Pope Francis - Our father: reflections on the Lords Prayer

Father.

Without saying this word, without taking it to heart, we cannot pray.

To whom do I pray? Almighty God? Too far away. I cannot feel that he is near. Even Jesus did not refer to God as the Almighty God.

To whom do I pray? The cosmic God? That is fashionable these days, praying to the cosmic God. But that is nothing but a polytheistic idea of who God is, typified by a lite culture.

To whom do we pray? No, not a cosmic God, but a

Father. We have to pray to the Father! It is a powerful word, father. We have to pray to the one who has begotten us, the one who has given us life. He has given life to everyone, of course, but everyone is too anonymous. He has given life to you. He has given life to me. He is also the one who accompanies us on our journey. He knows our whole lives, the good and the not-so-good. If we do not begin our prayer with this word, spoken not with our lips but with our hearts, we cannot pray as Christians.

We have a Father who is close to us, one who embraces us. All of these anxieties, all of the worries we may have, let us leave them to the Father. He knows what we need.

But wait. How do we understand the word Father? Is he my Father? No, he is our Father! I am not an only child; none of us is. And if I cannot be a brother, it will be hard for me to truly be a son of this Father, because he is a Father of all. My Father, and that of my brothers and sisters. If I am not at peace with my brothers and sisters, I cannot say Father to him.

We cannot pray with enemies in our hearts. This is not easy, I know. Sometimes people will say, Father? I cant say Father, that doesnt work for me. I understand that. Some people have said to me, I cant say our, because my brother, my enemy, did this or that to mehe should go to hell; hes not family to me! Acceptance is not easy. But Jesus promised us the Holy Spirit. He is the one who teaches us, from the inside, from the heart, how to say Father and how to say our. Let us then ask the Holy Spirit to teach us to say Father and to be able to say our, thus making peace with our enemies.

This book contains my conversations with Fr. Marco Pozza on the Our Father. Jesus did not give us this prayer simply as a formula for addressing God. With this prayer he is inviting us to turn to the Father so that we can discover who we are and live as his true children and as brothers and sisters together. Jesus shows us what it means to be loved by the Father and reveals to us that the Father wants to pour forth upon us the same love that he has for his Son from all eternity.

So I hope that in saying the Our Father, every one of us will feel ever more loved, forgiven, bathed in the dew of the Holy Spirit, and will thus be able in turn to love and forgive every other brother, every other sister.

This will give us an idea of what heaven is like.

Francis

Our Father

Holy Father, for me the evening of March 13, 2013, the night of your election as pope, was a bit strange. I had turned on the television right after reciting vespers, so according to the Churchs liturgy I was already well into March 14, and March 14 is my moms birthday. On March 13, you came out onto the loggia of the Vatican and we learned with great amazement that you were going to be called Francis, Pope Francis, and my dads name is Francis. That evening I felt that God was closer to me than ever before. This is why I like to begin by calling you Holy Father. For two reasons: first, because the word Father reminds us that we are all children, and then Holy because you are a father who proclaims the holiness of God. I would like to start right here, from the concept of father, because in the prayer that my dad taught me when I was a child, the Our Father, there is almost amazement at seeing a God who would allow his creatures to address him so intimately. I would like to know what it feels like for