Reflections on OUR FATHER ...

Reflections On the Prayer to Our Heavenly Father

Our Father

The Lord Jesus gave us a prayer by which to reach to God on a regular basis. The same prayer provides us the fundamental obligations we owe to God, to our neighbors, and to ourselves. Jesus wanted us to pray the Our Father! Let us try to understand this prayer Jesus gave us.

OUR FATHER, WHO ARE IN HEAVEN..

Try to imagine this: Jesus wants us to call God our Father. What an honor Jesus allows us to call God our Father. Doesn't everyone wish he or she be called son of the congressman, or daughter of a CEO, or child of the President? But us as children of God! Isn't this awesome?

HALLOWED BE YOUR NAME...

Number one in Jesus' admonition to us is that we praise the Lord's name. The person of God should be on top of our list of respectable figures in our daily life. Being politically correct as to conform to the ban of public prayer, or being dissuaded from the public display of His laws the 10 commandments are acts of denial of the legimate praise we owe our Creator, God.

YOUR KINGDOM COME...

Jesus again admonishes us to ask the Father to open for us, for men/women of peace, the Kingdom of God. The Lord tells us to ask for it now! This is amazing! Heaven on earth! Jesus wants us to pray that we, although yet pilgrims on a journey, may experience the foretaste of heaven, those moments of pure joy, unsabotaged unity, moments of mutual understanding, niche of temporary fulfilment or excellence in an undertaking, flash moments of solving life puzzles, etc... All via the merits from Jesus' salvation of mankind.

YOUR WILL BE DONE ON EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN...

Jesus wants us to ask the Father through the Holy Spirit that we keep focused on Heaven as we do our living on earth. Our life between each other must be some reflection of Heaven, i.e. scenes of unity, coordination, helping one another, mutual understanding, togetherness especially within families, and working together in apreciating and saving this earth's resources for our own good and benefits. All mutual endeavours in the spirit of trying to copy Heaven.

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD...

Oh how Jesus knew what will trouble our hearts day-in and day-out. Money? A home? Our clothes? A job? Our food? And so the Lord wants us to make sure we do the right thing, i.e. that we turn to the one who IS THE REAL CREDITOR of all the world's wealth and goods: the Father. This is God's earth, this is God's world. His creation. And whereas we are adopted as children of God still as children depend on the father, we must never forget notwitstanding our gifts we ultimately are dependents of God. We are supposed to follow his commands to sweat it out in work but we are never to assume any level of self-sufficiency. God still wills to provide for us. That's Divine Providence.

FORGIVE US OUR SINS AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO SIN AGAINST US...

(Some would have a different interpretation of this line.) Through the blood poured by the Lord Jesus in ransoming our sin-indebtedness to the Father God forgives us our sins. Through baptism and repentance we are to ask the Father the application of Jesus' grace that we may be united back to God's favor. It is in this light that we ask for the stength by which we are to forgive our neighbors who offended us. I.e. Let us ask God to enable us, especially our weak will to unconditionally forgive our neighbors. We are to forgive like God forgives. No string attached. No conditions before we allow to reconcile. We just extend our reconciliation.

LEAD US NOT INTO TEMPTATIONS...

From the precedent paraphrasing on the OUR FATHER PRAYER line about the petition that we be forgiven of our sins we are being made aware of the fact that each man is guilty of many sins, and that by his human nature man is inclined to sinfulness (ie. the reality of concupiscence or the human scar of original sin). Aware and forewarned, thus, of this condition of human tendency to sin, the Lord Jesus wisely advises every human being to be wise and prudent not to wrecklessly expose ourselves to unnecessary putting God to the test. In other words, knowing we are weak in flesh, man should never underestimate the danger brought upon any man by sollicited temptations to sin. Just like fire kindles combustible material to fire, man must not expose himself/herself to temptations to sins, and sure occasions of sins. Hanging around or lingering around whatever can lead us to commit sin, whether outwardly through the places we go to or the people we regularly seek company of, or innerly through intemperate control of our thoughts, immaginations, and desires should be avoided at all cost. Doing so is thus equivalent to the expression of dangerously 'playing with fire. At this juncture, we are particularly to watch out about this wrecklessness with temptations to sins specifically with sexual sins.

In this day and age boys look at girls, girls look at boys. It seems all the time, and anywhere. Whether on TV, or out in the world. Yes we could say especially some men and women from the physical standpoint are reflections of the beauty of God. But with the proliferations of those beauty magazines (whether for women or for men), the TV shows, and the movies that all seem populated by them physically gifted creatures it seems like a normal pastime for "them" to be on display, and for all regular viewers to have to be teased by them. (Now some might be thinking. "You must be weird talking this way.") But the reality is what is transpiring in the world of entertainment, and in the wordl of fashionable dressing up is UNREAL. Women are not for men's visual entertainment, and vice-versa. Through reversing the fashion trends people could look again like real people, not women all the time looking like coming out of their dressing rooms, or men from their connubial bedrooms. Of course, women or men, we could be personable. From the totality of our human qualities both men and women could take pride in developing and expressing each unique charm or leadership traits, ie. we certainly must make effort at growing into our best personalities. But neither the women nor men must be treated like objects. It depersonalizes human nature. And conformities with the above refered to sexual behaviorism are acts of sinfulness.Which also brings us to the meaning of sex or physical sexuality. Its only place in is in the bedroom, and only between legitimate couples in wedlock. All other deviation from this setting is wrong, and unnatural. (There are other temptations to wary about from this line of the prayer.) But we are to ask the Father that we may be delivered from the temptations to sins, like the kind from the above I have been alluding to, especially those that are under our control.

BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL AMEN.

Saint Paul said we are not battling just against men but against principalities. Devils roam around the world. Bad spirits linger all around us. And they are ever ready to devour us if we are not careful. And so the Lord Jesus wants us to pray to the Father to protect us by equally saturating our enviroment with His good Angels. Jesus wants us not to cease praying for help upon our darkened mind, and our fragile will including our vulnerable senses, We need to ask all the time for the power of grace to aid us in discerning which way to go in our round about world, whether at work, at leisure places, or in travel. And we need to arm ourselves with the capable protection from all the good Angels, especially our Guardian Angels.

And we are to pray that we be faithful in saying this prayer: OUR FATHER!