Saturday, February 7, 2009

Tit 2, 13 The appearance of the glory of the great God

(Tit 2, 13) The appearance of the glory of the great God
[13] as we await the blessed hope, the appearance of the glory of the great God and of our savior Jesus Christ,
(CCC 2857) In the Our Father, the object of the first three petitions is the glory of the Father: the sanctification of his name, the coming of the kingdom, and the fulfillment of his will. The four others present our wants to him: they ask that our lives be nourished, healed of sin, and made victorious in the struggle of good over evil. (CCC 2858) By asking "hallowed be thy name" we enter into God's plan, the sanctification of his name - revealed first to Moses and then in Jesus - by us and in us, in every nation and in each man. (CCC 2859) By the second petition, the Church looks first to Christ's return and the final coming of the Reign of God. It also prays for the growth of the Kingdom of God in the "today" of our own lives. (CCC 2860) In the third petition, we ask our Father to unite our will to that of his Son, so as to fulfill his plan of salvation in the life of the world. (CCC 2861) In the fourth petition, by saying "give us," we express in communion with our brethren our filial trust in our heavenly Father. "Our daily bread" refers to the earthly nourishment necessary to everyone for subsistence, and also to the Bread of Life: the Word of God and the Body of Christ. It is received in God's "today," as the indispensable, (super-) essential nourishment of the feast of the coming Kingdom anticipated in the Eucharist. (CCC 2865) By the final "Amen," we express our "fiat" concerning the seven petitions: "So be it". (CCC 2856) "Then, after the prayer is over you say 'Amen,' which means 'So be it,' thus ratifying with our 'Amen' what is contained in the prayer that God has taught us" (St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. myst. 5,18: PG 33, 1124; cf. Lk 1:38). (CCC 2760) Very early on, liturgical usage concluded the Lord's Prayer with a doxology. In the Didache, we find, "For yours are the power and the glory for ever" (Didache 8, 2: SCh 248, 174). The Apostolic Constitutions add to the beginning: "the kingdom," and this is the formula retained to our day in ecumenical prayer (Apostolic Constitutions, 7, 24, 1: PG 1, 1016). The Byzantine tradition adds after "the glory" the words "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." the Roman Missal develops the last petition in the explicit perspective of "awaiting our blessed hope" and of the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (Titus 2:13; cf. Roman Missal 22, Embolism after the Lord's Prayer). Then comes the assembly's acclamation or the repetition of the doxology from the Apostolic Constitutions.

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