St. Gregory of Nyssa’s meditation on the words “Our Father Who Art in Heaven.”

When therefore the Lord teaches us in this prayer to call God “Father,” I believe He is doing nothing less than ordaining an exalted and sublime way of life. 

 

Christ leads us to heaven itself, having made it accessible to all. He does so through the practice of goodness and virtue. In this manner He brings us close to God through prayer. For this is the power of His words in the Lord's Prayer, a prayer by which we learn not merely sounds uttered through syllables of speech, but the knowledge of the ascent to God achieved through a spiritual way of life. We can comprehend the divine mystery through the words of the Lord's Prayer.

 

Christ begins with the words, "When you pray" (Mt 6:7). The Lord said to the disciples: "When you pray, say,‘Our Father who art in heaven’" (Mt 6:9). Somewhere in the Psalms the great David says, "Who will give me wings like a dove?" (Ps 55:6). I, too, would dare speak with the same voice. Who will give me such wings as to fly with my mind to the height of the noble meaning of these words? I need to leave the whole earth behind. I would have to remove my mind far from all things that change and are in flux. By attaining to an unchanging and unwavering disposition of the soul, I would first earnestly make Him my friend who is eternal and unchangeable. Only then would I invoke that most intimate Name and say, "Father!"

 

What quality of soul must the speaker possess to speak of God as "Our Father!" What confidence of spirit! What purity of conscience! To perceive God's ineffable glory, he must comprehend the mystery of God as far as it is possible from the names that have been conceived of and attributed to God in the Scriptures. He must learn that the divine nature of God is goodness, holiness, joy, power, glory, purity and eternity. Whatever God may be in His deep mystery, He possesses all these eternal and many other conceivable attributes that properly belong to the Divine Nature. Let us say that a person could understand all these endowments of God through the study of Holy Scriptures as well as one's own creative reflection. Could such a person even then dare to utter the sacred Name and call such a God his own Father?

 

One thing is very clear. If he had any sense, he would not dare address God with such a Name and say "Father," unless he perceived a reflection of the same attributes in himself. For it is impossible that God who is good in His very essence should be the Father of anyone engaged in evil activities. God who is holy could not be the Father of one defiled in life, nor He who is Eternal be the Father of one prone to every change, nor He who is the Father of life be the Father of one dead in sin. Similarly, God who is pure and spotless cannot be the Father of those who behave unseemly, neither can God who is generous be the Father of those who are greedy, nor the All Good One be the Father of those who in any way participate in evil things.

 

Someone may indeed dare seek intimacy with God while yet knowing himself to be in need of purification, discerning that his wicked conscience is filled with stains and evil wounds. If such a person, prior to being cleansed from these many evils, approaches God to call Him "Father," it would be like a person who is unjust and impure, and yet dares to address the One who is Most just and pure. It would be, at it were, to name God as the Father of one's own wickedness, a flagrant insolence. Such a person's words would amount to no less than mockery. Why? Because the word "Father" signifies fatherhood–the source and cause of a person who is made to exist by God. Therefore, whoever invokes God as Father and still possesses a wicked conscience, he in fact accuses God of nothing less than being the source and cause of his own evils.

 

According to the apostle Paul, however, "there is no communion between light and darkness" (2 Cor 6:14). Rather, the contrary is true. The light seeks intimacy, with what is just, the good with what is good, the incorruptible with what is incorruptible. The opposite things seek intimacy with their own kind. The Lord said: "A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit" (Mt 7:18). 

 

If someone is possessed, as Scripture puts it, by hardness of heart and dares to utter the words of the Lord's Prayer, he pursues falsehood. Let him know that such a person calls Father not the Heavenly One, but the Infernal One. The latter is himself a liar and the father of lies (Jn 8:44) that may arise in any given person. He is sin and the father of sin. For this reason, those whose soul is given to evil passions are called “children of wrath" (Eph 2:3) by the Apostle Paul. He who separates himself from true life is named "son of perdition” (Jn 17:12). And someone who is loose and immoral is called "the son of traitorous maidens” (1 Sam 20:30). on the contrary, those who have a conscience full of light are called "sons of light and of the day" (1 Thess 5:5). And those who have sought to fortify themselves with divine power are called “sons of power” (1 Sam 10:26).

 

When therefore the Lord teaches us in this prayer to call God “Father,” I believe He is doing nothing less than ordaining an exalted and sublime way of life. For He who is the Truth does not of course teach us to lie, that is, to state that which we are not. He does not want us to name God as Father when it is not our right. But when we dare call the Incorruptible God, the One perfectly just and good, "our Father," we must attest to our kinship with Him by our way of life. Do you see how much preparation we need? What quality of life? How much and what kind of diligence in order that our conscience rise to that level of confidence to dare address God as "Father?" 

