Lessons From This Invocation

St. Cyprian of Carthage. And in calling God Father, we must remember and know, most beloved brothers, that we ought also to conduct ourselves as sons of God, so that as we ourselves rejoice in God the Father, so also He may rejoice in us. Let us abide as the temple of God, so that it may be evident that God dwells in us. Let not our deeds be unworthy of the Spirit: having begun to be heavenly and spiritual, let us think and do only what is spiritual and heavenly, keeping in mind what God has said: “for I will honor those who honor Me, but those who despise Me will be disgraced” (1 Sam. 2:30)—and what the blessed Apostle has written in his Epistle: “and you are not your own? For you were bought with a great price. Therefore glorify God in your bodies” (1 Cor. 6:19–20).

St. Gregory of Nyssa. What kind of soul is needed by one who pronounces the word “Father”? How great a boldness is required? What kind of conscience must one have, so that—having come to know God as much as possible and having understood that the divine nature is goodness, holiness, joy, power, glory, purity, and all else of this kind that the mind conceives concerning the divine nature—one might then dare to utter this word and name that Being one’s own Father? Clearly, if someone has any measure of reason and does not perceive in himself the same qualities that are in God, he will not dare to address Him with this word and say: “Father!” For it is unnatural for the Good by nature to be the father of one who is evil in deeds, for the Holy to be the father of one who is defiled in life, for the Father of life to be the father of one who has been slain by sin, for the Pure to be the father of those who have dishonored themselves through shameful passions. If someone, seeing that he still has need of cleansing and recognizing his sinful conscience as full of filth, includes himself among God’s kin before being cleansed of such vices—and, unrighteous to the Righteous, impure to the Pure, says “Father”—then this utterance will be nothing but an insult and a blasphemy. Therefore, when the Lord teaches us in prayer to call God Father, He seems to me to be doing nothing other than establishing a sublime mode of life that stands above all else; for truth teaches us not to lie, not to say of ourselves what is not in us, not to name ourselves what we have not been, but rather, in calling the Righteous and Good One our Father, to justify this kinship by our life. Do you see, then, what kind of life we need in order to have the boldness to say to God: Father? For if you love money, are preoccupied with the allure of worldly life, pursue human glory, serve above all your passionate desires, and yet take such a prayer into your mouth—what, do you think, will He say who sees your life and hears your prayer? These are the words I seem to hear God Himself speaking to such a person: “And you, corrupt in life, call the Father of incorruption your own father? Why do you defile a pure name with impure lips? Why do you use this word falsely? If you are My child, your life must bear the marks of My own nature. I do not recognize in you the image of My nature; your features are the opposite. Another father is the source of your evil qualities. My offspring are adorned with good paternal qualities: the son of the merciful is merciful, of the pure—pure, of the incorruptible—free from corruption, of the good—good, of the righteous—just. But you I do not know, where you come from.” Therefore, in prescribing in prayer to say that God is our Father, He commands nothing other than to resemble the heavenly Father through a virtuous life; as in another place He commands the same thing more plainly, saying: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). Just as the marks of likeness to God are evident, so also a wicked disposition has its own particular marks—and one who has them cannot be a son of God. These are: envy, hatred, slander, arrogance, covetousness, passionate desire, the sickness of vainglory—by such and similar features is the image of the adversary distinguished. Therefore, if one who has blackened his soul with such filth calls upon the Father, what father will hear him? Let such impurity be removed from your character. The Divinity has no share in envy or any other defilement—and let no such passions stain you either: neither envy, nor arrogance, nor anything else that mars the God-like beauty. If you become such, then boldly call upon God and name the Lord of all things your Father. He will look upon you with fatherly eyes, and, clothing you in a divine garment, adorning you with a ring, and furnishing your feet with the Gospel sandals for the journey upward, will restore you to your heavenly homeland.

