Sometimes we feel as if our prayer is so weak, so anemic, so woefully inadequate, that it can't change anything, least of all us. That's why I suggest praying the Our Father - in the right way. The Our Father is a powerful, life-changing prayer because it is the prayer that Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary, has taught us. Bishop Robert Barron, in his Lenten Gospel Reflection for March 3, 2020, reminds us that Jesus taught us this prayer so that we can begin to pray to the Father sharing His intimacy with the Father - because His Father IS our Father also.
But, we can't want to just imitate Jesus the Christ when we pray the Our Father, as if He is simply another spiritual teacher. No, change in us can only happen if we begin our prayer by humbly taking a risk. By humbly risking asking God to make us one with Christ, so that we and Christ have one mind and one heart and one soul. All of us are afraid of "too much" intimacy at some level. But if we take the risk to ask to intimately live with one mind, heart, and soul with Christ, we will be living with the Source of all Love and Joy and New Life. If we are spiritually living with and IN CHRIST, St. Paul tells us that "Therefore IN CHRIST, you are a new creation!" (Second Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 17.)
The New Living Translation says "This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun!" Regardless of our own dysfunctions and neuroses and selfish sinfulness, if we ask for the spiritual gift to be one with Christ and IN CHRIST, we can begin to change into someone new! Someone new who is healed of past hurts. Someone spiritually gifted with new insights and understandings who will love and trust our Heavenly Father in the same way that Jesus the Christ did and does. Someone who can begin to break away from old, limiting, dysfunctional patterns and ways of living.
Bishop Barron says,
"We call God 'Father' when we pray. We call him Abba, Daddy. The same intimacy that Jesus has with his Abba he invites us to share. We don’t just imitate his prayer, the way we would imitate the prayer of any spiritual teacher; rather, we enter into the dynamics of his own being when we pray."
What a world of difference it makes in our lives when we can LET GO AND TRUST our Daddy, our Heavenly Father! Once we let down our guard and begin to really EXPERIENCE, LOVE, and KNOW our Heavenly Father as Jesus the Christ did and does, we are blown away with awe. This is the God Who made all creation, the entire universe we know, and who knows what else, and made US! Scripture tells us that we, our own persons, were in the mind of God from the Beginning! Regardless of how and why our earthly fathers created us, our Heavenly Father deliberately created the person we are out of unconditional love for us.
Such intimate knowledge of God our Creator makes our hearts bow down and we sing out "Holy! Holy! Holy! Lord God of Hosts! Heaven and Earth are filled with Your Glory!" Is it any wonder that the next line of the Our Father is "Hallowed, or holy, is Your Name." We praise God!
But there's another, deeper meaning to this line. Bishop Barron adds,
""Hallowed be thy name.' May your name be held holy. The first thing we ask is that we might honor him, that we might make him first in our lives, that he might be set apart from everything else. Job, family, money, success, the esteem of others, our friends—all of it is good, but none of it is to be held holy in this sense.
"If we get this wrong, we get everything else wrong. If we don’t hold his name holy above all, everything becomes profane."
Jesus the Christ was so intimately united, mind, heart, and soul, with His Heavenly Father, that to experience Him on earth was to experience His Heavenly Father. Jesus the Christ literally made our invisible Heavenly Father tangible - visible, touchable, hearable - in this world. Jesus the Christ was able to do this because He made His Father first, most important, sacred, holy, above all created things, in His life. Doing the Father's Will empowered Jesus to experience the holiness, the sacredness, of His family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, even strangers. Jesus taught us through His life on earth that everyone is created in the Image of God our Father, and therefore everyone in this world are brothers and sisters with the same Father. He did not use or abuse anyone, or lie to or oppress anyone. But, also, since His Father was first in His life, He had such inner freedom that He didn't let anyone else tell Him that He should put power, money, security, or success first. First, for Him, was doing the Will of His Father.
It's amazing how our lives can change when we risk, let go of, our fears of intimacy, and choose to become one mind, heart, and soul with Jesus the Christ; then through Him, and IN HIM, we become intimately united with His Father, Who is also our Father. Suddenly we don't "need" the approval of people, or even money, security, or success in the self-protective way that we used to. We have an inner peace and inner freedom that we didn't have before. Our self-worth and our mission on earth come directly from our Father Who loved us from the beginning and deliberately created us.
