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89 pages

English

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It's the most well-known Christian prayer in the world, but do we truly understand its power and meaning? We regularly pray it. We learned it while we were still learning to speak. It's one of the most important prayers ever given to the human family.And yet, many of us take it for granted, missing its depth and breadth. But this is the Lord's Prayer. It's called by such a distinguished name because the Lord Jesus gave it to us after his apostles asked him how to pray. He taught them then with this prayer, and it teaches us still today. Thy Kingdom Come: Living the Lord's Prayer in Everyday Life is about diving into the familiar and yet unknown world of the Lord's Prayer. Within its pages you'll discover: How this prayer is a list of seven distinct petitions we ask of God,Why we "dare" to call God our Father, How fatherhood is not a human convention imposed on God but a divine name and identity, Why the beauty of heaven is a model for us on earth, How God's name, his kingdom, and his will are interconnected, Why we pray "this day" for our "daily" bread, Why "as we" are the most overlooked words of the prayer, How God seeks to protect and deliver us from the evil one. These and many other spiritual insights are given through the seven tenets of the Lord's Prayer. And Thy Kingdom Come is your helpful guide and practical resource to explore them all!

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Philosophie et théologie

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Publié par	TAN Books
Date de parution	27 avril 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781505115864
Langue	English

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T HY K INGDOM C OME
THY KINGDOM COME
Living the Lord’s Prayer in Everyday Life
Fr. Jeffrey Kirby, STD
TAN Books Gastonia, North Carolina
Thy Kingdom Come: Living the Lord’s Prayer in Everyday Life © 2019 Jeffrey Kirby
All rights reserved. With the exception of short excerpts used in critical review, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in any form whatsoever, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible—Second Catholic Edition (Ignatius Edition), copyright © 2006 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Excerpts from the English translation of the Catechism of the Catholic Church for use in the United States of America © 1994, United States Catholic Conference, Inc.—Libreria Editrice Vaticana. Used with permission.
Cover design by Caroline Green
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019957920
ISBN: 978-1-5051-1584-0
Published in the United States by
TAN Books
PO Box 269
Gastonia, NC 28053
www.TANBooks.com
Printed in the United States of America
To My Father, Alan Joseph Kirby, Jr.
Praise for Thy Kingdom Come …
Fr. Kirby offers solid and practical guidance for contemplating and living each of the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer. Along the way, he helps us to discover how to draw closer to God through the Beatitudes, virtues, gifts of the Spirit etc. His exciting “school of discipleship” is all about making deep connections. Highly recommended!
— S COTT H AHN , P H D Fr. Michael Scanlan Chair of Biblical Theology and the New Evangelization, Franciscan University of Steubenville
The “Our Father” is so ingrained in the minds of most Christians that we all too often recite it merely by rote. Thy Kingdom Come is a most welcome reminder of the worlds of meaning in every phrase of the prayer that Jesus taught us.
— M ARY A NN G LENDON Former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See
Clearly, Fr. Jeff Kirby has reflected deeply on the words of Lord’s Prayer. In this book, he shares his insights to help us experience more fully the love of the heart of our heavenly Father.
— F ATHER M ICHAEL G AITLEY , MIC Author of 33 Days to Merciful Love
C ONTENTS
Foreword
Preface
Introduction: The Tale of Two Fathers
The Salutation
The Holy Name
The Kingdom
God’s Will
Give Us
Forgive Us
Lead Us
Deliver Us
Conclusion: Our Decision
Spiritual Matrix
Bibliography
F OREWORD
The early Church writer Tertullian made the striking comment that the Lord’s Prayer “is truly the summary of the whole gospel.” And he went on to say, “In summaries of so few words, how many utterances of the prophets, the Gospels, the apostles—how many discourses, examples, parables of the Lord, are touched on! How many duties are simultaneously discharged!” In its explanation of this summary of the Gospel, Thy Kingdom Come provides us with rich fare, drawing out the words of the Our Father and demonstrating how the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Beatitudes, and the virtues unite around its petitions—and also how the individual petitions strengthen us against the vices and sins that threaten to dislodge the work of God within us.
The Our Father is a prayer. Father Kirby draws out for us here its riches as a teaching from the Lord. Well-known for his ability to unite vibrant and engaging teaching with a deep concern for building up the spiritual life, he provides in this latest work sustenance for our Christian lives through a wholesome diet of good teaching. This work not only feeds the mind but also draws out and strengthens the heart at the same time. Here we will find strong foundations for sustaining our response to the Lord’s invitation to us.
