HALLOWED BE THY NAME

26 POPE FRANCIS HAS REMINDED US THAT AS CHRISTIANS, “WE SAY THAT WE HAVE A FATHER, BUT WE LIVE LIKE PEOPLE WHO DO NOT BELIEVE EITHER IN GOD OR IN MAN. WE LIVE WITHOUT FAITH; WE LIVE NOT IN LOVE BUT IN HATRED, IN COMPETITION, IN WAR; WE LIVE IN DOING EVIL.” HALLOWED BE THY NAME

BY MIKE DALEY

No more adjectives. Just nouns. If you think this advice was given by a crabby old grammarian, you’d be wrong. It was offered by Pope Francis.

Speaking to employees at the Vatican’s Communication Office, Pope Francis stated that one of the things they must not do “is advertising, mere advertising". To this he added two words that he is allergic to: 'authentic' and 'truly'. He gave the example: “’This is a Christian thing’: why say authentically Christian? It is Christian! The mere fact of the noun Christian, ‘I am of Christ’, is strong: it is an adjectival noun, yes, but it is a noun.”

Pope Francis observed: “We have fallen into the culture of adjectives and adverbs, and we have forgotten the strength of nouns. The communicator must make people understand the weight of the reality of nouns that reflect the reality of people. And this is a mission of communication: to communicate

with reality, without sweetening with adjectives and adverbs.”

As reflected in the Our Father, Jesus is a proponent of nouns without any of the flowery additions we think so necessary when addressing God. Unlike other Jewish and near Eastern prayers of his time, the Our Father is brief. It gets right to the person (God) and the point (petitions). Coming in at just around 50 words (Gospel of Matthew version), it doesn’t mince or waste words. Remarkably, considering the subject–our relationship with God–it contains little to no formality or ceremony.

THE POWER OF KNOWING A NAME Though the Our Father begins with a very intimate and familial name for God–Father–it quickly moves to a call to glorify, to sanctify, and to reverence God’s name. You get a sense in this movement of a relationship–God and us–which should be stronger, closer, more mutual and reciprocal, but isn’t. Interestingly, we often think of 'hallowing' God’s name in terms of violating it. Like when we curse. Ironically enough, mentioning this in the sacrament of reconciliation, some of us are given Our Fathers as a form of penance. In his own book on this prayer, Our Father: Reflections on the Lord’s Prayer, Pope Francis suggests: “’Hallowed be thy name’ means it should be hallowed, it should be revered and honored, in us, in me. Because many times we believers, we Christians, present a testimony that is sad, ugly. We say that we are Christians, we say that we have a father, but we live like–I do not want to say like animals, but we often live like people who do not believe either in God or in man. We live without faith; we live not in love but in hatred, in competition, in war; we live in doing evil.”

In the ancient world, unlike today, names were very important. To know someone’s name was to have power over that person. To

reveal your name to someone was to invite relationship and commitment with that person. Such is the revelatory event when God reveals God’s name–Yahweh, “I AM”–to Moses at the burning bush (Ex 3:14). Here God begins a covenant with a ragtag group of misfits, rejects, and slaves. The one thing God asks for is faithfulness.

“OUR” BECOMES “MY” As history and our lives attest to today, our response to God’s covenantal offer of relationship can be summed up in three words: 'Yes', 'No', and 'Maybe'. Depending on the day, it can be one, two, and/or all three of them. Fervent belief and practice meet defiant rejection followed by indecisive waffling. Makes you wonder what God was thinking to initiate such a relationship.

As Irish Dominican scripture scholar, Sr Celine Mangan, O.P. reminds us in Can We Still Call God “Father”: A Woman Looks at

27 the Lord’s Prayer Today: “But the temptation for the people of Israel, as for all of us, was to pay lip service to God’s name while going their own way in the ordinary events of life. At several different stages of their history they confined their service of God to external worship. God always broke out of such a straitjacket, often in a blazing fire of anger from the mouth of one of the prophets.”

Furthermore, even when we’re trying to hallow God’s name, chances are our fingers are crossed such that we hope to see ourselves elevated as well. Some of us may remember from 'back in the day' putting at the head of school papers 'AMDG'. It comes from the Latin phrase ad majorem dei gloriam which translates 'To the greater glory of God'. Pious paper heading or necessary reminder of who should be at the centre of our lives? What would happen if, in addition to our corporate or business brands, we put AMDG on our professional correspondence?

Call it Original Sin but as soon as we say “Our” Father something inside us quickly makes it “My” Father. What we want–social standing, economic gain, and good looks -God wants for us. Unfortunately, this distorts, exploits, and perverts who God is. In the absence of our commitment to faithfulness, to justice, comes the recognition that God must hallow God’s name. Even when we are not faithful to God’s covenant, God is. This is made clear when the Book of Ezekiel proclaims: “Therefore say to the house of Israel: Thus says the Lord GOD: Not for your sake do I act, house of Israel, but for the sake of my holy name, which you desecrated among the nations to which you came. But I will show the holiness of my great name, desecrated among the nations, in whose midst you desecrated it. Then the nations shall know that I am the LORD–oracle of the Lord GOD–when through you I show my holiness before their very eyes” (36:22-23). CO-OPERATORS IN GOD’S WORK Despite our shortcomings and sinfulness, we are still invited to become co-operators with God in bringing forth the kingdom. God doesn’t want to hallow God’s name for us, but with us. Whatever the time and age, this is no easy task. Bringing glad tidings to the poor, liberty to captives, sight to the blind, and freedom to the oppressed (Luke 4:18- 19), takes patience, energy, courage, and perspective. Rarely is it met with financial reward or gracious recognition.

Yet, that is our vocation as Christians. As Capuchin friar Michael Crosby reminds us in his book, The Prayer that Jesus Taught Us: “To make God’s name holy on earth as it is in heaven may take us into boardrooms and shareholder meetings as well as into the inner chambers of curias and councils. However, when we do, we may incur their ‘justice’ in forms of rejection and even being called ‘communist,’ unpatriotic, or disloyal to the Holy Father. However, such persecution was promised those who would be willing to promote justice in a world marked by injustice (see 5:10). Matthew’s Jesus even goes further to say that this persecution will be done in his name, or on his behalf (see 5:11).”

I’m starting to realise becoming more fully conscious of the Our Father comes with certain risks and challenges. Mike Daley is a teacher and writer from Cincinnati, Ohio, where he lives with his wife June and their three children. His latest book, co-edited with Diane Bergant, is Take and Read: Christian Writers Reflect on Life’s Most influential Books. To know someone’s name was to have power over that person. To reveal your name to someone was to invite relationship and commitment with that person