 

When we approach God, let us first examine our way of life. Let us see if we inwardly possess some quality worthy of divine kinship. And then we can take courage to speak those words. For the Lord who has directed us to say "Father" did not thereby permit us to speak a lie. Therefore, whoever conducts himself worthily of God, it is he who rightly gazes toward the heavenly city. It is he who rightly names the King of heaven "Father" and calls the heavenly blessedness his own homeland. Where does the aim of our advice lead? To think of the things above, where God is. It is there that each should lay the foundation stones of his home. It is there that each should lay up treasures and each lift up his heart. "For where the treasure is, there is also the heart" (Mt 6:21). Then one can continuously behold the beauty of the Father and adorn his own soul with that same beauty.

 

Extracted from: 

https://www.orthodoxprayer.org/Lords_Prayer.html

 

St. Gregory of Nyssa, (c. 335 – c. 394), was an early Roman Christian prelate who served as Bishop of Nyssa (in Turkey) from 372 to 376 and from 378 until his death in 394. He is venerated as a saint in Eastern Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Oriental Orthodoxy, Anglicanism, and Lutheranism. Gregory, his elder brother St. Basil of Caesarea, and their friend St. Gregory of Nazianzus are collectively known as the Cappadocian Fathers. He was an erudite Christian theologian who made significant contributions to the doctrine of the Trinity and the Nicene Creed.

 

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The Our Father as explained by Our Lord – Part Two.

[In Maria Valtorta’s writings there are a number of separate teachings on the Lord’s Prayer given by Jesus Himself.]

 

If the world were able to live out the “Our Father,” the Kingdom of God would be in the world.

 

In the “Our Father” the perfection of prayer is found. Observe: no act is absent in the brevity of the formula. Faith, hope, charity, obedience, resignation, abandonment, entreaty, contrition, and mercy are present. In saying it, you pray with all Paradise, during the first four petitions; then, leaving Heaven, which is the dwelling that awaits you, you return to the earth, remaining with your arms upraised towards Heaven to make entreaties for your earthly needs and to ask for aid in the battle to be won in order to go back up above.

 

“Our Father, who art in heaven.”

 

[…] Only my love could tell you, “Say 'Our Father'.” By this expression I publicly invested you with the sublime title of sons and daughters of the Most High and brothers and sisters of mine. If someone, burdened by the consideration of his human nothingness, may doubt that he is a child of God, created in his image and likeness, on considering these words of mine, he can no longer doubt. The Word of God does not err and does not lie. And the Word tells you, “Say 'Our Father'.”

 

To have a father is something sweet and a powerful aid. In the material order, I wanted to have a father on earth to protect my existence as a baby, as a boy, and as a young man. By this I wanted to teach you − both children and fathers − how great the moral figure of the father is. But to have a Father of absolute perfection, as the Father in Heaven is, is the sweetness of sweetnesses, the aid of aids. Look at this Father-God with holy fear, but let grateful love for the Giver of life in heaven and on earth always be stronger than fear.

 

“Hallowed be thy Name.”

 

With the same movement as the seraphim and all the angelic choirs, to whom and with whom you join in glorifying the name of God, repeat this exalting, grateful, just praise to the Holy of Holies. Repeat it while thinking of Me − I, God, the Son of God, who, before you, pronounced it with supreme veneration and supreme love. Repeat it in joy and in sorrow, in light and in darkness, in peace and in war. Blessed are those children who have never doubted the Father and at every hour and in every event have been able to say to Him, “Blessed be thy Name!”

 

“Thy kingdom come.”

 

This invocation ought to be the pulsation of the pendulum of your entire life, and everything should gravitate around this invocation of Goodness. For the Kingdom of God in hearts, and passing from hearts into the world, would like to say, “Goodness, Peace, and every other virtue”. Accentuate your lives, then, with numberless appeals for the advent of this Kingdom. But let them be living appeals − that is, to act in life by applying your sacrifice of every hour, for to act well means to sacrifice nature to this end.

 

“Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.”

 

The Kingdom of Heaven will belong to whoever has done the Will of the Father, not to those who have heaped words upon words and then rebelled against the Father's will […]. Here, too, you unite to all of Paradise, which does the Will of the Father. And if the inhabitants of the Kingdom do it, won't you do so to become, in turn, the inhabitants of Heaven? Oh, the joy that has been prepared for you by the Triune Love of God! How can you fail to work with a persevering will so as to conquer it?