St. John Chrysostom. You have not been taught to pronounce this word (“Our Father!”) in vain, but so that, revering the name of the Father as pronounced by your own tongue, you might imitate His goodness—as in another place He says: be like “your heavenly Father, for He commands His sun to rise over the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). Therefore, a person who has a disposition that is savage and inhuman cannot call the loving God his Father; for he does not have the qualities of goodness that belong to the heavenly Father, but has changed into the likeness of a beast and has forfeited the divine dignity. But one who is gentle and loving toward his neighbors and does not take revenge on those who sin against him, but repays offenses with good deeds, can call God Father without reproach. And notice the precision of the expression: how He enjoins mutual love upon us and binds all together with a disposition of friendship. He did not command us to say: “My Father, who is in the heavens,” but “Our Father, who is in the heavens,” so that, having been taught to name the common Father, we would show a brotherly disposition toward one another.

St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. By this invocation “Our Father!” we are taught:

1) that for all Christians there is “one Father”—God; consequently, they are brothers among themselves, as those who have one Father.

2) Christians, as spiritual brothers, ought to have love among themselves, to pray to God for one another, and as it were to send up a single voice from the heart to their heavenly Father: “Our Father!” “By this He teaches,” says St. John Chrysostom in his homily on this word, “to make prayer in common for the brotherhood. For He does not say: ‘My Father,’ but says: ‘Our Father’—to send up prayers on behalf of the common body, and everywhere to look not only to one’s own benefit, but also to that of one’s neighbor.”

3) When Christians are brothers in God, they all share one honor and glory. All, I say: masters and servants, the celebrated and the unknown, the rich and the poor, the distinguished and the simple—as brothers. And therefore they should not despise one another, since “they are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). “Thus,” says St. John Chrysostom, “He removes inequality from us and shows the great equality of the king with the beggar.”

4) How diligently they must guard themselves from sins, and more especially how they must resemble God in good conduct as sons resemble their father, if they wish to call upon Him and name Him Father without shame.

5) It is evident from this that an unrepentant Christian, until he has corrected and cleansed himself through true repentance, cannot call upon God with profit, still less name Him Father and recite this prayer. One must without fail abandon sins and fleshly lusts, repent, and depart from iniquity, according to the teaching of the Apostle: “Let everyone who names the name of the Lord depart from iniquity” (2 Tim. 2:19). For how can one say to Him: “Our Father,” while in one’s own conduct one resembles the beasts or the devil? For those who call God Father and pray: “Our Father”—must be children of God, and in children there must be qualities resembling their father. Therefore one must without fail, like the prodigal son, come to oneself, turn, and return to the Father, and before Him with humility acknowledge one’s sin: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before You and am no longer worthy to be called Your son” (Luke 15:17–21)—and henceforth not be separated from the Heavenly Father, but serve Him with a pure heart, and share in the company of His household, that is, of true Christians, and so together with them send up to Him the common cry: “Our Father!”

The Compiler (St. Theophan the Recluse). “Our Father!” What a sweet invocation! The name of Father is both warm and sobering. One who has a father feels himself sheltered under a mighty wing, completely safe and protected; he also feels that there is nothing he needs to worry about or trouble himself over—everything will be there: food, clothing, shelter—and all he need do is turn to his father when he wants something, and he will receive everything.

The same feelings belong to one who is able to recognize and feel God as his Father. As soon as the assurance arises in someone that God is his Father, those feelings that children ordinarily have toward their father will at once settle in his heart—he will feel himself dwelling in a safe home, in carefree contentment, and in firm hope that everything will be given to him that he asks for in a worthy manner.

Here, then, is where all the power lies—in rising to the feeling that God is our Father. But how is this done? By clarifying the relationships into which it has pleased God to place Himself toward us. Reflect on what God is for us—and you will arrive at it.

First. God is our Father even by the natural order. For in creating man, He breathed into his face the breath of His own life. This breath—not fleshly but spiritual—does not cease to animate all people, and the traces of what is divine in it are indelible. Thus we are related to God by nature. This thought, though abstract, is not far from common feeling. And St. Paul did not hesitate to use it to instruct the Athenians, not merely calling to their memory the words of one of their own scholars: “we are His offspring”—but drawing from it a very telling conclusion: “being then the offspring of God” (Acts 17:28–29). Every person can arrive at such a conviction, or rather, revive it in himself, and then say in his heart: being of God’s offspring, you can and should feel yourself akin to God and have Him as your progenitor and the common Father of all.

