Reading 1 Gn 18:20-32 In those days, the LORD said: "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave, that I must go down and see whether or not their actions fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me. I mean to find out."
While Abraham's visitors walked on farther toward Sodom, the LORD remained standing before Abraham. Then Abraham drew nearer and said: "Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty? Suppose there were fifty innocent people in the city; would you wipe out the place, rather than spare it for the sake of the fifty innocent people within it? Far be it from you to do such a thing, to make the innocent die with the guilty so that the innocent and the guilty would be treated alike! Should not the judge of all the world act with justice?" The LORD replied, "If I find fifty innocent people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake." Abraham spoke up again: "See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord, though I am but dust and ashes! What if there are five less than fifty innocent people? Will you destroy the whole city because of those five?" He answered, "I will not destroy it, if I find forty-five there." But Abraham persisted, saying "What if only forty are found there?" He replied, "I will forbear doing it for the sake of the forty." Then Abraham said, "Let not my Lord grow impatient if I go on. What if only thirty are found there?" He replied, "I will forbear doing it if I can find but thirty there." Still Abraham went on, "Since I have thus dared to speak to my Lord, what if there are no more than twenty?" The LORD answered, "I will not destroy it, for the sake of the twenty." But he still persisted: "Please, let not my Lord grow angry if I speak up this last time. What if there are at least ten there?" He replied, "For the sake of those ten, I will not destroy it." Responsorial Psalm Ps 138:1-2, 2-3, 6-7, 7-8 R.(3a) Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me. I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart, for you have heard the words of my mouth; in the presence of the angels I will sing your praise; I will worship at your holy temple and give thanks to your name. R. Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me. Because of your kindness and your truth; for you have made great above all things your name and your promise. When I called you answered me; you built up strength within me. R. Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me. The LORD is exalted, yet the lowly he sees, and the proud he knows from afar. Though I walk amid distress, you preserve me; against the anger of my enemies you raise your hand. R. Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me. Your right hand saves me. The LORD will complete what he has done for me; your kindness, O LORD, endures forever; forsake not the work of your hands. R. Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me. Reading 2 Col 2:12-14 Brothers and sisters: You were buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. And even when you were dead in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he brought you to life along with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions; obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims, which was opposed to us, he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross.
Alleluia Rom 8:15bc R. Alleluia, alleluia. You have received a Spirit of adoption, through which we cry, Abba, Father. R. Alleluia, alleluia. Gospel Lk 11:1-13 Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished, one of his disciples said to him, "Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples." He said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our sins for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us, and do not subject us to the final test."
And he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend to whom he goes at midnight and says, 'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey and I have nothing to offer him,' and he says in reply from within, 'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked and my children and I are already in bed. I cannot get up to give you anything.' I tell you, if he does not get up to give the visitor the loaves because of their friendship, he will get up to give him whatever he needs because of his persistence.
"And I tell you, ask and you will receive; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. What father among you would hand his son a snake when he asks for a fish? Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg? If you then, who are wicked, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER Please be bold, because when we pray we usually have a need. The friend is God: he is a rich friend who has bread, he has what we need. As Jesus said: "In prayer be intrusive. Do not get tired ". But do not get tired of what? Of asking. “Ask and it will be given to you”. (…) A constant, intrusive prayer. Think of Saint Monica, for example, how many years she prayed like this, even with tears, for the conversion of her son Augustine. (Santa Marta, 11 October 2018)
In today’s Gospel passage (cf. Lk 11:1-13), Saint Luke narrates the circumstances in which Jesus teaches the “Lord’s Prayer”. They, the disciples, already know how to pray by reciting the formulas of the Jewish tradition, but they too wish to experience the same “quality” of Jesus’ prayer because they can confirm that prayer is an essential dimension in their Master’s life. Indeed each of his important actions is marked by long pauses in prayer. Moreover, they are fascinated because they see that he does not pray like the other teachers of the time, but rather his prayer is an intimate bond with the Father, so much so that they wish to be a part of these moments of union with God, in order to completely savour its sweetness.
