17^th Sunday in Ordinary Time (C); 7-24-2022

Gn 18:20-32.   Ps 138.  Col 2:12-14.  Lk 11:1-13

Deacon Jim McFadden

       The Our Father is probably the prayer most often prayed throughout the world.  Within the Catholic Church, it is prayed twice during the Liturgy of the Hours—at Lauds and Vespers—which doesn’t include being recited at Holy Mass every day, as well as after each decade of the rosary.  Despite its ubiquity, it is anything but a universal prayer.  Say what?  How could that be when it is so omnipresent throughout the whole world?   If we look at the Lucan account, we see that it was meant for Jesus’ disciples who asked him, “Lord, teach us to pray.  He said to them, ‘When you pray, say:…”. If one isn’t a disciple, I just don’t think the prayer makes any sense.  Every line about the Our Father is about disciples forgetting their own desires, plans, and agendas—about living the Ego-drama—and desiring only what God wills.  Why would a non-disciple want to do that?  But, a disciple would.  At the same time, it is a very dangerous prayer because one who says it with conviction is basically saying that their life is no longer about themselves, but is about God. 

            The dangerous nature of the Our Father can be camouflaged  by its misuse: as prayer stuffing when someone runs out prayer ideas or as a penance after confession: “For your penance, say one Our Father and one Hail Mary.” 

            Besides being a dangerous prayer, the Our Father is very short, especially in Luke’s version.  It’s short because it gets right to the point.  It does so because there is no need for a litany of divine titles or precise theological language that expresses a competency while addressing God.  No, there is no need of any of that because God is simply addressed as Our Father!  Abba—that is the only address.  It’s very familial and you talk to God as you would your father.  You’re not addressing some king in a heavenly court or God as ‘Judge,’ or ‘Omniscient One,’ or ‘Great Power in the Sky’—all of what would be loftier titles that would show respect for a transcendent. 

            Instead, Jesus invokes him as ‘Father’, which puts him on a familial plane with him, just as a child turns towards his father, knowing  that we are loved and looked after by him.  That’s why the Our Father gets to the point so directly: it is a prayer for a new family of disciples, which is why it lacks even a hint of solemnity or a whisper of courtly jargon.  One who says the prayer simply wants to make the concerns of God their own and, as they do so, they will come to know that God cares for them as well.

            When Jesus invited his disciples to address God as Father,they must have found it to be incomprehensible and so precious—are we really given permission to address God as Abba—as dear Father?  We cannot under estimate what a tremendous breakthrough, indeed, what a great revolution this is in the psychology of religion to be able to address God as Father—the One who is love and who loves us.

            Does that mean that God is a man?  Ultimately, a patriarchal figure?  While the Triune God has no gender—God is not a particular kind of being—many people have come to understand God only as masculine, which has promoted a patriarchal view of religion.  Since the term ‘Father’ is drawn from human relationships, for some the word ‘Father’ may have some unhappy associations.  They may perceive God as a harsh judge, as a critical taskmaster, or God as an absent  father, a MIA deity. 

            If some experience their fathers as absent, judgmental, or harsh, then they may project these images upon the God that Jesus experienced.  If they have grown to expect little from their fathers, then they may have the same expectations of God.  In this case, they may feel that God is irrelevant in their ordinary lives.  If their father was generally non-communicative, they will project that upon God.  From this perspective God would seem to be uncommunicative and disinterested in an intimate relationship.  Such a view would have implications for the expectations one would bring to prayer. 

            John the Evangelist offers us some help: “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father”. (Jn 14:9).  This assures us that ultimately we can  recognize God only when we look at Jesus, who is the perfect reflection of the 1^st person of the Trinity.  As St. Paul notes in his letter to the Colossians, Jesus is the perfect icon “…of the invisible God” (1:15).  In connection with our reflection of absentee fathers this means that while not everyone has had a father or the right kind of father, everyone, however, can have Jesus as a brother, look to him, learn from him, trust him, and follow the same path as he does.  Those who do that will learn, through Jesus, what it means to say that God is our father.  They will gain God as their father through Jesus.  In following Jesus as his disciple, we will arrive at that very place where the Holy Spirit makes us daughters and sons of God.  And, that Spirit will cry within us with “…sighs too deep for words” (Rom 8:26): “Abba! Father!”

            People of God , everything  the Father is  and has he gives to us through his beloved Son, Jesus.  He gives us his very substance, his very life, which we liturgically and intimately share in the Eucharist.  We simply have to come before Abba as a disciple, as a child and say to God, “I know that you have life for me.  I want you to be  my Father; I want you to be our Father.”  Amen.