More Rowan
I saw a post at Catholic Sensibility a day or two ago ... it was about a BBC piece - Rowan Williams, Reflections on the Lord's Prayer. Here is the beginning of it, below (not italicized) ...
*****
A prayer to set us free
The prayer as a whole is a prayer which I think tells us we stand in a very vulnerable place. We stand in the middle of a human world where God's will is not the first thing, the most automatic thing that people do. Where crisis faces us, where uncertainty is all around about tomorrow and where evil is powerfully at work.
To stand with dignity and freedom in a world like that, we need to know that God is Our Father. We need to know that whatever happens to us God is God, God's name and presence and power and word are holy and wonderful and that that glorious God has made us members of his family in a very intimate and direct way.
With that confidence, that kind of not childish dependence, we're actually free. We know that there is a relationship that nothing can break.
And again, you could turn to Saint Paul on that to the end of chapter eight of his Letter to the Romans: "I know that nothing, nothing can separate me from the love of God and Jesus Christ". And to begin that prayer "Our Father" is really to say what Saint Paul is saying. Here is an anchorage, you know the old hymn, here is an anchor that keeps the soul. Here is the anchorage that keeps us steady in this turbulent, difficult, nightmare world.
So the Lord's Prayer is a prayer that is utterly serious about the danger, the tragedy of the world.
*****
*****
A prayer to set us free
The prayer as a whole is a prayer which I think tells us we stand in a very vulnerable place. We stand in the middle of a human world where God's will is not the first thing, the most automatic thing that people do. Where crisis faces us, where uncertainty is all around about tomorrow and where evil is powerfully at work.
To stand with dignity and freedom in a world like that, we need to know that God is Our Father. We need to know that whatever happens to us God is God, God's name and presence and power and word are holy and wonderful and that that glorious God has made us members of his family in a very intimate and direct way.
With that confidence, that kind of not childish dependence, we're actually free. We know that there is a relationship that nothing can break.
And again, you could turn to Saint Paul on that to the end of chapter eight of his Letter to the Romans: "I know that nothing, nothing can separate me from the love of God and Jesus Christ". And to begin that prayer "Our Father" is really to say what Saint Paul is saying. Here is an anchorage, you know the old hymn, here is an anchor that keeps the soul. Here is the anchorage that keeps us steady in this turbulent, difficult, nightmare world.
So the Lord's Prayer is a prayer that is utterly serious about the danger, the tragedy of the world.
*****
posted by crystal | 1:40 AM
5 Comments:
With that confidence, that kind of not childish dependence, we're actually free. We know that there is a relationship that nothing can break.
I like that inversion -- that a prayer to 'Our Father' might not be about assuming a childish dependence.
Hi Rob. Yes, elsewhere in that writing, he says ...
And I think Jesus' teaching and the teaching of Saint Paul tell us that to depend on God completely as Father is not to be stuck in a childish helplessness. It's to be able to take risks, knowing that the Father will always be there to forgive and give you new beginnings.
I'm kind of fascinated by the "Father" stuff.
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