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| When you pray, say: “ Father hallowed be thy name” |
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| (Luke 11,2) |
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Jesus was seen praying. Luke reported: “he was praying in some place. When he ceased, one of his disciples said to him: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples” and Jesus answered: “When you pray, say: Father hallowed be thy name” |
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Strange request. We do know what that means to have a name, to make a name for ourselves. If we have a name, it means we matter for the others, for the society itself. Some like to have their name in the news and think they can built that way a proper personality.
To give a name to some body is to give him a place among the others, a place of his own, irreplaceable. To have a name it is for that person to get out of the anonymity, to be distinguished among the crowd, to be special. To be called by our own name, it is to be recognized, both as unique and as related to the others. |
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Regarding God, He does not give away His name. He keeps it secret. He does not make it known neither to Moses nor to Jacob. All through the First Testament, God is already seen as the forgiving, full of tenderness; slow to get angry however this image of God is mixed with the image of a warrior who assails His enemies to protect His people.
When Jesus came, he told us that the only convenient name for God was “Father” and He really is a Father for us. Through Jesus, God appeared like a Father full of tenderness. We should name Him like that. |
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Why should we pray him to “sanctify” his name? It is to liberate man from the fear of a “sacred” name jealously hidden to them. We pray to make His tenderness to be known everywhere and to intervene in the history of the world, a world for which the name of God does not mean much anymore. “Make you recognize as God” according to another translation done by the TOB * of the usual translation “Hallowed be thy name”. *Traduction Oecuménique de la Bible (Ecumenical Translation of the Bible).
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We pray that we can experience and say that God saves man rather than keeps him down
In this manner the world will enter in “holiness”. God shows his holiness by loving men, He came to this world for everybody; each of us received from Him a share of holiness and dignity. Only God is holy, however he communicates his holiness and we receive it. That is our story, marvellous, and our profound desire, expressed in our prayer that this holy Name be recognized everywhere and we say thanks, always, in spite of it all. |
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