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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