IN CHRIST, we can change our attitudes towards our family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, even all the people of the world. Suddenly, IN CHRIST, we don't judge any person or any nation as being inferior to us. We understand that all God's people are equal in the Father's sight. Our Father yearns for all His children to be cared for, saved, and to ultimately live with Him. And so for us, as for Christ, every person's hunger, nakedness, illness, or oppression, is the concern of God, and our concern. Any person we care for is not "our spiritual duty" or the "object of our charity," but literally our brother or sister.
Bitterness, vengeance, and hatred are not a part of Who God is and can't be part of who we are IN CHRIST. Listen to the Names of WHO God IS in Scripture and you discover that the Face of God the Father and the Face of Jesus, God's Son, shine with Justice, Mercy, Forgiveness, Compassion, and Peace. Do our faces shine with the same Divine light? IN CHRIST, we are empowered to spiritually LET GO of our grievances and let God work with His People, not us. We take the hard, unforgiving swords of the words we'd like to say and the "get them back" actions we'd like to do, and instead beat them into life-giving, compassionate words and actions that are ploughs capable of furrowing the hard ground of our enemies' hearts, making them ready for the divine seeds of God's Word. Why? Because God's Likeness is now imprinted on our hearts, minds, and souls, and we too yearn for the salvation of all people, even our worst enemies.
If your face, like the Face of Jesus the Christ, shines with the love, peace, acceptance, compassion, peace, mercy, and forgiveness of the Father's Face, you will begin to put an end to the negative habits or patterns in your family's history. You will no longer hold a grudge against family members who everyone else has cut off. You will no longer allow the family depression that you experience to lead you to self-medicate with alcohol, drugs, gambling, or food, because your body is a Temple of God's Holy Spirit. You will no longer be held hostage to other's hatreds of people who are of a different color, social class, religion, or sexual orientation.
Once you live IN CHRIST and pray IN CHRIST, You will have that priceless inner freedom that comes from knowing and experiencing that you are a beloved, priceless, child of God. This inner freedom will allow you to see your life and gifts as God sees them. This inner freedom will help you to see your family's values and restrictions newly through the mind, heart, and soul of Christ. His inner freedom will free you from all that is not of God in your family. His inner freedom will empower you to fully embrace all that is good and holy in your family, to embrace every member of your family, with God's flowing fountain of love.
Being IN CHRIST will empower you to reject the world's adulation of power and domination. It will prevent you from feeling driven to make tons of money out of greed or to climb the corporation ladder in order to be a success according to the world's standards. You will have the inner freedom that Jesus the Christ had to put His Father, His Father's Will, first in all things and all ways, and so you will make all your decisions according to the Light and Wisdom of God. Even if, as it always will for those who live IN CHRIST, it leads you to the Cross. Not everyone will agree with your Christian values. Not everyone will respect your decisions about how you intend to live your life, spend your money, choose your friends. You might be rejected. Christ was. But that is the price of attaining the Kingdom.
Yes, prayer changes things. First of all, real prayer changes YOU if you pray IN CHRIST, with your mind, heart, and soul united to Christ. IN CHRIST, you are a NEW creation, a NEW person. Once you live IN CHRIST, you begin to love, experience, and know His Father intimately so that you trust your Father with your very life - and death. If you endure the Winter of loneliness, misunderstanding, rejection, the death of your selfish ego, and physical death, you will experience the Spring of New Life through the treasured company of God's Saints on earth, and the Resurrection of your body, mind, heart, and soul in Heaven through intimate union with God, our Greatest Love.
Once you begin to pray, not only at Church, you will discover that your life can be a prayer all day long because you are choosing to live as Jesus the Christ lived, in union with the Father's Will and purposes. Sure it's a risk, if you want to leave your small, hard, shriveled heart, mind, and soul intact. But if you unite all of you with all of Christ, your vision of life and your life itself will expand dramatically, richly. God will work mightily in your life to change you, make you a new person, so that you can change things, even in your family. Pray the Our Father, the prayer that Jesus the Christ taught us. Pray it IN CHRIST and you will experience a radical, remarkable NEW way of being you!