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2777 In the Roman liturgy, the
Eucharistic assembly is invited to pray to our heavenly
Father with filial boldness; the Eastern liturgies develop
and use similar expressions: ‘dare in all
confidence’, ‘make us worthy of...’ From the
burning bush Moses heard a voice saying to him, ‘Do not
come near; put off your shoes from your feet, for the place
on which you are standing is holy ground.~2ó Only
Jesus could cross that threshold of the divine holiness, for
‘when he had made purification for sins’, he
brought us into the Father’s presence: ‘Here am 1,
and the children God has given me.’27
Our awareness of our status as slaves would make us sink
into the ground and our earthly condition would dissolve
into dust, if the authority of our Father himself and
the Spirit of his Son had not impelled us to this cry...
‘Abba, Father!’. . . When would a mortal
dare call God ‘Father’, if
270 man’s innermost being were not animated by
power from on high?28 2778 This power
of the Spirit who introduces us to the Lord’s Prayer is
expressed in the liturgies of East and of West by the
beautiful, characteristically Christian expression:
parrhêsia,
boldness, the certainty of being loved.29
2779 Before we make our own this first
exclamation of the Lord’s Prayer, we must humbly
cleanse our hearts of certain false images drawn ‘from
this world’. Humility makes us recognize that
‘no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one
knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son
chooses to reveal him’, that is, ‘to little
children’.30 The purUi cation of our hearts has to
do with paternal or maternal images, stemming from our
personal and cultural history, and influencing our
relationship with 239 God. God our
Father transcends the categories of the created
world. To impose our own ideas in this area ‘upon
him’ would b~ to fabricate idols
to adore or pull down. To pray to the Father is t~
enter into his mystery as he is and as the Son has revealed
him to us.~ |
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