My dear Parishioners,
Peace! There are nineteen (19) In Brief articles in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which treat the Lord’s Prayer or “Our Father.” The following reflection considers CCC, 2798.
Mary Daly (+2010), Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza (b. 1938), Elizabeth Johnson (b. 1941), Rosmary Radford Ruether (b. 1936) and others who might be called “feminists theologians” may have difficulties in praying the Lord’s Prayer because God is invoked as “Father.” It is important to recall, however, that if “patriarchy” is a sin and the Lord Jesus calls God His Father and ours in a patriarchal fashion, then Jesus Himself was a sinner and therefore not God and we are still in our sins… (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:17). There was “goddess worship” in the ancient world. For example Ashtoreth is said to be the goddess of the Sidonians in 1 Kings 11:5, 33. Diana is said to be a goddess of Ephesus in Acts 19:27, 35. Apart from Sacred Scripture Aphrodite is an ancient Greek goddess of love while Athena is the goddess of wisdom. Isis is the ancient Egyptian goddess of wisdom. Durga is a Hindu river goddess.
To pray the “Our Father” is to acknowledge that God is Father unlike any other father. I have known fathers who loved their children and others who have not. I have know fathers who were generous and diligent and exhibited other virtues and others who have not. There is no lack in God the Father, the First Person of the Holy Trinity. God has revealed Himself over time, of old through the prophets and in the fullness o f time through His Son (Hebrews 1:1). Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Moses did not have the revelation of the Trinity which the Lord Jesus Gives, but they knew (and know) the One True God (cf. Exodus 3:6; Matthew 22:32; Acts 3:13–20). Our fallen world, ourselves and our human language included, might give a certain bias against the revelation entrusted to us in the Lord’s Prayer. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, however, we can do so as an act of faith in the Lord Jesus who has given it to us. When discouraging us from sin, the Lord Jesus warns us against having the Devil as our father (cf. John 8:44).
The Lord Jesus Christ is true God and true man, like us in all things but sin (cf. Hebrews 4:15). He has taught us to call God “Father” (Matthew 5:48; 6:4–6, 9–13, 14–15, 18, 26, 32; 7:11; 10:20, 29). The Lord Jesus as Eternal Son of the Eternal Father prays “Our Father” in a little different way than we do, in that we are only adopted children of God our Heavenly Father.
In Holy Baptism we are made adopted children of the Eternal Father through the Eternal Son as we are incorporated into His mystical body the Church. The Lord’s Prayer is a communal prayer of the adopted children of God, the communion of saints.
God bless you!
Father John Arthur Orr