Jesus teaches his disciples how to pray and through that prayer how to be in a relationship with God. The prayer recognizes who God is and the holiness of God’s name and God’s reign. It asks God to supply our daily needs, to forgive us and to protect us from evil. It also reminds us that we are called to be holy and merciful as well. It is the perfect prayer in that it encompasses the essence of our relationship with God.
Those who have studied the history of worship in the Church from the first century until the present day remind us that Christian worship began by reciting this prayer three times a day – in the morning and the evening and at our daily Eucharist. Still today, our morning prayer and our evening prayer and our daily celebration of the Eucharist include this particular prayer. It is the first prayer that is prayed after a person is baptized; if the neophyte is a baby, the prayer is offered by the parents and godparents. It is prayed during the administration of almost every sacrament of the Church – the only exception being the Sacrament of Penance. It is quite literally the skeleton upon which our rituals are composed.
Jesus very correctly tells his disciples that the spirit is more important than the words, and according to this spirit this prayer is a child’s invocation of its Father. Joachim Jeremias explains: “’Abba’ is a child’s word, used in everyday speech, an expression of courtesy. It would have seemed disrespectful, indeed unthinkable, to the sensitivities of Jesus’ contemporaries to address God with this familiar word. Jesus dares to use ‘Abba’ as a form of address to God because it expresses the heart of Jesus’ relationship to God. He spoke to God as a child to its father, confidently and securely and yet at the same time reverently and obediently.”
Even in the most hieratic prayers, even during the most solemn liturgies, we should always bear in mind that the most important title is this “Abba, Father,” which the Christian, as a child of heaven, speaks to his Father.
Fr. Lawrence Jagdfeld, O.F.M., Administrator