Editing Fast Fridays: 30 Minutes for God (section)

=== Our Father ===

* contemplating "Our Father"
We discussed how, when Jesus gave us the "Our Father" prayer he was changing our relationship to God, instructing us that we, collectively, have a Father in Heaven, and we are his children if we so choose.

To the ancient world, the notion that God was "the Father" was shocking. The "Desert Fathers and Mothers" were early Christians who escaped worldly attentions to live in isolated prayer in the lands outside of Alexandria, Egypt, and in the Holy Lands. One Desert Mother was so firmly moved by the notion of "Our Father," that should would spend three days sobbing in gratitude and wonder over those two words -- and she could never make it through the Our Father prayer!

Btw, here for the "[[Our Father|Seven petitions]]" in the Our Father prayer. (Protestants refer to it as "Lord's Prayer": it is the same.)