Second. God is our Father in His providential care for us. For having created us, He preserves us, holds us in His right hand, leads us to our end, and surrounds us with every kind of care—more than a natural father. Therefore, come to the seeing and the feeling of God’s providential care—not just for all in general, but for you yourself—and then you will involuntarily cry out: “Our Father!”

But how is this to be attained? — By reflection. Be willing to reflect and to trace through all that God has done for the human race: how He placed us in paradise for blessedness; how He did not leave us in our fall, but devised a means for restoring what we had lost; how He then led us toward receiving our Restorer—first all alike, then separately, the Jews in one way and the other peoples in another; how at last that Restorer came and accomplished the work of restoration; how the work of appropriating that restoration then proceeded through our race; how in this God turned whole peoples and drew countless multitudes of individuals; how He turned our own people and preserves among them the restorative forces. If you wish to see the more particular workings of God’s care, trace the history of Abraham, Joseph, Job, David, Hezekiah, and other great men; look at our native history and its great men. In all of this you cannot fail to see that God thinks much and takes much care of us. Is He not then the Father of our race?

Then pass in reflection to yourself and trace all that has happened to you. You will see many deliverances by God from calamities and falls, and throughout your whole life a special and beneficent direction of it by the hand of God. God’s hidden blessings are far more numerous than the manifest ones. They are hidden because they are invisible at the time they are given and are perceived only afterward—and this with tangible clarity. Such an understanding and vision of God’s care—unseen at its proper time and discerned afterward—gives the conviction that even now God is providentially ordering our existence and well-being, though we cannot point to it with certainty. From this one cannot help but carry away the conviction that the eye of God is benevolently turned upon us, and His right hand holds, covers, and guides us, directing the course of our life along a good path. When this is felt, the heart itself will cry out irresistibly: “Our Father!”

Third. God is our Father by virtue of spiritual rebirth. In this respect one must marvel at how little—or no—feeling we Christians have that God is our Father. For Christians this feeling ought to be present in the heart of itself, without any special effort to produce it. For they have been born of God. The holy Evangelist John writes: “to those who received Him”—the Word of God, who came in the flesh into what was His own—“who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12–13). When were they born? When, after believing, they were baptized. For in baptism one is born of water and Spirit. And whoever is not born in this way cannot enter the realm of sonship to God, opened by the incarnate Son of God. Being thus the offspring of God in the Spirit, we should also feel this with our spirit and have God as our Father in the spirit—not arriving at this through reflection, but feeling it directly.

Why then is this feeling weak, or altogether absent? It must be because the state into which birth from God places us has either entirely evaporated and passed away, or has grown faint. This state is absent? Then so also is the feeling of being a child of God and of God’s fatherhood.

Consequently, what is to be done? The state of regeneration must be restored in its full force; then the feeling of God’s fatherhood will also be restored. But how?

Reflection alone is not enough here. Reflection on what we ought to be as a result of birth from God, and on how all of this came about, can serve only as an introduction. Begin by examining what you ought to be according to your spiritual birth, and compare it with what you actually are. You will see a great discrepancy between the two, which lies upon you as a heavy reproach before your Christian conscience, before God and His angels. Reproach draws condemnation; condemnation is followed by punishment. Deepen these thoughts—which show a true and immutable reality—and you will be stirred. Being stirred, you will take care to avoid the expected reckoning. From this will come repentance and a resolve to live henceforth in a manner worthy of birth from God. In the sacrament of repentance the grace of regeneration is restored, or its working on the heart is purified anew. Here the feeling of God’s fatherhood ought immediately to be born as well. And indeed it is, for all who truly repent. Having received or sensed forgiveness, they cannot help but feel the father’s embrace, as in the parable of the prodigal. But afterward this feeling passes. There lies ahead the labor in the father’s house—at first like that of a servant, then like that of a hired hand. One who by constancy in labor passes through these stages will at last enter into the rank of a son. Then the feeling of God’s fatherhood takes up its dwelling in the depths of his heart and abides there without departing.