Our Father

Christ is Risen!

We are blessed to have access to many very profitable Orthodox publications via the Internet.

For some time now, we've been a recipient of a daily e-mail service entitled "Orthodox Quote of the Day."  A young man named Adam publishes the service, and within it is a daily quote from one of the Holy Fathers, to boost us all spiritually.  His side purpose in publishing the information is to request donations for building a church at Holy Cross Monastery in West Virginia.  If you're moved to donate, you can do so here:

https://www.holycross.org/pages/new-church?ref=oqotd

In this day's mailing was a quote from Metropolitan Gregory (Postnikov) of St. Petersburg.  Please read carefully his instructive words to us:

[On the Lord's Prayer] if God is the Father of every human, then there is no doubt that every man, whoever he may be, is my brother, and every woman or girl is my sister; con­sequently I behaved very foolishly if I treated some people as strangers, and did not find them deserving of even a glance or word , or considered them the kind of people to whom I do not owe any love. I acted very foolishly, and I must correct myself, otherwise I must not dare to pray using this Lord's Prayer, and therefore, must not consider myself as belonging to the number of true children of the Father God.

Operative words for a sinful priest?

I acted very foolishly.

I must correct myself.

I dare not pray the Lord's Prayer until I correct myself.

Perhaps you're thinking the same thing.  It's fascinating that we have such words (the text of the Lord's Prayer) as part of the fabric of who we are as Christians, and yet we so very seldom pause to ponder exactly what we're saying, what we're praying, and the obvious implications (obvious - once pointed out to us by someone with such clear vision as Metropolitan Gregory) of how we're "mouthing" the words with our tongues, but not "meaning" the words with our hearts!  How many times in each day do we pray the Lord's Prayer, and still not have it change us???

Thank you, Adam, for your ministry.  Today is just one example of how your efforts impact those of us out here who read them daily!

In our Risen Lord,

FrB