Dissecting the Lord’s Prayer
Our Father
What it means to call God “Our Father”
When his disciples asked Jesus to teach us how to pray, he shared with us the prayer immortalized in the pages of the Gospel — The Lord’s Prayer or Pater Noster (Latin for “Our Father”).
This prayer has since become a very important prayer for all Christians. The prayer has become one of the most uttered prayers of Christians all over the world. It has been part of the Divine Liturgy, and it has remained a prayer well-loved by many not only for its universality but also for the teaching value that the prayer brings.
We start the prayer by calling God “Our Father.”
When we call God Father, we recognize that He is our source. He is the father of the universe — the creator of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.
When we call God Father, we also recognize his relation as God the Father to Jesus, God the Son. We recognize Jesus as the Son who reveals the Father to us.
No one has ever seen God. The only Son, God, who is at the Father’s side, has revealed him. (John 1:18, NABRE)
When we call God our Father, we recognize that God is not just Jesus’ Father, but he is also our Father. Jesus made this clear when, at his resurrection, he told Mary Magdalene to tell his disciples:
I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.
(John 20:17 NABRE)
That we are God’s children is not something given to us by our own virtue; rather, it was given by his grace.
See what love the Father has bestowed on us that we may be called children of God. Yet so we are. (1 John 3:1, NABRE)
The apostle Paul affirms this saying:
In love, he destined us for adoption to himself through Jesus Christ.
(Ephesians 1:5, NABRE)
Because of this, when we call God our Father, we also recognize the sacrifice that Jesus did for us. He took on our humanity — born of a virgin in a manger, suffered, died, and rose from the dead — so that we may take part in his divinity.
Hence, the next time we call God our Father, we must live as God’s children and live in the light. We are called to act in righteousness and to love our brothers.
In this way, the children of God and the children of the devil are made plain.
(1 John 3:10, NABRE)
