Here’s a scary thought: Prayer reveals who we are. It’s
the most characteristically personal activity. Consider the Pharisee and
the Publican.
The
Pharisee, we’re told, prays to himself. He was a self-made man, full of
his own deeds, with no room for God or for others. “God, I thank thee that I am
not like other men; for I fast twice a week, and pay tithes of all I owe…not
like that publican.”
The
Publican stood afar off and didn’t lift his eyes to heaven. He saw nothing
wrong that anyone else had done. He merely opens the depths of his broken heart
to the merciful and man-loving God: “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.” He
alone went home justified by God.
But in both cases, prayer
revealed the person.
What do my prayers reveal
about me?
Consider all that I do in the
course of a day.
I
eat. I drink. I sleep. I feel pain and pleasure. All these reveal that I am an animal;
for I share all these with the animals.
I
think. I plot. I plan. I read and write. All these reveal that I am rational,
like all other people and like the angels.
But none of these reveal who
I am; they only show what I am. Prayer alone reveals my person. Prayer
alone shows who I am.
Am I so busy pursuing animal
appetites and worldly concerns that I forget to pray? When I was a
little boy and sat down to lunch, I sometime started to dig in without praying.
My grandma would stop me, saying, “Essen, nicht fressen”—“Eat like a human, not
like an animal.”
Prayer is that most personal
activity, because I open myself up before the Three-Person God. I open to him
the depths of my being, and seek the depths of his. I bring before him all
those other persons he has brought into my life, and offer my requests for
them, and give thanks for them. To put it simply, in prayer I relate to God personally.
That is why, when we pray, we begin with “Our Father.” Not just “Creator God,”
which would make me just a creation. Not “My Father,” as if I stand apart from
others, but Our Father. Here I include all those dear to me and not so
dear, all my fellow Christians…indeed, every man and woman and child for whom
Christ died and rose again.
Today’s Gospel is the
high-priestly prayer of Christ—the real “Lord’s Prayer.” And it’s
precious to us, because it reveals to us Who He is.
He begins by calling God “Father.”
He doesn’t say, like we do, “Our Father,” but simply, “Father.”
And in so doing, he reveals
himself the only Son of God, one in essence with the Father, as our Nicene
Fathers confessed. He is the Father’s Son.
What is it, after all, to be Son?
What does that word mean?
A
son is the same nature as his father. Canine fathers produce canine
sons. Human fathers produce human sons.
A
son is a different person from his father. I am what my father
was, but I am most certainly not who he was.
A
son is, in some sense, from his father…in a way that the father is not
from the son.
What about space and time? My
son is younger than I am. He occupies a different place than I do.
But space and time are
features of the created order. God is not a creature. So those don’t
apply in him. From all eternity, the Father begot the Son; they are co-eternal.
And when the Son became enfleshed, he did not leave the Father.
He is also our Savior. Even though his Person is divine, the Second Person
of the blessed Trinity, that divine Person willed to join himself to our
created nature. Without ceasing to be God, he became man, that through his life
and death and rising we might share the divine life. Just as he is one in
essence with the Father according to his divinity, he is one in essence with us
according to his humanity. Begotten eternally of his Father without mother, he
was born in time of a Mother, without father.
So he prays, “I have revealed
your name to those you gave me.” In the ancient world, to know a thing’s name
was to have access to it…to know it. When Jacob wrestled with the angel of the
Lord, he revealed his name to the angel. But the angel did not reveal his name
back. But Christ has revealed God’s name to us; and so we have access to
the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. And this, my friends, is to have
salvation: to share the life of the Holy Trinity.
He keeps and preserves us,
too. “Holy Father,” he says, “keep them in thy name.” You see, the cares
and pleasures of our body, and the worries and delights of our rational soul,
can work to draw us away from that saving name. So the Son asks the Father to
keep us in the name; and the Father answers the prayer of the Son by sending
forth the Holy Spirit, who prays in us with groans too deep for words…who
intercedes for us according to the divine will.
And so we need not fear. For
the Son intercedes for us with the Father. And soon we will celebrate that great
day when He poured out the Spirit from the Father upon his waiting disciples.
What can we say in response? What can we do? What else, but to walk through
this life in prayer and praise and thanksgiving to the only true God: Father,
Son, and Holy Spirit.
