The fact that Christ and we become one, means that what applies to Christ applies to us, and that we can, in a way unknown to the rest of the world, call God our father, no longer by analogy, no longer in terms of anticipation or prophecy, but in terms of Christ. This has a direct bearing upon the Lord’s Prayer: on the one hand, the prayer can be used by anyone, because it is universal, it is the ladder of our ascent towards God, on the other hand, it is absolutely particular and exclusive: it is the prayer of those who are, in Christ, the sons of the eternal father, who can speak to him as sons.
When the prayer is envisaged in its universal meaning, it is safer to study and analyse it in terms of an ascent, but it is not the way in which Christ has given it to those who, in him and together with him, are the children of God, because for them it is no longer an ascent that is spoken of, it is a state, a situation; we· are, in the Church, the children of God, and these first words ‘Our Father’ establish the fact and make us take our stand where we belong. It is no good saying we are unworthy of this calling. We have accepted it, and it is ours. We may be the prodigal son and we will have to answer for it, but what is certain is that nothing can transform us back into that which we no longer are. When the prodigal son returned to his father, and was about to say: ‘I am no more worthy to be called thy son, make me as one of thy hired servants’ (Lk 15: 19), the father allowed him to pronounce the first words: ‘I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight and am no more worthy to be called thy son’, but there he stopped him. Yes, he is not worthy, but he is a son in spite of his unworthiness.
You cannot cease to be a member of your family, whatever you do, whether worthy or not. Whatever we are, whatever our life is, however unworthy we are to be called the sons of God, or to call God our father, we have no escape. That is where we stand. He is our father, and we are answerable for the relationship of sonship. We are created by him as his children and it is only by rejecting our birthright that we become prodigal sons. Imagine that the prodigal son did not come back, but settled and married in the strange land, the child born of this marriage would be organically related to the prodigal’s father. If he went back to his father’s native land he would be received as one of the family; if he did not go back he would be answerable for not returning and choosing to remain a stranger to his father’s family.
It is baptism which is the return of the children of many generations to the household of the father. And we baptize a child in the same spirit in which we cure a baby born with a disease. If later on he wrongly comes to think that it would have been more convenient to have kept his infirmity, to be of no use to society and to be free from the burden of social obligations, that is another matter. The Church, in baptising a child, heals it in order to make it a responsible member of the only real society.
Rejection of one’s baptism amounts to the rejection of an act of healing. In baptism we not only become healthy but we become organically members of the body of Christ.
At that point, calling God ‘Our Father’ we have come to Zion, to the top of the mount, and at the top of the mount we find the Father, divine love, the revelation of the Trinity; and just without the walls the small hill which we call Calvary, with history and eternity blending there in this vision. From there we can turn round and look back. This is where the Christian should begin his Christian life, having fulfilled this ascent, and should begin to say the Lord’s Prayer in the order in which the Lord gives it to us as the prayer of the only begotten Son, the prayer of the Church, the prayer of each of us in our togetherness with all, as a person who is a son within the Son. And it is only then that we can go down from the top of the mountain, step by step, to meet those who are still on their way or those who have not yet begun their way.
~Archbishop Anthony Bloom, Living Prayer