Thus, one day they wait for Jesus to finish praying in a secluded place and then they ask him: “Lord, teach us to pray” (v. 1). In responding to the disciples’ explicit question, Jesus does not provide an abstract definition of prayer, nor does he teach an efficient technique to pray in order to “obtain” something. Instead, he invites his own to experience prayer, by putting them directly in communication with the Father, causing them to feel nostalgic for a personal relationship with God, with the Father. Herein lies the novelty of Christian prayer! It is a dialogue between people who love each other, a dialogue based on trust, sustained by listening and open to a commitment to solidarity. It is the dialogue of a Son with his Father, a dialogue between children and their Father. This is Christian prayer.
Hence, he delivers the “Lord’s Prayer” to them, perhaps the most precious gift left to us by the Divine Master during his earthly mission. After revealing to us his mystery as Son and brother, with that prayer Jesus allows us to enter into God’s paternity. I want to underscore this: when Jesus teaches us the “Our Father”, he allows us to enter into God’s paternity and he points the way to enter into a prayerful and direct dialogue with him, through the path of filial intimacy. It is a dialogue between a father and his son, of a son with his father. What we ask in the “Our Father” is already fulfilled for us in his Only-begotten Son: the sanctification of the Name, the advent of the Kingdom, the gift of bread, of forgiveness and of delivery from evil. As we ask, we open our hand to receive; to receive the gifts that the Father has shown us in his Son. The prayer that the Lord taught us is the synthesis of every prayer and we address it to the Father, always in communion with our brothers and sisters. Sometimes distractions can occur in prayer, but we often feel the need to stop at the first word, “Father”, and feel that paternity in our heart.
Jesus then recounts the parable of the importune friend and Jesus says: “we must persevere in prayer”. My thoughts turn to what children do when they are three-and-a-half years old: they begin to ask about things they do not understand. In my country, it is called “the ‘why’ age”, I think it is also the same here. Children begin to look at their father and ask: Why Dad? Why Dad? They ask for explanations. Let us be careful: when the father begins to explain why, they come up with another question without listening to the entire explanation. What is happening? Children feel insecure about many things that they are only partially beginning to understand. They only wish to attract the father’s gaze, and thus the “why, why, why?”. If we pause on the first word of the “Our Father”, we will be doing the same as when we were children: attracting the father’s gaze upon us: saying, “Father, Father” and also asking, “why?”, and he will look at us. Let us ask Mary, woman of prayer to help us pray the “Our Father” in unity with Jesus in order to live the Gospel guided by the Holy Spirit.
BENEDICT XVI - from "OUR FATHER" - Consists of an opening invocation and seven questions..Three are in the second person singular and four in the first person plural. The first three questions are about the very cause of God in this world; the four that follow are about our hopes, needs and difficulties. One could compare the relationship between the two types of questions in the Lord's Prayer with the two tables of the Decalogue, which, after all, are explanations of the two parts of the principal commandment-love toward God and love toward neighbor- guiding words in the way of love. So also in the Lord's Prayer, the primacy of God is first affirmed, from which derives from itself the worry about the righteous way of being man. Here, too, it treats first of all about the way of love, which is at the same time a way of conversion. In order for man to ask in the right way, he must be in the truth. And the truth is "first God, the Kingdom of God." We must first come out of ourselves and open ourselves to God. Nothing can become right if we are not in the right order with God. Therefore, the Lord's Prayer begins with God, and, starting from Him, leads us on the ways of being human. Eventually we descend to the ultimate threat to man, behind which lies the evil one - the image of the apocalyptic dragon who makes war against men "who keep the commandments of God and are in the possession of the testimony of Jesus" (Rev. 12:17) may surface in us. But always the beginning remains present : "Our Father"-we know that He is with us, holding us in His hand, saving us. Fr. H. P. Kolvenbach tells of an Orthodox staretz who made it a point to always intone the Lord's Prayer with the last word, to become worthy of ending the prayer with the initial words "Our Father." In this way, the staretz explained , one travels the paschal path . "One begins in the desert with the temptation , one returns to Egypt, one retraces the path of the Exodus with the stations of forgiveness and God's manna, and one arrives thanks to God's will in the promised land, the Kingdom of God, where He communicates to us the mystery of His Name: 'Our Father. May both paths, the ascending and the descending, remind us that the Lord's Prayer is always a prayer of Jesus and that it unfolds from Communion with Him. We pray to the Heavenly Father whom we know through the Son , and so in the background of the questions there is always Jesus. Since the Lord's Prayer is a prayer of Jesus it is a Trinitarian prayer : with Christ through the Holy Spirit we pray to the Father
-->In Jesus' discourses, the Father appears as the source of all good, as the standard of measurement of the man who has become perfect. "Love to the end" (Jn. 13:1), which the Lord brought to completion on the cross by praying for His enemies, shows us the nature of the Father. He is this Love. For Jesus practices it. He is totally Son and invites us to become sons in turn. (Mt 7:9ff) "If you therefore who are evil know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give good things to those who ask Him." Luke specifies "How much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him" (Lk 11:13). This means that God's gift is God Himself...the only thing we need...prayer is a way to purify little by little our desires , correct them and know slowly of what we really need : God and His Spirit. The "Lord's Prayer" does not project a human image in heaven but, starting from heaven, from Jesus, shows us how we should and how we can become men. And if earthly fatherhood separates, heavenly fatherhood unites. Heaven thus means that other height of God ,from which we all come and toward which we all must be on the way .Fatherhood "in heaven" refers us to that greater "us" that crosses all borders, breaks down all walls and creates peace. - Hallowed be Thy Name - The Name creates the possibility of the invocation, of the call. It establishes a relationship. What comes to fruition in the incarnation began with the delivery of the Name. Jesus in the Priestly prayer , presents Himself as the new Moses : "I have made known Your Name to mankind"(Jn 17:6).What began at the Burning Bush in the Sinai desert is fulfilled at the Burning Bush of the Cross. This supplication so that He Himself may take care of the sanctification of His Name , protect the wonderful mystery of its accessibility by us and always again in its true identity from the deformation caused by us.
FAUSTI - The mission of the "Samaritan" will be accomplished only when all men say "Abba, Father!" This is the word that generates us in our truth of sons. Jesus has come to teach us this, if we listen to Him like Mary. After having unveiled to us His mystery as Son and Brother, with this prayer He makes us enter into the fatherhood of God: in this prayer we desire what we need to live it. This is what He Himself offers to us in the Eucharist, in which He offers Himself as food. Only at the end will the prayer of asking for the bread and the Spirit cease, because we will have His fullness of life. Then we will exult with Him in the Spirit. This prayer is a direct dialogue between a "You" who is the Father and a "us" who is the true I, inasmuch as it is in communion with the Son and with our brothers and sisters. In Jesus I can resume answering "You" to the Father who in His infinite love has always addressed His Word to me. In this "You" that I address to the Father, in solidarity with me of His Son, I also find the "we" of the brothers. The discovery of paternity founds and builds fraternity. Without the "You" there is no prayer. And neither is there man, who is an escape from himself or an answer to the "you" that God addresses to him. But even without the "we" there is no prayer, because one cannot stand before the Father separated from the Son and from one's brothers and sisters. With this prayer we say "here I am" to our truth as children, and we recognize our hidden identity. "Abba" is the first word that the infant babbles, his first nod of communication, joyful surprise of those who listen to it with love. God is the Father of Mercies, who is propitious to us and loves us more than Himself. The colour of Christian life is His paternal smile, His tenderness towards us and our trust in Him. We come from God and return to Him. We come from the splendour of His Love and we are on our way to return to Him. Our life is desire and search for the One who lets Himself be desired and seek only because we overcome the deception that made us escape from Him. In Him we find our source that nourishes us with delights. "Abba" is God's ineffable word, which the Word says