Pater Noster

Prayer beads are a wonderful aid I have discovered. Lately, praying repeated Our Fathers has opened new doors, unexpectedly I might add. I was not raised on repetitive prayer and many of my colleagues in ministry were suspicious of the idea. One United Church of Christ pastor I knew in Maine deliberately altered the prayers of the liturgy every week so that "I will keep everyone on their toes." I always worried that this was a form of liturgical terrorism. I made use of a structured liturgy with only the Prayers of the People altered from week to week. Still I didn't explore the use of private repeated prayers until becoming Catholic. "The Way of a Pilgrim" is a beautiful exposition of how effective praying the Jesus prayer can be. There are several variants of the prayer, but "Lord Jesus, have mercy on me a sinner" seems to be common. Other references to the use of repeated "Our Fathers intrigued me until I decided to try it myself.

My own experience praying the "Our Father" as Catholics commonly call the Lord's Prayer has opened up new vistas of focused, contemplative prayer. The "Our Father" first of all has a wonderful way of calming the mind and the imagination so that only our Father is himself the focus of prayer. Then, the prayer seems to reduce every conceivable kind of petition to a few basics without in any way minimizing the specifics of what may be weighing down the petitioner's heart. I tend to pray the prayer in couplets, with a stand -alone line here and there:

Our father,
who art in heaven

That is a magnificent starting point because it separates the every day realm of human life and discourse from the realm of God, and so the one praying can switch mercifully away from the concerns of everyday life to focus on the divine. Our father, who art in heaven. You who are my spiritual father and are every day close to me are also in heaven.

Hallowed be thy name.

In my mind that line stands alone as I contemplate what it truly means.
Hallowed, not taken for granted, hallowed, not despised, hallowed, not substituted for the name of my choosing, hallowed: revered and adored.

Thy kingdom come
thy will be done

The coming of God's kingdom is linked to doing God's will, not that the one determines the other but that the one encompasses the other. When and as God's kingdom comes it will involve the joyful and obedient doing of God's will.

On earth
as it is in heaven.

We can only prepare for an eternal life with God if we understand how obedience
now prepares us for obedience then. Even now the saints and angels are kneeling at the throne of God in devoted obedience and adoration.

Give us this day our daily bread

Give us your presence at mass and in adoration, and in reconciliation even as you feed our bodies. For we will not make use of the food at our tables if we have not fed on you at the Table of our Lord.

Forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us

How many of life's daily difficulties circulate around being hurt by another person, or being the one who has done the hurting in retaliation or ignorance or a bit of both? And how much freedom has been gained by admitting to both and then offering forgiveness as well as receiving the forgiveness of God? I could spend a day on that petition alone.

Lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil

Evil exists as a concrete reality around us, but whether we become ensnared in it has a lot do to with our own intentions. To ask for help with avoiding temptation is a reminder that we have wills, often weak wills, even as we also have to cope with the evils in the world not of our own making. How to keep separate the weak will of my self from the stark reality of evil outside myself is not always easy. And so these two petitions accompany one another inevitably.

If I can pray 25 "Our fathers" while in adoration, with intense focus on each petition, I can begin the glorious process of self-emptying which leads to genuine union with God. Notice I began with the word "if". I try and anyone reading this should try too. It is a beautiful experience.

May we all get better at it and inch closer to our Lord, in whom resides all our comfort and joy!