Our Father, who art in heaven” – Christian prayer

Christians know that “Our Father” is their most ancient and purest prayer. Biblical studies confirm this. This is not to say that in other religions, we don’t encounter the idea of divine fatherhood. For example, the supreme god of the Romans is named Jupiter, which comes from Deus Pater, the father god. The prayers that are addressed to him in Virgil’s poem address him: “Father of gods and men!” Some have wanted to make this fact explained this fact by an ancient cult of dead ancestors or mythologies of the divine origin of rulers. Finally, all peoples believed that the dead were alive and would be raised in the religious world if their memory were sacred. And so, it can be said that according to primitive beliefs, the deities are integrated into the life of the tribe or family by the titles they had before they died. According to the Old Testament, even the God of Israel behaves to the chosen people as a father (cf. Psalm 89:27; 63:15; 64:7). The Jews are called upon to respect and obey him as a father. Yet they dared not to invoke him directly with the prayer “Our Father” until late in the period. And from a Hellenistic background comes the invocation we read in Sirach (23:1,4), “O Lord, Father, and Ruler of my life!” The prayers of the Palestinian Hebrews in Jesus’ time, who were not so Hellenized, remained anciently – Hebrews confessed divine fatherhood to their people. Still, they did not call him individually by the title “Father.”
The Gospel texts, however, make it abundantly clear that Jesus himself still invokes God as his Father. St. Mark (14:36) preserves the word in its original language – Abba, as uttered by Jesus in his anguished prayer in Gethsemane. It was a vernacular expression in the children’s language; it was how children called their fathers. The Hebrews would dare not use this word in prayer. It is a new revelation of how Christ still refers to his heavenly Father. It is the teaching that Jesus has to God a special relationship with God, different from other people. The Pharisees were offended at this, seeking to “kill” Jesus: not only for breaking the Sabbath but also for calling God his own Father made himself equal to God” [John 5:18].
If he also encourages us to say “Our Father,” he introduces us to a mystery hidden for centuries, into the heart of the divine life in which we are beginning to participate. Did the disciples understand this? In the beginning, they had little awareness of it. And when they did.
Faith in God the Father
Jesus himself explained it very clearly in his speech after the Last Supper (cf. John 14:8ff.); it is thought that the profound meaning of the mystery was grasped by St. John, who rested on the breast of Jesus. Indeed, the consciousness of this ineffable privilege is attested by the letters of St. Paul to the Galatians and Romans. They also preserve the original Aramaic expression: Abba! (cf. Ga/4:6; ihm8:15). Christians coming from a Hellenistic background did not understand it; therefore, probably the double word “Abba, Father.” When Christians pray like this, they are aware that their relationship to God is no longer “fatherly” in the indefinite, in a purely metaphorical sense, but expresses an unheard the privilege of divine sonship in which he shares who is his own Son and who gives us his Spirit into our hearts. And the voice of the Holy Spirit unites with our prayer and provides power that human nature does not know.
It is said that the son of a French king was his tutor and rebuked him with stern words. But the boy, however. was aware of his dignity and protested, “He dared not to speak to me like that if you knew I was the son of your king.” But the tutor was not to be disconcerted: “And you would not dare to protest if you were aware that I was the son of your God and that I call him ‘Our Father’ every day.” The true originality of this Christian invocation is even more evident when compared to the religious notions of Greco-Roman cultural concepts into which the Gospel message began to penetrate.