• Benny Nalkara, CMI

There is only one prayer taught by Jesus – the Our Father and it happens to be the prayer that is prayed most frequently by the Christians. Two versions of this prayer are recorded in the gospels: a longer form within the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew (6:9-13), and a shorter form in the Gospel of Luke when “one of his disciples said to him, ‘Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples” (11:.2-4). As we come to know Almighty God as Abba, the prayer Jesus taught his disciples would become the model for our entire prayer life and the foundation of our daily peace and joy. More than a prayer, ‘Our Father’ becomes the pronouncement of the Abba-consciousness, a new awareness about God, given by Jesus. The whole of the Lord’s prayer is predicated on this intimate relationship with God. The Lord’s Prayer is specifically and definitely stated to be the disciple’s prayer; and only on the lips of a disciple has the prayer its full meaning.
Jesus came from a nation which loved prayer. The Jewish Rabbis said the loveliest things about prayer: “God is as near to his creatures as the ear to the mouth.” Jesus introduced a radical teaching on the manner, mode and place of prayer, contrary to that of the Jewish traditions. But the most important revolution he brought through his gospel was the way we look at God in prayer. Any person who prays is bound to want to know to what kind of God he or she is praying. One wants to know in what kind of atmosphere his/her prayers will be heard. Is the God a grudging God out of whom every gift has to be squeezed and coerced? Is it a mocking God whose gifts may well be double-edged? Is he praying to a God whose heart is so kind that he is more ready to give than we are to ask? Before teaching his disciples to pray “our Father,” he insisted that we must always remember that the God to whom we pray is a God of love, who is more ready to answer than we are to pray. His gifts and his grace have not to be unwillingly extracted from him. We do not come to a God who has to be coaxed, or pestered, or battered into answering our prayers. We come to one whose one wish is to give.
Jesus took a stance towards God entirely different from the attitude of his contemporaries. They knew him as the all-powerful Creator, as the all-knowing one, who had delivered them from slavery and had given them the homeland and provided for their needs They also feared him rather than showing reverence. So sacred was his name that they dared not even pronouncing it. Jesus really radicalized this stance by addressing and calling out God as “Father.” Jesus was not giving his disciples a new title for Yahweh, but a new relationship with God. He brought in a familial word and title into the life of the disciples. He was revealing to them that as a result of his incarnation, and the forthcoming death and resurrection, they would be able to relate to God in a totally new way- as father and children.
So, then, when we discover that the God to whom we pray has the name and the heart of a father, it makes literally all the difference in the world. We need no longer shiver before a all-powerful God; but we can trust in the love of an all-inclusive God. Because of the awareness of the all-inclusiveness of God, the Lord’s Prayer does not teach us to pray “My Father”; it teaches us to pray Our Father. The very phrase “Our Father” involves the elimination of self. To pray “Our Father” surrenders any right to be exclusive. This prayer challenges us to give up the deep inclination we all have to close our eyes and to keep away from those who notably differ from us.
If we can be certain that the name of the God who created this world is Father, then we can also be certain that fundamentally this is a friendly universe. To call God Father is to settle our relationship to the world in which we live with a positive outlook. If we believe that God is Father, it gives a new dimension to our relationship to our fellow-beings. The fatherhood of God is the only possible basis of the brotherhood and sisterhood of the human kind.
Jesus wanted us to address God as the Father who is in “heaven.” The expression reminds us of the love of God and the power, glory and holiness of God. Apart from adding certain reverence to the opening word, “Our Father.” The expression, “who are in heaven,” reminds us of our heavenly pilgrimage moving through a sacred time to a final meeting with God.
When we pray, Our Father, we pronounce the same Abba-consciousness that Jesus had, we proclaim that our God is an all-inclusive God, Our God is a loving and caring father whom we can approach without any fear or trembling. It’s not merely a prayer but a programme of life for us, Christians. It reminds us of the attitudes, stances and approaches we should have in life towards God and the fellow human beings.