Our Father...

“Our Father…”

 

Jesus teaches us to pray and he started with, “Our Father…” which expresses a radically new intimacy between God and humanity. It’s an intimacy that comes with the deeply personal dimension of being personally known and loved by God. You are personally known and loved. I want to repeat that: you are personally known and loved.

 

As individuals, deeply loved by the very source of our being, we are also called into relationship. Relationship with God and relationship with one another. The dynamic of relationships is a critically important aspect of living out our faith for we are called into relationships, into community.

 

There is no “Me. Me. Me” in the prayer Jesus taught us.

 

The radical individualism of the modern world is brought into a corrective lens through life in Christ. We work out our identity through the dynamic, iterative nature of relationships. I am Rob, but I am Rob who is a son, who is a brother, who is a cousin, who is a father, who is a husband. I know me and I form who I am in relationship with God who bestows on me an inalienable identity of dignity. I ground myself in this as I form as a person in relationship with others.

 

Christ assures us that we are individually loved and we work that love out in relationships with others. There we will discover our own need for love, grounded in our true identity, and the beauty of forgiveness. 

 

There is no “I” in the Our Father.

 

Let us learn to love one another as God loves us.