in Love for the Father, of which He is precisely the Word of Love. It is the ecstasy of the Son in the Father. God will always be our Father, because the Son has definitively become our brother. For this reason, to call God "Abba" is to know and proclaim the love for me of Jesus, my Lord. It is to be in communion with Him who has taken charge of me. It is to recognize the gift that has participated to me in Him, the Son, in Whom I exist and am what I am. Outside of him, I am not what I am and I am what I am not. The reality of this sonship is the Spirit of God, poured into our hearts, that groans in us with ineffable groans (Rom 5:5). To cry out "Abba" is faith in the Son who loved us and gave Himself for us (Gal 2:20); it is certain hope of a new world in which the lord is Lord and we are all brothers and sisters, it is love as a response to the Father and to all His children; It is the joy of returning to home, it is the richness of every blessing, it is the satiety of every desire and desire of every satiety, it is participating in the banquet with the most beautiful clothing, with the ring and the sandals, eating the sacrificed calf, it is the feast with symphony and dances that the Father has prepared for His lost son. To pray in a spirit of truth this prayer, is already the very fulfillment of every prayer. In fact, by calling God by the name of Father, we accept his fatherhood and ask Him for that bread which is always necessary every day: His love and forgiveness to love and forgive our brothers and sisters. What we ask for in the "Our Father" is already accomplished and given to us in the Son: the sanctification of the Name, the Kingdom, the bread, forgiveness and the power of trust.
RispondiEliminaReading 1
Gn 18:20-32
In those days, the LORD said: "The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great,
and their sin so grave,
that I must go down and see whether or not their actions
fully correspond to the cry against them that comes to me.
I mean to find out."
While Abraham's visitors walked on farther toward Sodom,
the LORD remained standing before Abraham.
Then Abraham drew nearer and said:
"Will you sweep away the innocent with the guilty?
Suppose there were fifty innocent people in the city;
would you wipe out the place, rather than spare it
for the sake of the fifty innocent people within it?
Far be it from you to do such a thing,
to make the innocent die with the guilty
so that the innocent and the guilty would be treated alike!
Should not the judge of all the world act with justice?"
The LORD replied,
"If I find fifty innocent people in the city of Sodom,
I will spare the whole place for their sake."
Abraham spoke up again:
"See how I am presuming to speak to my Lord,
though I am but dust and ashes!
What if there are five less than fifty innocent people?
Will you destroy the whole city because of those five?"
He answered, "I will not destroy it, if I find forty-five there."
But Abraham persisted, saying "What if only forty are found there?"
He replied, "I will forbear doing it for the sake of the forty."
Then Abraham said, "Let not my Lord grow impatient if I go on.
What if only thirty are found there?"
He replied, "I will forbear doing it if I can find but thirty there."
Still Abraham went on,
"Since I have thus dared to speak to my Lord,
what if there are no more than twenty?"
The LORD answered, "I will not destroy it, for the sake of the twenty."
But he still persisted:
"Please, let not my Lord grow angry if I speak up this last time.
What if there are at least ten there?"
He replied, "For the sake of those ten, I will not destroy it."
Responsorial Psalm
Ps 138:1-2, 2-3, 6-7, 7-8
R.(3a) Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.
I will give thanks to you, O LORD, with all my heart,
for you have heard the words of my mouth;
in the presence of the angels I will sing your praise;
I will worship at your holy temple
and give thanks to your name.
R. Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.
Because of your kindness and your truth;
for you have made great above all things
your name and your promise.
When I called you answered me;
you built up strength within me.
R. Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.
The LORD is exalted, yet the lowly he sees,
and the proud he knows from afar.
Though I walk amid distress, you preserve me;
against the anger of my enemies you raise your hand.
R. Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.
Your right hand saves me.
The LORD will complete what he has done for me;
your kindness, O LORD, endures forever;
forsake not the work of your hands.
R. Lord, on the day I called for help, you answered me.
Reading 2
Col 2:12-14
Brothers and sisters:
You were buried with him in baptism,
in which you were also raised with him
through faith in the power of God,
who raised him from the dead.
