Bishop Robert Barron wrote this weekend on the language we use to speak to Christ in our prayers.
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done…” and we pray, “Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.” Again, I realize that to our ears, this language sounds less rather than more intimate, but it is in fact meant to convey the same easy familiarity with the Father and the Blessed Mother that Catherine of Siena enjoyed with Christ. Then there is the Bible. The Scriptures obviously present God as overwhelming, transcendent, uncontrollable, inscrutable, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, but they insist that this sublime and frightening power is a person who deigns to speak to us, to guide us, and to invite us into his life. They even make bold to speak of the awesome God “pitching his tent among us,” becoming one of us, taking to himself our frail humanity. And this implies that we can speak to God as we speak to an intimate colleague. Conversing with his disciples the night before he died, Jesus said, “I no longer call you slaves, but friends,” and in making that utterance, he turned all of religious philosophy and mysticism on its head.
With this in mind we would like to ask.
