30 July 1989
Campino Verde, Brazil

My dear Friends in Jesus Christ,

When the late Pope Paul VI lay dying on an August evening in 1978, he prayed over and over again the opening words of that prayer which Jesus taught His disciples: "Our Father, Who art in heaven; Our Father, Who art in heaven." It seems that he did not wish to pray the rest of the prayer, because he found so much theology, so much comfort and so much meaning in just those few opening words. It was the same with St. Teresa of Avila in her lifetime. Often she could not finish the Our Father because she, too, found that the first few words said everything.

What a rich word is the word, father. It brings to our minds what our own human fathers have done for us. When you say father, you think of one who provides, and the great provider for us all is God, Our Father, Who is in heaven. We can see many things wrong with the world, but it is also good to think of what is right in the world. Who made the sun to rise this morning? God, Our Father, Who is in heaven. Who is giving us the air we breathe at this moment? God, Our Father, Who is in heaven. Who gives us the fruits of the earth and the rains to soften the soil? God, Our Father, Who is in heaven. Who feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field? God, Our Father, Who is in heaven. We could continue making a long list of the good and beautiful things we can see with our eyes or hear with our ears in this world of ours, and all of them have come from God, Our Father, Who is in heaven.

Who has told us all this? Jesus Christ Who is Himself also God. There are people who say that the most important truth that Jesus Christ has taught us in the Gospels is that we have a Father in heaven and He is God. It is Jesus Christ Who taught us to call God our Father. The word He used when He was praying at that most difficult moment in His life, in the Garden of Gethsemane, was an intimate tender word that a child would use to his father, Abba. Our human fathers, whom we have known on earth, are very faint shadows of that loving, caring and providing Father, Who is in heaven and Who night and day watches over us as a father does his child.

When we pray the Our Father, Jesus has taught us to think of God first before ourselves. "May Your name be praised, may Your Kingdom come, may Your Will be done." It is only then that we present our own needs to Our Father, Who is in heaven. First we ask for bread. "Give us this day our daily bread." We ask for bread; we do not ask for luxuries. We ask for bread for today, because Jesus has reminded us, "Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Let the day's own trouble be sufficient for the day." (Mt 6:34). When we ask Our Father in heaven for bread, we cannot but think also of the bread of the Eucharist. May Our Father in heaven make us worthy to eat of the Bread of Heaven on earth, so that we may be worthy to take our place at God's great banquet table in heaven. We ask for pardon. We need it. Do not convince yourself that you do no wrong and hence have no need of God's pardon. Do not allow others to convince you that sin does not exist, or that God does not mind when we do wrong. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation and often throughout the day, we need to pray the prayer of St. Peter who fell down at Jesus' knees in the boat saying, "Depart from me for I am a sinful man, O Lord." (Lk 5:8). At the end of the Our Father we ask Our Father in heaven to free us from the danger of being unfaithful. Each of us can be unfaithful in different ways: married people, priests, Sisters, young people, all of us can be unfaithful to the teaching of the Church of Jesus Christ. We know that Jesus Christ prayed before He died that His friends would not be unfaithful. Infidelity can have serious consequences for us in this life and in the next. If not, why did Jesus Christ place the request to deliver us from the temptation to be unfaithful, in the prayer which He so kindly taught us?

The Gospel of today tells us that it was the example of Jesus praying that made His disciples want to pray like Him. In their lifetimes they would have come to the conclusion that St. Vincent de Paul reached in his lifetime: "If we persevere in our vocation, it is thanks to prayer. If we have success in our tasks, it is thanks to prayer. If we do not fall into sin, it is thanks to prayer. If we remain in charity and save our souls, all this is thanks to God and to prayer." (Coste XI, Fr. ed., p. 407).