And We Can Sing Just Like Our Fathers

There are a few things that Catholics and Protestants can agree on without question.  Most people would tend to think that The Lord’s Prayer is one of them.  Of course, if you talk with members of some Protestant churches (usually non-denominational churches), you might find the skeptical Bible reader who takes Matthew 6:7 ENTIRELY too literally: “In praying, do not babble like the pagans, who think that they will be heard because of their many words.”  From this verse, many Protestants have bought into the concept of “vain repetition.”  For the most extreme adherents to this concept, praying using ANY formal, written prayers is taboo.  And the Rosary???  Don’t get them STARTED!!

Well, apart from these few “prayer can have no structure whatsoever” Christians, most Christians can agree that when it comes to formal, pre-fabricated prayers, the ultimate is The Lord’s Prayer.  Why?  Well, it’s hard to argue with Matthew 6:9-13.  Jesus literally says, “This is how you are to pray...” then spouts off what we eventually called “The Lord’s Prayer” or simply “The Our Father.”  Now, based on how Jesus himself prayed throughout the Gospel, and the only mention of these exact words are in this verse, it’s pretty obvious that Jesus wasn’t saying this is the ONLY way to pray, but was simply giving us a guide on how to pray.  (Just more proof as to why you CAN NOT take the Bible literally, word-for-word, without SOME level of interpretation.)

Right after the Eucharistic Prayer, and our response of “Amen,” we all stand together as one church and pray the Lord’s Prayer.  The introduction from the priest goes like this:

Current Text:

1.      Let us pray with confidence to the Father in the words our Savior gave us.

2.      Jesus taught us to call God our Father, and so we have the courage to say:

3.      Let us ask our Father to forgive our sins and to bring us to forgive those who sin against us.

4.      Let us pray for the coming of the Kingdom as Jesus taught us.

Beginning in Advent 2011:

At the Savior’s command and formed by divine teaching, we dare to say…

I don’t know about you, but there’s something about that new introduction that reminds me of watching Rudy.  I just get really pumped up with how solid that phrasing turns out.

At the Savior’s command…  Ok, obviously that’s a straight-up nod to that Matthew 6:9 verse we mentioned above where Jesus said “This is how you are to pray.”  So there’s our “Savior’s command.”

…and formed by divine teaching… Our whole lives are supposed to be formed by divine teaching, or “the Word of God” (the Bible), and so we know not only HOW we are to pray, but WHY we should pray.

…we dare to say…  Yeah, buddy…this is the kicker line right here.  Think about it for a second: there’s a HUGE difference between “having courage” to say something and “daring” to say something.  We can have courage because of our own merits.  We can give ourselves enough credit to say, “Yeah, I’m brave enough to do this.”  Daring to do something, however, assumes a certain level of humility in that we realize there are some things we CAN do, but how WILLING we are to do them is another story.  Daring to pray the Lord’s Prayer inherently recognizes our humility before God.  We know we can physically say the words, but to MEAN the words is another story altogether. 

What’s so daring about these words we are about to pray?  That’s another story for another day.