Our Father

And so, after these different kinds of supplication, there follows a still higher and more exalted state. It comes about through the contemplation of God alone and through fervent love. In it the mind, carried away and flinging itself into love for him, speaks to God most intimately, as its own Father, with a devotion all its own. The form of the Lord’s Prayer teaches us that we ought to seek this state earnestly, when it says, “Our Father.” So when we confess with our own mouths that the God and Lord of the universe is our Father, we declare at once that we have been called out of our condition as slaves to be adopted as sons. Next we add, “who are in heaven.” We do this so that we may shun with the utmost horror all lingering in this present life, which we pass on this earth as pilgrims, and whatever separates us by a great distance from our Father. Instead we should hurry with all eagerness to that country where we confess that our Father lives. And we should not allow anything of the kind that would make us unworthy of this profession of ours and of the dignity of such an adoption, and so cut us off, as a disgrace, from our Father’s inheritance, and make us fall under the wrath of his justice and severity. [a]

When we have advanced to this state and condition of sonship, we will at once be set on fire with the devotion that belongs to good sons. Then we will bend all our energies to furthering not our own profit but our Father’s glory, saying to him, “Hallowed be your name.” In this we testify that our desire and our joy is his glory, and we become imitators of the one who said: “The one who speaks on his own authority seeks his own glory. But the one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and there is no unrighteousness in him.” Finally, filled with this feeling, the chosen vessel wished that he could be accursed and cut off from Christ, if only the people who belong to him might be increased and multiplied, and the salvation of the whole nation of Israel might add to the glory of his Father. For he could wish with complete assurance to die for Christ, since he knew that no one perished for life. And again he says: “We rejoice when we are weak, but you are strong.” And what wonder is it if the chosen vessel wished to be accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of Christ’s glory, the conversion of his own brothers, and the privilege of the nation? For the prophet Micah wished that he might be a liar and a stranger to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, if only the people of the Jews might escape the plagues and the going away into captivity that he had announced in his prophecy. He said: “I wish I were not a man who has the Spirit, and that I spoke a lie instead.” I pass over the wish of the Lawgiver, who did not refuse to die together with his brothers who were doomed to death, when he said: “I beg you, O Lord, this people has sinned a terrible sin. Either forgive them this wrong, or, if you will not, blot me out of your book that you have written.”

But the words “Hallowed be your name” may also very fairly be taken this way: “The hallowing of God is our perfection.” So when we say to him, “Hallowed be your name,” we are saying in other words: “Make us, Father, such that we may be able both to understand and to take in what the hallowing of you is, or at least that you may be seen to be hallowed in our spiritual way of life.” And this is truly fulfilled in our case when “people see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven.”