The Paradox Parexcellence
The Lord’s Prayer reveals us to ourselves at the same time that it reveals the Father to us. O man, you did not dare to raise your face to heaven, you lowered your eyes to the earth, and suddenly you have received the grace of Christ: all your sins have been forgiven. From being a wicked servant you have become a good son… Then raise your eyes to the Father who has begotten you through Baptism, to the Father who has redeemed you through His Son, and say: “Our Father…” But do not claim any privilege. He is the Father in a special way only of Christ. But He is the common Father of us all, because while He has begotten only Christ, He has created us. Then also by his grace, “Our Father”, So that you may merit being his Son.
The free gift of adoption requires on our part continual conversion and new life. Praying to our Father should develop in us two fundamental dispositions: First, the desire to become like him: though created in his image, we are restored to his likeness by grace. We must respond to this grace.
We must remember.. and know that when we call God “our Father” we ought to behave as sons of God.
You cannot call the God of all kindness your Father if you preserve a cruel and inhuman heart; for in this case you no longer have in you the marks of the heavenly Father’s kindness. We must contemplate the beauty of the Father without ceasing and adorn our own souls accordingly. Second, a humble and trusting heart that enables us “to turn and become like children” for it is to “little children” that the Father is revealed.
The prayer accomplished by the contemplation of God alone and by the warmth of love through which the soul moulded and directed to love him, speaks very familiarly to God as to its own Father with special devotion.
Our Father: at the hearing of this name, love is aroused in us… and the confidence of obtaining what we are about to ask… What would he not give to his children who ask. Since he has already granted them the gift of being his children.