The Our Father offers us doctrine in the form of prayer. It provides us with the center and heart of what we can term a “dogmatic spirituality.” There are many spiritualities in the Church’s tradition—Franciscan, Dominican, Ignatian, Carmelite, and so on. Each one of these offers a distinct path, a distinct way of living out the call to holiness. However, underlying each of these paths and structuring them in different ways are the central truths of the faith that are the fundamental bedrock of our lives. The magnificent truths concerning the Blessed Trinity, concerning Jesus Christ, true God and true man, concerning our participation in the life of grace—it is from these that we live, and from which we draw our deepest springs of life. And these truths and the Christian way that flows from them is summed up for us in this prayer taught to us by Our Lord. Here we have the “quintessential” prayer of the whole Church (CCC 2776), the prayer common to all Christian paths and spiritualities, the prayer that sums up the Gospel.
This work by Father Kirby uses the same catechetical approach towards the Lord’s Prayer as is found in his recent book on the Beatitudes. As with that work, this new publication not only teaches but also explores the depth and practical application of what St. Thomas Aquinas described as “the most perfect of prayers.” The subtitle to Father Kirby’s work provides us with his key focus: “Living the Lord’s Prayer in Everyday Life.” The beautiful uniting of narrative and personal witness that we find here, together with an evident pastoral wisdom and a penetrating examination of conscience attached to each petition, enable us to see how the words of this prayer can truly “take flesh” in in our lives.
And throughout this overriding concern for the living of the prayer, Father Kirby never lets us forget that the growth of the kingdom of God in life is itself a thing unseen and secret. The source of its growth consists precisely in the relationship of prayer and in the love and service of God growing in our hearts. For each of us, he provides a reminder here of the priority that the Church has always accorded to prayer and to contemplation, where we find “a communion of love bearing Life for the multitude” (CCC 2719). While Father Kirby helps us to look outwards from prayer into life, he also helps us to remember that our outward gaze of love flows from the fact that the Father has first looked upon us with love in secret.
The Scottish poet Edwin Muir captures the essence of such a gaze, coming from the eyes of Love into ordinary life, beautifully in his poem Annunciation:
The angel and the girl are met….
See, they have come together, see,
While the destroying minutes flow,
Each reflects the other’s face
Till heaven in hers and earth in his
Shine steadily there …
Outside the window footsteps fall
Into the ordinary day
And with the sun along the wall
Pursue their unreturning way …
But through the endless afternoon
These neither speak nor movement make,
But stare into their deepening trance
As if their gaze would never break.
It is the power of just such a gaze, the gaze of the Father, that this most perfect of prayers gives to us if we are faithful to it, and which allows us to turn towards others in everyday life.
Petroc Willey STL, PhD
Director of the Office of Catechetics and the
Catechetical Institute
Franciscan University of Steubenville
P REFACE
New Awareness
Thank you for picking up this book!
Many of us know the words of the Lord’s Prayer, often learning them as we were still learning to speak. We assume we know what these words mean, but their depth can be taken for granted. This book is designed to get us beyond what we think we know and instead guide us through the beauty and wisdom of the prayer. It’s also meant to show us the practical dimensions and applications of the prayer.
“Our Father”
Some years ago, my brother traveled with me to a parish mission in Florida. When we arrived, the local parish leaders invited us out to dinner. We were happy to join them. The group was a happy bunch. The food was good, the conversation was pleasant, and there was an overall sense of welcome and joy.
At some point in the meal, one of the parish leaders asked my brother and me a question about our family. While attempting to answer her question, I said something like, “Well, our father was in the military….” I stopped and chuckled. The words our father were so close to the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer that they struck me and sounded comical. The wording was unique for me.
Normally, I would travel by myself or with an assistant who is not a family member. Or, if I was with my brother or sister, I would use the more colloquial “Dad.” Or, many times, I would use a singular pronoun, “my father,” with the presumption that it extended to one of my siblings. For all these reasons, I was surprised by my use of “our father.”
Later, as I thought about it, I realized that there are only two people on the entire planet with whom I could use that term—namely, my brother and my sister. We three are the children of one father. We are united by one father. And only with one another can we use the plural pronoun our . This reflection helped me grasp the closeness I have with my brother and sister because of my father. It helped me to feel even more loved and more united with my father, my siblings, and my family.
This brief story illustrates what the Lord Jesus says and offers to each of us. As he led the apostles in their tutorial on prayer, Jesus said, “Our Father.” He united himself to each of us as a true sibling. He draws familial bonds with us and reveals the Father to us. The Lord says to us, “Yes, he is our Father. I say this with you because we are the children of the same Father. What I am by nature, you are by adoption. We are united. We are family. We are given a kingdom and a way of life. Accept the Father’s love. Live in that love. Share his message. Spread this kingdom.”
Some Helpful Truths
For this reason, the Lord entrusted us with his prayer. The words of the prayer can teach and form our hearts to have the interior at