Thursday of the Eleventh Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 368

Our Father who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
thy Kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.


I love the full-throated enthusiasm of “I Know That My Redeemer Lives” and I sing it during the Mass with gusto. The melody is simple and catchy, one of those earworms that gets inside your head and persists for days.
But I also cringe just a bit:
He lives to bless me with His love,
He lives to plead for me above,
He lives my hungry soul to feed,
He lives to help in time of need.”

The song leans pretty far in the direction of self-centeredness. Today's gospel, the Lord’s Prayer rebalances our prayer as we recite its first three petitions. We – not I – declare our first priorities: thy name, thy kingdom, and thy will.
It’s a hard day when children learn their parents’ lives are not all about them, that their mother and father actually have separate existences with different interests, needs, and desires. But the child who never learns that hard lesson will remain forever a child.
Jesus lives to love and worship his Father. He can think of nothing more delightful than doing the will of his Father, which happens to include our salvation. While we thank God that he stoops to save us, we should not suppose our God lives to save us. Our glimpse of the mysterious Holy Trinity through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus tells us that he did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, and that he emptied himself to take on our mortal flesh. His obedience to the Father dislodged the privileges, pleasures, luxuries, securities, and authority of being the Only Begotten Son of God. He considered them so much rubbish!
But there is no suggestion that the Lord aspired to be human. No sooner was he human than he surrendered the pleasures and privileges of his human nature to die as the least, most despised of all humans.
Rather, the Holy Spirit teaches us to aspire to divinity. And in the imitation of Christ we do that by accepting our human nature with its lowly status. We want with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength that: 1) the Father's name -- a Name so holy we do not even speak it! -- is hallowed; 2) that God's kingdom will come; and that 3) God's will might be done. For ourselves we want nothing.

That's not hard to comprehend. In the past few months we have seen the word hero applied beyond our military personnel and Veterans to service providers of every sort. Some people, it's true, live only for themselves. They do not take risks for the sake of others. But heroes put the needs and welfare of others ahead of their own. Humanity cannot survive without these people.
They have answered the question, "What should I do with my life?" They give it for the sake others.
With heroes of every time and place, we pray, "Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven....