On the Lord’s Prayer 1 part 2/4

For it is not in the nature of him who is essentially good to become the father of an evil disposition, nor of the Holy One to become father of one defiled in life, nor of the Unchangeable One to become father of one subject to change, nor of the Father of life to become father of one deadened by sin, nor of the pure and undefiled One to become father of those behaving shamefully in the passions of dishonor, nor of the Benefactor to become father of the covetous, nor at all of him who is contemplated in every good to become father of those found in any evil.

For if someone, looking upon himself as still in need of purification, and recognizing his own wretched conscience to be full of stains and evil scars, before being cleansed of such evils, should adopt himself into kinship with God and say, "Father" — the unjust to the Just, the impure to the Pure — the words would be sheer insolence and abuse, if indeed he should call God the father of his own wretchedness.

For the term "father" signifies the cause of that which has its existence from him.

Therefore, if one wretched in conscience calls God his father, he will be accusing him of nothing other than being the originator and cause of his own evils.

But opposite things have kinship, in every case, only with things of their own kind.

"For a good tree cannot bear evil fruit."

If, therefore, someone, being "heavy of heart," as Scripture says, and seeking falsehood, presumes to utter the words of prayer, let him know that such a one does not call upon the heavenly Father, but the one from below, who is himself a liar and becomes the father of the lie constituted in each person — that one is sin, and the father of sin.

Likewise, on the contrary, those bright in conscience are called sons of light and of day, and others are called sons of power, those who have strengthened themselves toward the divine might.

Whenever, then, the Lord teaches us to call God "Father" in prayer, it seems to me he is doing nothing other than legislating for us a lofty and exalted life.

For the Truth surely does not teach us to lie, so as to say what we are not and to name what we are not by nature; but, in calling the incorruptible and just and good One our Father, we are to verify by our life this close kinship.

You see how much preparation we need, what kind of life, how great and what sort of earnestness, so that our conscience, once raised to this measure of boldness, might at last dare to say to God, "Father."

For if you were to fix your gaze on riches, if you were occupied with the deceit of this life, or were seeking after glory from men, or were enslaved to the more passionate of the desires, and then were to take this prayer upon your lips, what do you think one who looks upon your life and hears your prayer would say? For I myself seem to hear certain words of this sort, as though God were saying to such a one: "You call me Father — you who are corrupted by this life — the Father of incorruption? Why do you defile the undefiled name with your polluted voice? Why do you speak falsely of the word? Why do you insult the unstained nature? If you were truly my child, your life too would surely have to bear the marks of my goods."

I do not recognize the image of my own nature in you;

the marks in you are of the opposite kind.

What fellowship has light with darkness? What kinship has life with death? What affinity has the one pure in nature with the impure? Great is the distance between the benefactor and the covetous man.

Irreconcilable is the opposition between the merciful and the harsh.

The evils in you have another father.

For my offspring are adorned with their father's goods;

the merciful is the child of the merciful, and the pure the child of the pure; he who is a stranger to corruption is the child of the incorruptible one; and, in a word, the good is from the good, and the just from the just.

But as for you, I know not whence you are.

It is dangerous, then, before one's life has been purified, to venture upon this prayer and to name God one's own Father.

But let us listen again to the words of the prayer, in case through more continual repetition some understanding of its hidden meaning might come to us.

"Our Father who art in the heavens."

That it is necessary to make God one's own kin by a life of virtue has been examined by us to some extent in the preceding discourse;

for these words bring to our remembrance both the homeland from which we have fallen, and the nobility of birth from which we have been cast out.

For indeed, in the parable concerning the young man, the narrative shows forth the wretchedness of humanity in one who departed from his father's hearth and deserted to a life among swine, recounting in story form his departure and his profligacy; and it does not bring him back to his original good fortune until he has taken in a sense of his present calamity, and has come to himself, and has rehearsed the words of repentance.

Now these things corresponded in a certain way to the words of the prayer:

for there he says, "Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you;"

showing that heaven is his homeland, against which he transgressed by forsaking it;

and the ring placed upon his hand, through the engraving upon its bezel, signifies the restoration of the image;

and his feet also are made secure with sandals, lest, approaching the serpent's head with a bare heel, he should fall victim to its bite.

Just as, then, in that account, the young man's return to his father's hearth became the occasion of the father's loving-kindness toward him (and this hearth was heaven, against which he says he had transgressed toward the father), so also here, it seems to me, the Lord, in teaching us to call upon the Father who is in the heavens, is causing you to remember your good homeland, so that, having produced in you a more ardent longing for what is good, he might set you upon the road that leads back once more to your homeland.

But the road that leads human nature up to heaven is none other than flight and separation from earthly evils;

and the conception of the flight from evils seems to me to be none other than likeness to God.

One becomes like God by becoming just, and holy, and good, and such things as these;

and if anyone, so far as is possible, should clearly imprint the marks of these virtues within himself, he will migrate, without toil and as it were spontaneously, from earthly life to the heavenly region.

For the distance between the divine and the human is not a distance of place, such that we should need some device or contrivance to transport this heavy, weighty, and earthy little body of flesh into an incorporeal and intellectual mode of life; rather, since virtue is intelligibly separated from evil, this lies solely within the free choice of the human being — toward whatever a man inclines with his desire, in that very thing he is.

Since, then, no toil at all is required to choose the good, and upon choosing, the attaining of what one has chosen follows, it is possible for you to be in heaven at once, having received God into your understanding.

For if, as the Preacher says, God is in heaven above, and you, according to the prophet, have cleaved fast to God, it is altogether necessary that the one joined to God should be there where God is.

In commanding, then, that in prayer one should call God one's own Father, he commands nothing other than that you should become like the heavenly Father in a manner of life befitting God, just as elsewhere he enjoins the same thing more plainly, saying, "Become perfect, as your heavenly Father also is perfect."

If, then, we have grasped the meaning of such a prayer, it would be time to prepare our own souls, so that we might at last have the courage to take up these words upon our lips and say with boldness, "Our Father who art in the heavens."

For just as the marks of likeness to God are plain, by which one may become a child of God (for "as many as received him," it says, "he gave them authority to become children of God" —

and one receives God within himself when he has taken up perfection in what is good) — so likewise there are certain marks proper to the wicked character, in which whoever is found cannot be a son of God, since he bears the image of the opposite nature.

Do you wish to know the peculiar marks of the wicked character? Envy, hatred, slander, arrogance, covetousness, passionate desire, the sickness that is the mania for glory — these and things like these are what mark the form of the opposite nature.

But this father is not the heavenly one, but the one beneath the earth;

therefore the prayer of the wicked man, so long as he remains in wickedness, becomes an invocation of the devil; but the voice of the one who has departed from wickedness and lives in goodness will call upon the good Father.

When, then, we come near to God, let us first examine our life, whether we bear in ourselves anything worthy of divine kinship, and only then let us dare to speak such a word;

for he who commanded us to say "Father" did not permit us to speak a lie.

Therefore the one who has ordered his life worthily of divine nobility looks rightly toward the heavenly city, naming the King of the heavens his Father, and naming the heavenly blessedness his own homeland.

To what end does the aim of this counsel lead — "to mind the things above"? That where God is, there one should lay the foundations of one's own dwelling, there deposit one's treasures, there transfer one's own heart;

for "where the treasure is, there will the heart be also;"

to look continually toward the beauty of the Father, and by that beauty to adorn one's own soul.

"There is no respect of persons with God," says Scripture.

Let such filth also be far from your own form.

The divine is pure of envy, and of every stain of passion;

let not such passions mark you either — not envy, not arrogance, not any other of the things that defile the God-like beauty.

If you are such a one, take courage to call upon God with your own voice, and to name the Master of all your own Father.

He will look upon you with a father's eyes, he will clothe you with the divine robe, he will adorn you with the ring, he will fit your feet with the sandals of the gospel for the journey above, he will restore you to your heavenly homeland, in Christ Jesus our Lord, to whom be glory and dominion for ever and ever.

HOMILY 3. "Hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come." The Law, which holds the shadow of the good things to come, and which by certain typological riddles proclaims the truth beforehand, whenever it leads the priest, who is about to pray to God, into the inner sanctuary, first purifies the one entering by certain purifications and sprinklings; then, having adorned him with the priestly robe splendidly wrought with gold and purple and the other hues of dye, and having placed upon his breast the breast-covering mitre, and having fastened the bells of the fringes together with the pomegranates, and having above bound the ephod tight at the shoulder-pieces, and having adorned his head with the diadem, and having poured the oil lavishly upon his hair — thus it leads him forward to the inner sanctuary, to perform the unspeakable sacred rites.

But the spiritual lawgiver, our Lord Jesus Christ, stripping the Law of its bodily coverings and bringing the riddles of the types into the open, first does not set apart one man alone out of all to bring into converse with God, but grants this dignity equally to all, offering the grace of priesthood in common to those who desire it; then he does not embellish the beauty of the priest with an alien ornament devised from some dye and elaborate weaving, but clothes him with an adornment proper and connatural to him, arraying him, in place of the many-colored purple robe, with the graces of the virtues; and he adorns the breast too, not with earthly gold, but by beautifying the beauty of the heart with an unblemished and pure conscience; and into this mitre he sets also the gleams of precious stones —

and these are the radiances of the holy commandments, as it seems to the apostle.

But also by the drawers, that part of the body for which such a form of garment is an adornment is made secure;

and you are certainly not unaware that the garment of self-control is the adornment of that part.

Having fastened, then, to these fringes, in place of the bell, the well-sounding word of faith; in place of the pomegranate, the hidden preparation of the hope to come, which is veiled by a more austere life; and in place of the floral ornaments, the fair-flowering grace of paradise — thus he leads him forward to the inner and innermost sanctuary of the temple.

But this inner sanctuary is not a lifeless thing, nor made by hands, but the hidden inner chamber of our heart, if indeed it is truly inaccessible to wickedness and untrodden by evil thoughts.

He adorns the head with a heavenly mindset, not stamping the impression of letters upon a golden plate, but imprinting God himself upon the governing faculty of reason;

and he pours upon the hair the ointment that is compounded from within the soul itself through the virtues;

and through the mystical priestly rite he prepares him to bring to God as offering and sacrificial victim nothing other than himself.

For he who is thus led by the Lord to this priesthood, having put to death the mindset of the flesh by the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, thus propitiates God when he has come to be within the inner sanctuary, having performed the priestly office over himself through such a sacrifice, and having presented his own body a living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to God.

But someone will perhaps say that this is not the obvious sense of the prayer that lies before us for exposition, and that we are contriving such explanations, not fitting ones that properly suit the matter at hand.

Let him, then, again be reminded of the first words of the prayer.

For he who has so prepared himself that he can, with confidence, dare to name God his own Father — this man is precisely clothed with that robe which our discourse has described; he resounds with the bells, he blossoms with the pomegranates, he shines about the breast with the radiances of the commandments, and he bears upon his shoulders the patriarchs and the prophets, having transformed their virtues — in place of their names — into his own adornment; and he adorns his head with the crown of righteousness, and he has his hair drenched with the heavenly ointment, and he comes to be within the heavenly inner sanctuary, which is, to every profane thought, truly inaccessible and untrodden.

But how the one who has been consecrated as priest ought to be prepared, our discourse has to some extent shown in what has been examined; it remains, then, to consider the very petition which he commanded the one who has come within the inner sanctuary to bring to God;

for it does not seem to me that the words of the prayer, when set forth in a merely plain and bare sense, readily furnish us with their meaning.

"Hallowed," it says, "be thy name; thy kingdom come."

"What has this to do with my need?" someone might say — whether he is scourging himself through repentance for his sins, or is calling upon God as an ally that he might escape the sin that has mastery over him, always keeping before his eyes the one who wrestles against him through temptations.

From one quarter, fits of anger lead astray the reasoning of the settled mind; from another, the desires for improper things unnerve the vigor of the soul; from yet another, covetousness brings blindness upon the discerning eye of the heart; arrogance, pride, hatred, and the rest of the list of those arrayed against us — drawn up in a circle around us like a host of enemies — bring upon the soul the utmost danger;

for even if this were not said by me, is it then possible that the name of God should not be holy? "Thy kingdom come" —

has it not already embraced the whole creation above the world? If, then, the name of God is always holy, and nothing has escaped the power of God's dominion, but he has dominion over all things, and he who in all things is lacking in nothing and is perfect has no need of any addition with regard to holiness — what, then, does the prayer mean, "Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come"? Or perhaps the discourse teaches something of this sort under the form of the prayer: that human nature is weak with regard to the acquisition of any good thing, and that for this reason none of the things we strive after could come to be, unless the divine alliance brings the good to success in us. And the sum of all good things is that the name of God should be glorified in my life.

But the sense might become clearer to us from the contrary case.

I have heard somewhere holy Scripture condemning those who become the cause of blasphemy against God.

"For woe," it says, "to those on whose account my name is blasphemed among the nations."

Those who have not yet believed the word of truth look to the life of those who have received the faith of the mystery.

Whenever, then, the name of faith is present in some, but their life speaks against that name — either playing the idolater through covetousness, or behaving shamefully in drunkenness and revelry, and wallowing like a swine in the mire of profligacy — the charge is at once ready to hand among unbelievers, who do not turn the accusation upon the choice of those who have used their life badly, but speak as though it were the mystery itself that taught them to do such things;

for, they say, such-a-one who has been initiated into the divine mysteries would never have become a reviler, or a covetous man, or a robber, or any other such evil, were it not that sinning was lawful for them.

If, then, this has been understood, it would now be time to consider what is said from the opposite side;

for I think that, before all things, one ought to pray, and to make this the very heart of one's prayer: that the name of God not be blasphemed in my life, but rather be glorified and sanctified.

"In me, then," he says, "let the name of your lordship, which has been invoked upon me, be sanctified, that men may see the good works and glorify the Father who is in the heavens."

But who is so brutish and irrational that, seeing in those who have believed in God a pure life brought to perfection through virtue — free from every stain of sin, estranged from every suspicion of what is worse, radiant in self-control, dignified in prudence, bearing himself bravely against the assaults of the passions, in no way weakened by bodily pleasures, as far as possible removed from luxury, folly, and the vanity that comes with conceit, partaking of life only so far as is necessary, touching the earth with but the tip of his foot, not buried in this earthly existence by pleasurable enjoyments but rising above all the deceit that comes through the senses, and striving through the flesh toward the bodiless life, reckoning the one wealth to be the possession of virtue, the one nobility to be kinship with God, the one worth and dominion to be the mastery of himself and freedom from slavery to human passions, burdened by the prolongation of this material life, but hastening, like those who suffer hardship at sea, to arrive at the harbor of rest — who, seeing such a man, would not glorify the name that has been invoked upon such a life? Therefore the one who says in prayer, "Hallowed be your name in me," prays, in effect, this: "May I become, through the cooperation of your help, blameless, righteous, God-fearing, abstaining from every evil thing, speaking truth, working righteousness, walking in uprightness, minding the things above, looking beyond earthly things, shining in self-control, adorned with incorruption, made beautiful with wisdom and prudence, made radiant by angelic ways of life."

These things, and the like, are contained in this brief petition, which through prayer says to God: "Hallowed be your name";

for it is not otherwise possible for God to be glorified in a man, unless the virtue in him bears witness, by divine power, that God is the cause of good things.

The next clause prays that the kingdom of God may come.

Does it, then, now request that the King of the universe become king — he who always is what he is, who is unchangeable in the face of every change, who has nothing better to be found into which he might change? What, then, does the prayer intend, in calling forth the kingdom of God? The true account of this would be known to those to whom the Spirit of truth uncovers the hidden mysteries;

but as for us, we hold such an understanding concerning the saying.

One true authority and power is set over all things, having taken up the sovereignty of the universe, and reigning not by any violent or tyrannical dominion, having yoked its subjects to obedience by fears and compulsions.

For it is fitting that virtue be free from all fear and without a master, choosing the good by voluntary judgment;

and the sum of every good is to be set under the life-giving authority.

Since, then, human nature was led astray from the judgment of the good through deceit, and the inclination of our free choice turned to the opposite, and the life of men was overpowered by every kind of worse thing, death having mingled itself with our nature by countless paths (for every form of vice becomes, as it were, a path for death against us), since, then, we have been encompassed by such a tyranny, enslaved to death, as though to executioners or enemies, by the assaults of the passions, we rightly pray that the kingdom of God may come upon us;

for it is not otherwise possible to strip off the evil dominion of corruption, unless the life-giving power takes hold of the sovereignty over us.

If, then, we ask that the kingdom of God come upon us, we are, by the force of these words, entreating God for the following:

"May I be delivered from corruption, may I be freed from death, may I be released from the bonds of sin, may death no longer reign over me, may the tyranny of vice no longer be active against us, may the enemy no longer prevail over me, nor lead me captive through sin; but let your kingdom come upon me, that the passions now prevailing and reigning may withdraw from me — or rather, may pass over into non-being;"

"for as smoke vanishes, so shall they vanish, and as wax melts, so shall they perish."

For neither does smoke, once dispersed into the air, leave behind any trace of its own nature, nor is wax, once set in fire, found any longer, but it too, having fed the flame through itself, is changed into vapor and air, and the smoke passes away into complete disappearance.

Thus, if the kingdom of God comes upon us, all the things now prevailing shall be brought around to vanishing;

for darkness does not endure the presence of light, nor does disease stand its ground once health has taken hold, nor do the passions operate when dispassion is present; death is gone, corruption vanishes, when life reigns in us and incorruption holds sway.

Sweet is the voice by which we bring this petition directly before God:

"Let the opposing battle-line be dissolved, let the phalanx of the foreign foe disappear, let the war of the flesh against the spirit be abolished, let the body no longer be a stronghold for the enemy against the soul; let the royal power appear to me, the angelic hand, the thousands who set things aright, the myriad of those standing at the right hand, that the thousand of those who wage war may fall from the opposing side;"

great is the adversary, and terrible and unconquerable to those who are bereft of your alliance — but only so long as the one under attack stands alone;

but when your kingdom appears, pain and grief and sighing flee away, and in their place enter life and peace and exultation.

"May your Holy Spirit come upon us, and cleanse us."

What will those who speak brazenly against the Holy Spirit say to this? With what understanding do they refashion the dignity of the kingdom into the lowliness of servitude? For what Luke calls the Holy Spirit, this Matthew has named the kingdom.

How do they drag down the nature of the Spirit into subject creation, ranking it, instead of with the reigning nature, together with the nature that is reigned over? Creation is in servitude, and servitude is not kingship.

But surely the Holy Spirit is a kingdom;

and if it is a kingdom, it certainly reigns, and is not reigned over;

and if it is not reigned over, then it is not a creature either;

for to be in servitude is proper to creation.

If, then, the Spirit reigns, how do those who have not yet learned to pray count it among the servile nature — those who do not know who it is that cleanses what has been defiled, who it is that has taken up the sovereignty of the kingdom? "May your Holy Spirit come," it says, "and cleanse us."

Therefore the cleansing of sin is the proper and distinctive power and activity of the Holy Spirit;

for surely what is pure and unstained has no need of one who cleanses.

But moreover the apostle bears witness to this very same thing concerning the Only-begotten as well.

"For having made," he says, "purification for our sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty of the Father."

The work, then, of each is one and the same — of the Spirit who cleanses sin, and of him who has made the purification.

But of those whose activity is one, their power also is certainly the same;

for every activity is the accomplishment of a power.

If, then, both activity and power are one, how is it possible to conceive of a difference of nature in things in which we find no difference at all with respect to power and activity? For just as, in the properties of fire, when the two — the illuminating and the burning — are equal and alike, it is not possible to suppose that there is any variation in the underlying substance, so no one in his right mind, having been taught from divine Scripture that the activity of the Son and the Spirit is one, could be led to suspect any difference of nature.

But indeed it has already been demonstrated, in the opinions of those who hold right belief, that the nature of the Father and the Son is the same;

for it is not possible for things of different kind to be named together by the appellation "God."

For just as the son of a carpenter is not called a "bench," nor would any sensible person say that a builder "begot" a house, but rather by the appellation "son" and "father" what is joined together according to nature is signified — it is altogether necessary that, when two things stand in proper relation to one, they should not stand in a different relation to one another.

So then, if the Son is united to the Father according to nature, and the Holy Spirit has been shown, through the identity of their activities, not to be alien to the nature of the Son, it follows that the nature of the Holy Trinity has been demonstrated to be one — without the distinctive property observed in each of the hypostases being confused, and without the distinguishing marks being interchanged with one another, so that the mark of the Father's hypostasis should be transferred to the Son or the Spirit, or that of the Son in turn be applied to either of the other two, or the property of the Spirit be made to appear in the Father and the Son.

But within the commonality of nature, the distinction of what is peculiar to each is beheld as incommunicable.

It is proper to the Father not to be from a cause.

This is not to be seen in the case of the Son and the Spirit;

for the Son came forth from the Father, as Scripture says, and the Spirit proceeds from God and from the Father.

But just as being without cause, which belongs to the Father alone, cannot be applied to the Son and the Spirit, so conversely, being from a cause — which is proper to the Son and the Spirit — is by its very nature not to be observed in the Father.