[9] "This is how you are to pray: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
(CCC 2765) The traditional expression "the Lord's Prayer" - oratio Dominica - means that the prayer to our Father is taught and given to us by the Lord Jesus. The prayer that comes to us from Jesus is truly unique: it is "of the Lord." On the one hand, in the words of this prayer the only Son gives us the words the Father gave him (Cf. Jn 17:7): he is the master of our prayer. On the other, as Word incarnate, he knows in his human heart the needs of his human brothers and sisters and reveals them to us: he is the model of our prayer. (CCC 2780) We can invoke God as "Father" because he is revealed to us by his Son become man and because his Spirit makes him known to us. The personal relation of the Son to the Father is something that man cannot conceive of nor the angelic powers even dimly see: and yet, the Spirit of the Son grants a participation in that very relation to us who believe that Jesus is the Christ and that we are born of God (Cf. Jn 1:1; 1 Jn 5:1). (CCC 2781) When we pray to the Father, we are in communion with him and with his Son, Jesus Christ (Cf. 1 Jn 1:3). Then we know and recognize him with an ever new sense of wonder. The first phrase of the Our Father is a blessing of adoration before it is a supplication. For it is the glory of God that we should recognize him as "Father," the true God. We give him thanks for having revealed his name to us, for the gift of believing in it, and for the indwelling of his Presence in us. (CCC 2782) We can adore the Father because he has caused us to be reborn to his life by adopting us as his children in his only Son: by Baptism, he incorporates us into the Body of his Christ; through the anointing of his Spirit who flows from the head to the members, he makes us other "Christs." God, indeed, who has predestined us to adoption as his sons, has conformed us to the glorious Body of Christ. So then you who have become sharers in Christ are appropriately called "Christs" (St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catech. myst. 3, 1: PG 33, 1088A). The new man, reborn and restored to his God by grace, says first of all, "Father!" because he has now begun to be a son (St. Cyprian, De Dom. orat. 9: PL 4, 525A). (CCC 2784) The free gift of adoption requires on our part continual conversion and new life. Praying to our Father should develop in us two fundamental dispositions: First, the desire to become like him: though created in his image, we are restored to his likeness by grace; and we must respond to this grace. We must remember . . . and know that when we call God "our Father" we ought to behave as sons of God (St. Cyprian, De Dom. orat. 11: PL 4:526B). You cannot call the God of all kindness your Father if you preserve a cruel and inhuman heart; for in this case you no longer have in you the marks of the heavenly Father's kindness (St. John Chrysostom, De orat Dom. 3: PG 51, 44). We must contemplate the beauty of the Father without ceasing and adorn our own souls accordingly (St. Gregory of Nyssa, De orat. Dom. 2: PG 44, 1148B).
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