“And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil. Amen. For if you will forgive men their offences, your heavenly Father will forgive you also your offences. But if you will not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you your offences.”
Every day, you cannot help but at the very least put scuffs on the divine image in you, “for a just man shall fall seven times and shall rise again” (Proverbs 24:16). Therefore, turning to your heavenly Father with love on a frequent basis, asking for His forgiveness is a necessary affair. But o how beautiful this is! For though you fail, fall, and flounder, how many reminders of His infinite love can you receive by always turning back to Him, never tiring of this prayer, and being welcomed with joy and tenderness: “And when he hath found [the lost sheep], lay it upon his shoulders, rejoicing” (Luke 15:5). Because you can always go to your Father and receive tenderness, forgiveness, and love, Jesus calls you to walk after this Father as a child joyfully leaping in the footsteps of their own father with the same endless merciful love: “’Lord, how often shall my brother offend against me, and I forgive him? Till seven times?’ Jesus saith to him: ‘I say not to thee till seven times, but till seventy times seven times’” (Matthew 18:22). Those that sin against you, those that are difficult to deal with, those whose imperfections are clear as day to you are to be loved, cherished, and dealt with compassionately, just as your Father loves, cherishes, and deals with you compassionately and patiently: “And thou, O Lord, art a God of compassion, and merciful, patient, and of much mercy, and true” (Psalm 85:15). Each act of forgiveness or ignoring a fault, “Remember the covenant of the most High, and overlook the ignorance of thy neighbour” (Ecclesiasticus 28:9), “Hast thou heard a word against thy neighbour? Let it die within thee” (Ecclesiasticus 19:10), is another opportunity to make an act of love, which is the daily bread of the Christian. That the magnificence you have been given, “Behold thou art fair, O my love, behold thou art fair” (Song 1:14), may not fade, there is then a request to not be led away from God. Now, temptation will exist throughout your earthly life, but “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which you are able” (1 Corinthians 10:13). Thus is the image of the three young men cast into the fire by Nebuchadnezzar fulfilled in you: “Behold I see four men loose, and walking in the midst of the fire, and there is no hurt in them, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God” (Daniel 3:92), for the enemy can and will throw you into the raging fires of temptation, but in clinging to Jesus with love and childlike trust, not bending at any time, these flames will not burn you. You are so little and the fires climb so high: “and the flame mounted up above the furnace nine and forty cubits” (Daniel 3:47), but God keeps you near to Him, never letting His love or might leave you: “The Lord is the protector of my life: of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 26:1). It also calls on divine aid for the entirety of the Church, that none of her faithful may fall into the hand of the enemy, but may be kept in the loving grasp of the Savior: “no man shall pluck them out of my hand” (John 10:28). Finally, that you may be delivered from the evils of this life: “How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? Consider, and hear me, O Lord my God” (Psalm 12:3-4), the Church may be freed from the grip of worldly powers: “Mountains are round about it: so the Lord is round about his people from henceforth now and forever” (Psalm 124:2), and those lost in sin may be delivered from the evil that has overwhelmed them: “Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name” (Psalm 141:8), there is the line “deliver us from evil.” It is a prayer that spans the world that asks that all may be delivered from bad love to know the light of true love. All that is necessary is contained in the Our Father, with what lies beyond reaching outside of the necessities of love: “You ask, and receive not; because you ask amiss” (James 4:3). The term “amen” means “so be it,” for such is the confidence to be had in asking for the things the Lord tells you to pray for: “In whom we have boldness and access with confidence by the faith of him” (Ephesians 3:12). When you pray for these things with faith, they will be done: “Therefore I say unto you, all things, whatsoever you ask when ye pray, believe that you shall receive; and they shall come to you” (Mark 11:24), for when your heart is united with God’s, and you love in the same way, and long for the same things in the world, your prayers will do mighty things on earth, wrapping it in love. Thus, with the flames of the Holy Spirit burning within you, pray the Lord’s prayer, trusting that your loving Father will give you the gifts you ask for in this most wonderful of prayers.