 

Those doing the Will of the Father live in God. In living in God, they cannot err, cannot sin, and cannot lose their dwelling in Heaven, for the Father has you do nothing except what is Good and what, in being Good, saves from sinning and leads to Heaven. Those making the Father's Will their own, while annulling their will, know and savor − while on earth − the Peace which is the endowment of the blessed. Those doing the Will of the Father, while killing their perverse and perverted will, are no longer men: they are already spirits moved by love and living in love. You must, with good will, tear your will out of your heart and replace it with the Will of the Father.

 

After having provided for the petitions regarding the spirit, since you are poor, living amidst the needs of the flesh, ask Him who supplies food to the birds of the air and clothing for the lilies of the field for bread.

 

“Give us this day our daily bread.” 

 

I said this day and I said bread. I never say anything useless. “This day. Ask the Father for help day by day. It is a measure of prudence, justice, and humility.

 

Prudence: if you had everything at once, you would waste a great deal. You are eternal children and capricious, in addition. The gifts of God should not be wasted. Furthermore, if you had everything, you would forget God.

 

Justice: Why should you have everything at once when I received help from the Father day by day? And would it not be unjust to think that it is well for God to give you everything together, […] in the fear that God will not provide tomorrow? Distrust − you do not reflect on this − is a sin. God must not be distrusted. He loves you perfectly. He is the most perfect Father. To ask for everything at once affronts trust and offends the Father.

 

Humility: having to ask day by day refreshes in your mind the concept of your nothingness, of your condition as poor ones, and of the All and Wealth of God. Bread. I said “bread” because bread is the king of foods, the one indispensable for life. With one word and in the word I have enclosed − so that all of you would request them − all the needs of your stay on earth. But as the temperature of your spirituality varies, so does the extent of the word. 

 

Bread as food for those who have an embryonic spirituality, to such a degree that it is already a great deal if they are able to ask God for the food to fill their stomachs. There are some who do not ask for it and take it with violence, cursing God and their brothers and sisters. These are looked upon with wrath by the Father because they trample upon the precept from which the others come: “Love your God with all your heart; love your neighbor as yourself.'

 

Bread as help in moral and material needs for those living not only for their stomachs, but who are able to live for thought as well, possessing a more highly-formed spirituality. 

 

Bread as religion for those who, even more highly formed, place God before the satisfactions of sense and of human sentiment and are already capable of spreading their wings in the supernatural.

 

Bread as spirit, bread as sacrifice for those who, once the full age of the spirit is reached, are able to live in spirit and in truth, concerning themselves with the flesh only to the extent that is strictly necessary to continue to exist in mortal life, until it is time to go to God. They have now chiseled themselves according to my model and are living copies of Me over whom the Father bends in a loving embrace.

 

“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

 

There is no one, among the number of those created, except for my Mother, who has not had to seek the Father's forgiveness for more or less serious sins, according to each one's capacity to be a child of God. Ask the Father to erase you from the list of his debtors. If you do so in a humble, sincere, and contrite spirit, you will incline the Eternal in your favor.

 

But an essential condition to receive, to be forgiven, is to forgive. If you only seek mercy and do not grant it to your neighbor, you will not experience God's forgiveness. God does not like the hypocritical and the cruel, and whoever refuses to forgive his brother refuses the Father's forgiveness for himself. Consider, moreover, that no matter how much you may have been wounded by your neighbor, the wounds you have inflicted upon God are infinitely more serious. Let this thought spur you to forgive everything, as I forgave through my Perfection and to teach you forgiveness.

 

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

 

God does not lead you into temptation. God tempts you with gifts of Goodness alone, and to attract you to Himself. You, interpreting my words incorrectly, think they mean that God leads you into temptation to test you. No. The good Father who is in Heaven permits evil, but does not create it. He is the Good from which every good flows. But Evil exists. It existed from the moment Lucifer set himself up against God. It is up to you to make Evil a Good by overcoming it and by beseeching the Father for the strength to overcome it. 

 

This is what you request in the last petition. That God may grant you enough strength to be able to withstand temptation. Without his aid temptation would bend you, for it is cunning and strong, and you are dull and weak. But the Father's Light illuminates you, and the Father's Power strengthens you, and the Father's Love protects you, so that Evil dies and you are left freed from it.

 

This is what you ask for in the “Our Father” which I have taught to you. Therein everything is comprehended; everything understood; everything which it is just to request and grant, requested. If the world were able to live out the “Our Father,” the Kingdom of God would be in the world. But the world is unable to pray. It is unable to love. It is unable to save itself. It is capable only of hating, sinning, and condemning itself.

 

But I did not give and make this prayer for the world, which has preferred to be the kingdom of Satan. I have given and made this prayer for those whom the Father has given to Me because they are his, and I have made it so that they may be one with the Father and with Me, beginning in this life, so as to reach the fullness of union in the other. 

 

Based on Jesus’ Commentary from The Notebooks, July 7, 1943.

 

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