And even when you were dead
in transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh,
he brought you to life along with him,
having forgiven us all our transgressions;
obliterating the bond against us, with its legal claims,
which was opposed to us,
he also removed it from our midst, nailing it to the cross.
Alleluia
RispondiEliminaRom 8:15bc
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
You have received a Spirit of adoption,
through which we cry, Abba, Father.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Lk 11:1-13
Jesus was praying in a certain place, and when he had finished,
one of his disciples said to him,
"Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples."
He said to them, "When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread
and forgive us our sins
for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us,
and do not subject us to the final test."
And he said to them, "Suppose one of you has a friend
to whom he goes at midnight and says,
'Friend, lend me three loaves of bread,
for a friend of mine has arrived at my house from a journey
and I have nothing to offer him,'
and he says in reply from within,
'Do not bother me; the door has already been locked
and my children and I are already in bed.
I cannot get up to give you anything.'
I tell you,
if he does not get up to give the visitor the loaves
because of their friendship,
he will get up to give him whatever he needs
because of his persistence.
"And I tell you, ask and you will receive;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives;
and the one who seeks, finds;
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
What father among you would hand his son a snake
when he asks for a fish?
Or hand him a scorpion when he asks for an egg?
If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will the Father in heaven
give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?"
WORDS OF THE HOLY FATHER
Please be bold, because when we pray we usually have a need. The friend is God: he is a rich friend who has bread, he has what we need. As Jesus said: "In prayer be intrusive. Do not get tired ". But do not get tired of what? Of asking. “Ask and it will be given to you”. (…) A constant, intrusive prayer. Think of Saint Monica, for example, how many years she prayed like this, even with tears, for the conversion of her son Augustine. (Santa Marta, 11 October 2018)
.POPE FRANCIS
RispondiEliminaANGELUS Saint Peter's Square Sunday, 28 July 2019
In today’s Gospel passage (cf. Lk 11:1-13), Saint Luke narrates the circumstances in which Jesus teaches the “Lord’s Prayer”. They, the disciples, already know how to pray by reciting the formulas of the Jewish tradition, but they too wish to experience the same “quality” of Jesus’ prayer because they can confirm that prayer is an essential dimension in their Master’s life. Indeed each of his important actions is marked by long pauses in prayer. Moreover, they are fascinated because they see that he does not pray like the other teachers of the time, but rather his prayer is an intimate bond with the Father, so much so that they wish to be a part of these moments of union with God, in order to completely savour its sweetness.
Thus, one day they wait for Jesus to finish praying in a secluded place and then they ask him: “Lord, teach us to pray” (v. 1). In responding to the disciples’ explicit question, Jesus does not provide an abstract definition of prayer, nor does he teach an efficient technique to pray in order to “obtain” something. Instead, he invites his own to experience prayer, by putting them directly in communication with the Father, causing them to feel nostalgic for a personal relationship with God, with the Father. Herein lies the novelty of Christian prayer! It is a dialogue between people who love each other, a dialogue based on trust, sustained by listening and open to a commitment to solidarity. It is the dialogue of a Son with his Father, a dialogue between children and their Father. This is Christian prayer.
Hence, he delivers the “Lord’s Prayer” to them, perhaps the most precious gift left to us by the Divine Master during his earthly mission. After revealing to us his mystery as Son and brother, with that prayer Jesus allows us to enter into God’s paternity. I want to underscore this: when Jesus teaches us the “Our Father”, he allows us to enter into God’s paternity and he points the way to enter into a prayerful and direct dialogue with him, through the path of filial intimacy. It is a dialogue between a father and his son, of a son with his father. What we ask in the “Our Father” is already fulfilled for us in his Only-begotten Son: the sanctification of the Name, the advent of the Kingdom, the gift of bread, of forgiveness and of delivery from evil. As we ask, we open our hand to receive; to receive the gifts that the Father has shown us in his Son. The prayer that the Lord taught us is the synthesis of every prayer and we address it to the Father, always in communion with our brothers and sisters. Sometimes distractions can occur in prayer, but we often feel the need to stop at the first word, “Father”, and feel that paternity in our heart.
