Hallowed Be Thy Name

The Our Father is a prayer that holds a privileged place in the life of every Christian, and rightly so! It is the only time recorded in Scripture in which Jesus Christ gives his disciples a prayer. It is his answer to their request to be taught how to pray. St Thomas Aquinas referred to it as the “most perfect prayer;” and the Church, in her teaching refers to it as “the prayer of the Church par excellence, for which there is no substitute.”

Despite its importance, it can be easy for us to fall into the trap of saying the Our Father rather than praying it; to simply go through the motions out of pure routine. Jesus reminds us of this temptation and warns against it right before giving the disciples this most wonderful prayer (Matt 6:7).

To both grow in the life of prayer, and pray more fruitfully, it is important that we do take the time to reflect on what we are praying, and what those words mean. This helps our prayers to be offered to God with greater devotion and fervency. That said, over the next several blogs we will be looking at several of the petitions in the Our Father, and briefly exploring their meaning.

This week we will look at the line, “Hallowed be thy name". “Hallowed” can seem a strange and unfamiliar word to 21st Century ears, but it means, “to be made holy"; to be set aside to conform to God’s purpose. This does not mean we somehow make God holy; he is the source of his own holiness. But it does, among other things, remind us that we hallow God’s name by giving honor, reverence, and adoration to God.

We are asking that we recognize God’s name as holy and treat it as such in the way we live our lives. We are also asking that we would live in such a way that others would come to know and revere as holy, the name of the God we profess faith in and pray to in this very prayer. In this petition, we acknowledge that we owe God reverence and are reminded that whether his name is revered and kept as holy by others is directly related to how we represent him in the world.

In Isaiah 52 and Ezekiel 36, the Lord laments that his name is blasphemed in the world because of the behavior of those who were to be his ambassadors in the world – his chosen people, Israel. Furthermore, St. Paul declares that we are living letters of Christ to be read by all men (2 Cor 3:2-3). Finally, Jesus affirms, “By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (Jn 13:35). How much we need to be reminded of this constantly!

By virtue of our baptism, every one of us is called to a life of holiness and mission. Those two callings converge in this petition. Each one of us is called to share the joy of the Gospel and the love of Christ to a world so desperately thirsty for that love. How well we do this is directly proportionate to our pursuit of holiness and intimacy with Christ in our own lives. The Catechism makes this point very clear, “This work, then, is realized for us and in us only if his name is hallowed by us and in us” (CCC 2808). “Hallowed be thy name,” reminds us not only that this is our purpose, but also in this petition, we are praying that we would make God’s name holy in our lives; so that the world can see the face of Christ in us, and in how we live our lives. We give witness to God’s name and help to ensure that his name is hallowed by striving to do his will; being people of prayer; allowing his grace to animate our lives; seeking first the kingdom; being people of virtue; bearing witness to the love of God in the world (especially toward those who do not share the same values or opinions as us); and putting first our purpose: the praise of God and the salvation of souls.