“Our father in heaven, holy is your name; may your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. Do not bring us to the test, but deliver us from evil.”
“Our father in heaven”
When Jesus prayed to his father in the garden of Gethsemane , he called him ‘abba’ (Mk 14:36), and St. Paul
‘Abba’ is an Aramaic word (the language spoken by Jesus and his contemporaries) which translates into something like ‘Papa’ in English or ‘Tatay’ in Pilipino. It is a word a very small child would use in speaking to a father whom the child loves and trusts totally; it implies a Deep and loving intimacy between the two.
That is how we are to relate to God our father as children aware of the infinite love of our father for each of us. Like Jesus, we are in no way to be childish but we should develop the wonderful virtues of a child: a deep trust and love of God , a sense of joy and continuing wonder at all the beauty in life and a humility based on the truth of our relationship as creature to our infinite Creator.
As Jesus’ prayer also notes, our father is in heaven.’ This is not another ‘place.’ People sometimes have the perhaps unconscious tendency to think heaven as “up there” and hell as “down there.” On the contrary, ‘heaven’ is a different way of being, outside of time and space; it is the realm of the spiritual in which God is beyond our senses but present to us. It is the goal and fulfillment of our lives.
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