LITURGY
The “Our Father” is “not just one Christian prayer among many, but the prayer of the children of God”. “It is the great prayer” that “Jesus taught us”. Pope Francis recalled this in his General Audience focused on the Eucharistic liturgy today. “Entrusted to us on the day of our Baptism, the ‘Our Father’ makes the same feelings that were in Jesus Christ resound in us”, Pope Francis explained, adding off the cuff that “when we pray the ‘Our Father’, we pray as Jesus did”. “It is so beautiful to pray as Jesus prayed”, Pope Francis remarked, adding that “formed by divine teaching, we dare to turn to God calling him ‘Father’, because we were reborn as his sons and daughters through water and the Holy Spirit”. Actually “nobody – he continued – would be able to call Him intimately ‘Abba’ without being generated by God, without the inspiration of the Spirit, as St Paul teaches us”. “How many times – the Pope observed – a group of people say ‘Our Father’ without knowing what they say!”. “But when you say ‘Father’, do you feel that He is your Father, the Father of humanity, the Father of Jesus Christ? Do you have a relationship with this Father?”, he asked. “When we pray the Our Father we connect with the Father – he continued off the cuff – who loves us”. And “it is the Holy Spirit who gives us this connection, this feeling of being children of God”. “What better prayer than the one taught by Jesus can prepare us to Sacramental Communion with Him?” Pope Francis asked, and replied: “None!”. “The Lord’s Prayer is prayed not just at Mass, but also in the morning and in the evening, in the Lauds and in the Vespers”, the Pope continued, highlighting that “in this way, our filial attitude towards God and our brotherly attitude towards our neighbour contribute to giving a Christian shape to our days”.
