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604 love has no bounds, neither should
our prayer.52 Praying our Father opens to us the
dimensions of his love revealed in Christ:
praying with and for all who do not yet know him, so that
Christ may gather into one the children of
God.53 Gods care for all men and for the whole
of creation has inspired all the great practitioners of
prayer; it should extend our prayer to the full breadth of
love whenever we dare to say our Father.
2794 This biblical expression does not
mean a place (space), but a
Our Father is not elsewhere: he
transcends everything we can conceive of his holiness. It is
precisely because he is thriceholy that he is so close
to the humble and contrite heart.
Our Father who art in heaven is rightly
understood to mean that God is in
the hearts of the just, as in his holy temple. At the
same time, it means that those who pray should desire the
one they invoke to dwell in them.54
Heaven could also be those who bear the image of
the heavenly world, and in whom God dwells and tarries.55
2795 The symbol of the heavens refers us back to
the mystery of the covenant we are living when we pray to
our Father. He is in heaven, his dwelling place; the
Fathers house is our homeland. Sin has exiled us from
the land of the covenant,~6 but conversion of
then, heaven and earth are reconciled,~8 for
the Son alone descended from heaven and causes
us to ascend there with him, by his Cross, Resurrection and
Ascension.59 2796 When the Church
prays our Father who art in heaven, she
is professing that we are the People of God, already seated
with
in God;6° yet at the same time,
here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly
dwelling.6
[Christians] are in the flesh, but do not live
according to the flesh. They spend
their lives on earth, but are citizens of heaven.62 |
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