that the most important word in this prayer is the very first word: “our.” I’m sure that there are those who might choose another word. However, my reason for choosing the very first word is that this word reminds me that God is not someone that I can claim as my own. I share God the Father with every other human being. Because we have a common father, I must admit that every other human being is my brother or sister. Given the amount of hatred and vitriol all that we experience in our current society, this becomes a very important reminder to me that those with whom I disagree are still to be regarded as members of the family.

Today we hear this prayer stripped down to its essentials from the Gospel of Saint Luke. He does not include the word “our” at the beginning of his version. When we pray the Lord’s prayer, we use the wording that is included in the Gospel of St. Matthew. As someone who started seminary education immediately before the beginning of the Second Vatican Council, I vividly remember that in certain devotions, including the Divine Office (or Liturgy of the Hours as it has come to be known), preside are simply said the words: “Pater noster.” The rest of the prayer was prayed silently. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that I have come to regard the word “our” as so important. In the Latin version, it is the second word of the prayer.

Our Holy Father St. Francis wrote a meditation on this prayer I taking each phrase and expanding it to bring home the message of the prayer. Of the first two words, he wrote: “O Most Holy Our Father: Creator, Redeemer, Consoler and Our Savior.” St. Francis asked his followers to walk in the footsteps of the crucified Savior. However, it was his belief that walking in those footsteps would lead us to God the Father. In this way St. Francis strove to remember each day that he and we are completely dependent upon the gracious love of God the Father.