Jesus then recounts the parable of the importune friend and Jesus says: “we must persevere in prayer”. My thoughts turn to what children do when they are three-and-a-half years old: they begin to ask about things they do not understand. In my country, it is called “the ‘why’ age”, I think it is also the same here. Children begin to look at their father and ask: Why Dad? Why Dad? They ask for explanations. Let us be careful: when the father begins to explain why, they come up with another question without listening to the entire explanation. What is happening? Children feel insecure about many things that they are only partially beginning to understand. They only wish to attract the father’s gaze, and thus the “why, why, why?”. If we pause on the first word of the “Our Father”, we will be doing the same as when we were children: attracting the father’s gaze upon us: saying, “Father, Father” and also asking, “why?”, and he will look at us.
Let us ask Mary, woman of prayer to help us pray the “Our Father” in unity with Jesus in order to live the Gospel guided by the Holy Spirit.
BENEDICT XVI - from "OUR FATHER" - Consists of an opening invocation and seven questions..Three are in the second person singular and four in the first person plural.
RispondiEliminaThe first three questions are about the very cause of God in this world; the four that follow are about our hopes, needs and difficulties. One could compare the relationship between the two types of questions in the Lord's Prayer with the two tables of the Decalogue, which, after all, are explanations of the two parts of the principal commandment-love toward God and love toward neighbor-
guiding words in the way of love.
So also in the Lord's Prayer, the primacy of God is first affirmed, from which derives from itself the worry about the righteous way of being man. Here, too, it treats first of all about the way of love, which is at the same time a way of conversion.
In order for man to ask in the right way, he must be in the truth.
And the truth is "first God, the Kingdom of God."
We must first come out of ourselves and open ourselves to God.
Nothing can become right if we are not in the right order with God.
Therefore, the Lord's Prayer begins with God, and, starting from Him, leads us on the ways of being human.
Eventually we descend to the ultimate threat to man, behind which lies the evil one - the image of the apocalyptic dragon who makes war against men "who keep the commandments of God and are in the possession of the testimony of Jesus" (Rev. 12:17) may surface in us.
But always the beginning remains present : "Our Father"-we know that He is with us, holding us in His hand, saving us.
Fr. H. P. Kolvenbach tells of an Orthodox staretz who made it a point to always intone the Lord's Prayer with the last word, to become worthy of ending the prayer with the initial words "Our Father." In this way, the staretz explained , one travels the paschal path . "One begins in the desert with the temptation , one returns to Egypt, one retraces the path of the Exodus with the stations of forgiveness and God's manna, and one arrives thanks to God's will in the promised land, the Kingdom of God, where He communicates to us the mystery of His Name: 'Our Father.
May both paths, the ascending and the descending, remind us that the Lord's Prayer is always a prayer of Jesus and that it unfolds from Communion with Him.
We pray to the Heavenly Father whom we know through the Son , and so in the background of the questions there is always Jesus.
Since the Lord's Prayer is a prayer of Jesus it is a Trinitarian prayer : with Christ through the Holy Spirit we pray to the Father
-->In Jesus' discourses, the Father appears as the source of all good, as the standard of measurement of the man who has become perfect. "Love to the end" (Jn. 13:1), which the Lord brought to completion on the cross by praying for His enemies, shows us the nature of the Father. He is this Love.
RispondiEliminaFor Jesus practices it. He is totally Son and invites us to become sons in turn.
(Mt 7:9ff) "If you therefore who are evil know how to give good things to your children, how much more will your Heavenly Father give good things to those who ask Him."
Luke specifies "How much more will your Heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him" (Lk 11:13). This means that God's gift is God Himself...the only thing we need...prayer is a way to purify little by little our desires , correct them and know slowly of what we really need : God and His Spirit.
The "Lord's Prayer" does not project a human image in heaven but, starting from heaven, from Jesus, shows us how we should and how we can become men.
