Catechism of the Council of Trent: "Our Father, who art in heaven"
Opening Words of the Lord's Prayer
Importance Of Instruction On These Words
The form of Christian prayer given us by Jesus Christ is so composed and arranged that before coming to requests and petitions certain words must be used as a sort of preface calculated to increase our confidence in God when we are about to address Him devoutly in prayer; and this being so it will be the pastor's duty to explain each of these words separately and with precision, so that the faithful may have recourse to prayer more readily because of the knowledge that they are going to commune and converse with a God who is also their Father. Regarding this preface, if we merely consider the number of words of which it is composed, it is brief indeed; but if we regard the ideas, it is of the greatest importance and replete with mysteries.
"Father"
The first word, which, by the order and institution of God we employ in this prayer, is Father. Our Saviour could, indeed, have commenced this divine prayer with some other word, conveying more the idea of majesty, such, for instance, as Lord or Creator. Yet He omitted all such expressions because they might rather inspire fear, and instead of them He has chosen a term inspiring confidence and love in those who pray and ask anything of God; for what is sweeter than the name Father, conveying, as it does, the idea of indulgence and tenderness? The reasons why this name Father is applicable to God, can be easily explained to the faithful by speaking to them on the subjects of creation, providence, and redemption.
God Is Called Father Because He Created Us
Thus having created man to His own image—a favour He accorded to no other living creature—it is with good reason that, in view of this unique privilege with which He has honoured man, Sacred Scripture calls God the Father of all men; not only of the faithful, but also of the unbelieving.
God Is Called Father Because He Provides For Us
From His providence also may be drawn an argument. By a special superintending care and providence over our interests God displays a paternal love for us.
God's Care For Us Is Seen In The Appointment Of Guardian Angels
But in order to comprehend more clearly the fatherly care of God for men, it will be well in the explanation of this particular point to say something regarding the guardian Angels under whose protection men are placed.
By God's providence Angels have been entrusted with the office of guarding the human race and of accompanying every human being so as to preserve him from any serious dangers. Just as parents, whose children are about to travel a dangerous and infested road, appoint guardians and helpers for them, so also in the journey we are making towards our heavenly country our heavenly Father has placed over each of us an Angel under whose protection and vigilance we may be enabled to escape the snares secretly prepared by our enemy, repel the dreadful attacks he makes on us, and under his guiding hand keep the right road, and thus be secure against all false steps which the wiles of the evil one might cause us to make in order to draw us aside from the path that leads to heaven.
How We Are Helped By The Angels
And the immense advantage springing from the special care and providence of God with regard to men, the execution of which is entrusted to Angels, who by nature hold an intermediate place between God and man, will be clear from a multitude of examples with which Sacred Scripture supplies us in abundance, and which show that in God's goodness it has often happened that Angels have wrought wondrous works under the very eyes of men. This gives us to understand that many and equally important services, which do not fall under our sight, are wrought by our Angels, the guardians of our salvation, in our interest and for our advantage.
The Angel Raphael, the divinely appointed companion and guide of Tobias, conducted him and brought him back safe and sound; saved him from being devoured by an enormous fish; made known to him the extremely useful properties possessed by the liver, gall and heart of the monster; expelled the demon; repressed and fettered his power and prevented him from injuring Tobias; taught the young man the true and legitimate notion and use of matrimony; and finally restored to the elder Tobias the use of his sight.
In the same way the Angel who liberated the Prince of the Apostles, will supply copious material for the instruction of the pious flock regarding the striking fruits of the vigilance and protection of the Angels. The pastor need do no more than depict the Angel lighting up the darkness of the prison, touching Peter's side and awakening him from his sleep, loosing his chains, breaking his bonds, ordering him to rise, to take up his sandals and to follow; and then the pastor will point out how Peter was led forth out of prison by the same Angel, how he was enabled to pass without let or hindrance through the midst of the guard, how the doors were thrown open, and finally how he was placed in safety.
The historical part of Sacred Scripture, as we have already remarked, is full of such examples, all of which go to show the extent of the benefits bestowed by God on man through the ministry and intervention of Angels whom He deputes not only on particular and private occasions, but also appoints to take care of us from our very births. He furthermore appoints them to watch over the salvation of each one of the human race.
This teaching, if carefully explained, will have the effect of interesting and compelling the minds of the faithful to acknowledge and venerate more and more the paternal care and providence of God towards them.
God's Care For Us Seen In The Love He Has Ever Shown To Man
And here the pastor should especially praise and proclaim the treasures of God's goodness towards the human race. Though from the time of our first parents and from the moment of our first sin down to this very day we have offended Him by countless sins and crimes, yet He still retains His love for us and never renounces His singular solicitude for our welfare.
To imagine that He has forgotten us would be an act of folly and nothing short of a most outrageous insult. God was angry with the Israelites because of the blasphemy they had been guilty of in imagining that they had been abandoned by providence. Thus do we read in Exodus: They tempted the Lord, saying: "Is the Lord amongst us or not?" and in Ezechiel the divine anger is inflamed against the same people for having said: The Lord seeth us not: the Lord hath forsaken the earth. These examples should suffice to deter the faithful from entertaining the criminal notion that God can ever possibly forget mankind. To the same effect we may read in Isaias the complaint uttered by the Israelite against God; and, on the other hand, the kindly similitude with which God refutes their folly: Sion said: "The Lord hath forsaken me, and the Lord hath forgotten me." To which God answers: Can a woman forget her infant, so as not to have pity on the son of her womb? And if she should forget, yet will not I forget thee. Behold, I have engraven thee in my hands.
Although these passages clearly establish the point under discussion, yet thoroughly to convince the faithful that never for a moment can God forget man or cease to lavish on him tokens of His paternal tenderness, the pastor should still further confirm this by the striking example of our first parents. They had ignored and violated God's command. When you hear them sharply accused and that dreadful sentence of condemnation pronounced against them: Cursed is the earth in thy work, with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth; when you see them driven out of Paradise; when you read that to preclude all hope of their return a cherub was stationed at the entrance of Paradise, brandishing a flaming sword turning every way; and finally, when you know that, to avenge the injury done Him, God had afflicted them with punishments, internal and external, would you not be inclined to think that man's case was hopeless? Would you not consider that not only was he bereft of all divine help, but was even abandoned to every misfortune? Yet, surrounded as he then was by so many evidences of divine wrath and vengeance, a gleam of the goodness of God towards him is seen to shine forth. For the Lord God, says Sacred Scripture, made for Adam and his wife garments of skins and clothed them, which was a very clear proof that at no time would God abandon man.
This truth, that the love of God can be exhausted by no human iniquity, was indicated by David in these words: Will God in his anger shut up his mercies? It was set forth by Habacuc when, addressing God, he said: When thou art angry thou wilt remember mercy; and by Micheas, who thus expresses it: Who is a God like to thee who takest away iniquity and passest by the sin of the remnant of thy inheritance? He will send his fury in no more, because he delighteth in mercy.
And thus precisely does it happen. At the very moment when we imagine ourselves to be utterly lost and altogether bereft of His protection, then it is that God in His infinite goodness seeks us out in a special way and takes care of us. Even in His anger He stays the sword of His justice, and ceases not to pour out the inexhaustible treasures of His mercy.