Today’s Gospel, taken from St. Matthew (9-13) is one of my most favorite passages. It is Jesus telling us to pray to our Heavenly Father and He tells us how to do it.“Pray then like this: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread; and forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation,
But deliver us from evil.”
While we just celebrated Father’s Day, every day is Father’s Day for each one of us. We need our Heavenly Father because we truly are children – His children – so in need of His care.
The Navarre Bible comments on this passage: "…from childhood to death, the Our Father is a prayer which fills us with hope and consolation. Jesus fully realized how helpful this prayer would be to us. We are grateful to him for giving it to us, to the Apostles for passing it on to us and, in the case of most Christians, to our mothers for teaching it to us in our infancy. So important is the Lord’s Prayer that form apostolic times it has been used, along with the Creed, the Ten Commandments and the Sacraments, as the basis of Christian catechesis. Catechumens were introduced to the life of prayer by the Our Father, and our catechisms today use it for that purpose.”
Quoting St. Augustine, the author says that the Lord’s Prayer is so perfect that it sums up in a few words everything man needs to ask God for.
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