Our Father: Homily for Thursday, June 18, 2026

The Our Father. Prayer is something that God does not something that we do. We simply place ourselves in the presence of God and we wait we wait to see what God will do with this gift that we have given God of our time.

Our Father

Today we get a lesson in prayer and we recognize how important it is to pray. But we also recognize that it really doesn’t depend on us. When we babble on like the pagans we think that if we just do more it will be better.

But such is not the case because prayer is something that God does not something that we do. We simply place ourselves in the presence of God and we wait we wait to see what God will do with this gift that we have given God of our time.

There are characteristics in the our father that are helpful to us to know really what prayer is about. The prayer begins with praise and we should know how important it is for us to praise God not so much because God needs to hear it but because we need to say it.

When we praise God we are reminding ourselves of who God is and who we are. We recognize that we need the Lord God; that without the Lord God we can do nothing as we said in the opening prayer.

Then we pray for something that I’m not sure that we fully realize the impact of. Thy kingdom come. The coming of the kingdom is ultimately going to be the second coming of Christ and the question becomes, “Do we look at this second coming of Christ with joy or fear? Do we prepare for the second coming of Christ by living in a certain way or checking off a certain number of boxes?”

Thy will be done. We hear time and again how God asks people to do something and they don’t want to do it. One of my favorite passages in that regard is the call of Moses who offers up all kinds of excuses as if God didn’t know all these things. He offers all kinds of excuses as to why he can’t do this until God gets impatient and just says go.

We ask for what we need. Give us this day our daily bread. Now of course this has a twofold reference. There is the bread we need to live, to eat, I mean physically. But there is also the daily bread we receive in the Eucharist which fulfills a far more important need in us, our spiritual health and well-being. Reminding ourselves how important it is to receive the best gift that Jesus gives us, the gift of himself.

But then the hardest part. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And in fact that’s so important Jesus mentions it twice. He mentions it in the prayer but then he kind of expounds on that one part. If you forgive others their transgressions your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.

Now of course, forgiveness is one of those things that has multiple levels or multiple types shall I say. Sometimes we’re called to forgive little things. That’s not so hard. There isn’t really a cause to us in doing that. At other times we are called to forgive in a way that’s a real struggle.

And forgiveness is not the same as condoning. When we forgive we are never saying that a wrong is right. What we are saying is that for human beings to thrive or rather what God is saying for human beings to thrive and to be open to the forgiveness of God we need to exercise the same in our life. Not because God is limited but because we need to stretch our hearts so that we can love more and more and more. And so today give special attention when you pray the Our Father.

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