Our Father / Pater Noster

Here I would like to explain just one word of prayer which is dear to me above all others, because it seems to me to be the inner basis and the inner core of all possible prayers – I mean the address Our Father [Latin: Pater noster], from which all further prayer proceeds and is sustained.

Father – with this I express that someone is there who listens to me, never leaves me alone, is always present. With this I express that God, in all his infinite differences from me, is such that I can address him, yes, I can even speak with him informally. His greatness is not overwhelming; it does not throw me into insignificance and meaninglessness; certainly – I stand beneath him, as a child beneath a father, yet at the same time there is also an essential equality and similarity between him and me, yes, I am so important for him, related so closely to him, that I am correct when I call him “Father”. In this way my existence is not a fault, rather a grace; it is good to live, even if I don’t always realize it. I am wanted; not a child of happenstance and necessity, but rather of will and freedom. That is precisely why I’m needed; there is a purpose for me which is intended only for me; there is an idea of me which I can seek and find and fulfil. Father – that means that I do not exist in an arbitrariness which only appears as freedom, that is in reality a surrender to indifference, the eternal return of an indifferent void. […] This love which wants me is not an indifferent tolerance; it puts me under the measure of truth before which I can fail. But this gravity which challenges me, which becomes difficult for me, is only one more certainty that I am not insignificant evolutionary material, but rather am needed and loved. When growing up through life becomes unbearably difficult, when I want to cry out like Job, like those praying the Psalms […] – then I can carry this cry into the word Father, and slowly the cry becomes a word again, the rebellion becomes trust, because from the Father it becomes apparent that my being challenged, yes, my apparent torment is part of the greater love to which I owe myself.

Another thing becomes clear to me with the word Father: that I am not of myself, that I am a child. Initially, I want to rebel against this, as the prodigal son did. I want to be mature, “emancipated”, my own master. But then I ask myself: What is the alternative for me, for mankind in general, if there is no longer a father, if I have finally left childhood behind me? Have I really grown? Really free? Or have I not abolished the principle of freedom with my father? All that remains is the mighty and cruel machinery of the universe, in which life is an “obscene aberration of carbon,” as Friedrich Dürrenmatt put it. At any rate then, I'm alone in the dark, yes, in the dirt, as Beckett says. No, only if there is the principle of freedom, someone who loves and whose love has power, then am I free too. And so, in the end, there is nothing left than to turn back like the prodigal son, to have the humility to say “Father”, and to walk towards freedom, whilst accepting my truth. And then my gaze falls on the one who knew himself as a child, as a son, all his life and who is just as consubstantial with God himself: Jesus Christ. When I say "Father," I speak with him, and in speaking with him, he takes me into his life, so that I become a son with him, belong with him in God’s nature. […]

In this way, the word “Father” [Latin: Pater] automatically flows into the word “our” [Latin: noster]. I cannot say “Father” to God alone. How could I dare to? I can only do it because it was said by him before me, he who could do it, he who was allowed to do it. I can do it, because he invites me to speak with him like that. But when I speak with him, I am also with all those whom he wanted to make his siblings, my siblings. When I say “Father”, I have to accept the We of his children. But the reverse is also true: When I say “Father”, I know that I stand within the community of all of God's children and that they are all with me. Thus, talking to God doesn't lead me away from the responsibility for the earth and for mankind, it gives it back to me anew. From the light of prayer, I can dare to face it.