And if earthly fatherhood separates, heavenly fatherhood unites. Heaven thus means that other height of God ,from which we all come and toward which we all must be on the way .Fatherhood "in heaven" refers us to that greater "us" that crosses all borders, breaks down all walls and creates peace.
- Hallowed be Thy Name - The Name creates the possibility of the invocation, of the call. It establishes a relationship. What comes to fruition in the incarnation began with the delivery of the Name. Jesus in the Priestly prayer , presents Himself as the new Moses : "I have made known Your Name to mankind"(Jn 17:6).What began at the Burning Bush in the Sinai desert is fulfilled at the Burning Bush of the Cross.
This supplication so that He Himself may take care of the sanctification of His Name , protect the wonderful mystery of its accessibility by us and always again in its true identity from the deformation caused by us.
FAUSTI - The mission of the "Samaritan" will be accomplished only when all men say "Abba, Father!" This is the word that generates us in our truth of sons.
RispondiEliminaJesus has come to teach us this, if we listen to Him like Mary. After having unveiled to us His mystery as Son and Brother, with this prayer He makes us enter into the fatherhood of God: in this prayer we desire what we need to live it. This is what He Himself offers to us in the Eucharist, in which He offers Himself as food. Only at the end will the prayer of asking for the bread and the Spirit cease, because we will have His fullness of life. Then we will exult with Him in the Spirit.
This prayer is a direct dialogue between a "You" who is the Father and a "us" who is the true I, inasmuch as it is in communion with the Son and with our brothers and sisters.
In Jesus I can resume answering "You" to the Father who in His infinite love has always addressed His Word to me.
In this "You" that I address to the Father, in solidarity with me of His Son, I also find the "we" of the brothers. The discovery of paternity founds and builds fraternity.
Without the "You" there is no prayer. And neither is there man, who is an escape from himself or an answer to the "you" that God addresses to him.
But even without the "we" there is no prayer, because one cannot stand before the Father separated from the Son and from one's brothers and sisters.
With this prayer we say "here I am" to our truth as children, and we recognize our hidden identity. "Abba" is the first word that the infant babbles, his first nod of communication, joyful surprise of those who listen to it with love.
God is the Father of Mercies, who is propitious to us and loves us more than Himself.
The colour of Christian life is His paternal smile, His tenderness towards us and our trust in Him. We come from God and return to Him. We come from the splendour of His Love and we are on our way to return to Him. Our life is desire and search for the One who lets Himself be desired and seek only because we overcome the deception that made us escape from Him.
In Him we find our source that nourishes us with delights.
"Abba" is God's ineffable word, which the Word says in Love for the Father, of which He is precisely the Word of Love. It is the ecstasy of the Son in the Father. God will always be our Father, because the Son has definitively become our brother. For this reason, to call God "Abba" is to know and proclaim the love for me of Jesus, my Lord. It is to be in communion with Him who has taken charge of me.
It is to recognize the gift that has participated to me in Him, the Son, in Whom I exist and am what I am.
Outside of him, I am not what I am and I am what I am not.
The reality of this sonship is the Spirit of God, poured into our hearts, that groans in us with ineffable groans (Rom 5:5). To cry out "Abba" is faith in the Son who loved us and gave Himself for us (Gal 2:20); it is certain hope of a new world in which the lord is Lord and we are all brothers and sisters, it is love as a response to the Father and to all His children; It is the joy of returning to home, it is the richness of every blessing, it is the satiety of every desire and desire of every satiety, it is participating in the banquet with the most beautiful clothing, with the ring and the sandals, eating the sacrificed calf, it is the feast with symphony and dances that the Father has prepared for His lost son.
To pray in a spirit of truth this prayer, is already the very fulfillment of every prayer.
In fact, by calling God by the name of Father, we accept his fatherhood and ask Him for that bread which is always necessary every day: His love and forgiveness to love and forgive our brothers and sisters.
What we ask for in the "Our Father" is already accomplished and given to us in the Son: the sanctification of the Name, the Kingdom, the bread, forgiveness and the power of trust.