Dissecting the Lord’s Prayer
Hallowed be Thy Name
I learned to pray the Lord’s Prayer early on. We recited its English version and sang its Chinese version everyday when we were in nursery.
Unknown to my young mind back then, there is something unique in the structure of the Our Father, at least compared with how we normally pray. When we pray for supplication, right after addressing God, we immediately jump to our requests and our needs. Such is not the case with the Lord’s Prayer. Jesus did not teach his disciples to ask for daily bread or forgiveness or deliverance from evil as soon as we address the Father. Instead, after saying “Our Father who are in heaven”, we say “hallowed be thy name”.
One then wonders whether this statement is a praise or a petition. I believe it is both, and probably it is even more than these two. But before we go there, we need to understand how important this name is for it to merit an eminent position in the Lord’s Prayer.
God first revealed his name when he called Moses through the burning bush in the mountain of God, Horeb.
“But,” said Moses to God, “if I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what do I tell them?” God replied to Moses: I am who I am. Then he added: This is what you will tell the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.
God spoke further to Moses: This is what you will say to the Israelites: The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.
This is my name forever;
this is my title for all generations.(Exodus 3:13–15 NABRE)
When God gave his name to the Israelites, it is a sign of his personal relationship with Israel. It extends to us who are descendants of Israel in faith. We are forever linked to God through his name, and the request for God to hallow his name is a request for him to make us holy through his name.
Biblical scholars say that to give someone one’s name is to give power over to that person. By giving the Israelites his name, he gave them the power to call upon him and to talk about him. The significance of this lies in how a commandment comes second in the Ten Commandments:
You shall not invoke the name of the Lord, your God, in vain. For the Lord will not leave unpunished anyone who invokes his name in vain.
(Exodus 20:7)
When we say “hallowed be thy name”, in a way, we are praising God. We acknowledge the Lord’s name is holy. We recognize that his name is not to be put in vain.
Even Jesus’ name is to be glorified.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the end,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
(Philippians 2:9–11)
And these altogether point to the fact that when we pray, we pray in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps this is also the reason why we invoke God’s name as soon as we start the Our Father. We call to mind his name, the holiness of his name, because it is in his name that our petitions are to be answered. It is in his name that we are protected and delivered from evil as Jesus said,
Holy Father, keep them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one just as we are. When I was with them I protected them in your name that you gave me, and I guarded them, and none of them was lost except the son of destruction, in order that the scripture might be fulfilled.
(John 17:11b-12 NABRE)
and further:
I made known to them your name and I will make it known that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I in them.
(John 17:26 NABRE)
To petition God to hallow his name is to petition God to grant all our other petitions in his name. To ask God to hallow his name is to ask God to bless us with the protection that the power of his name has. When we say “hallowed be thy name”, we not only look forward, but also look back and recognize how he has granted our petitions in the past. We praise and glorify his name because of the blessings he has bestowed on us.
This is a petition consistent with what Jesus asked his Father,
Father, glorify your name.
(John 12:28a NABRE)
A look at the context of this statement from Jesus helps us understand that this simple statement of Jesus, in fact, means, “Father, glorify your name through me.” Hence, when we say “Hallowed be thy name” when we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we are asking God to make us instruments of his love, so that he may glorify his name through us.
In this way, this petition is also a personal call to action. We also ask God to grant us the grace to do what he wants us to do so that his name may be glorified in us. A scholar said that to pray is to unite one’s will with God’s will, and by saying “hallowed be thy name”, we make ourselves more ready to accept God’s will in our lives so that in us and through us, he may hallow his name.
Our Father, who are in heaven, hallowed be thy name!
This is the third in a series of articles on the Lord’s Prayer beginning with Our Father which was followed by Who Are in Heaven.
