As I am re-reading Cardinal Walter Kasper’s book, “Mercy: The Essence of the Gospel and the Key to Christian Life” (Translated by William Madges. New York: Paulist Press, 2014, pp. 288), I keep finding passages that I wish to quote in order to share Cardinal Kasper’s insights with readers of this column. I don’t recall ever reading any book on theology or spirituality that is so focused on one topic.
The cardinal reviews the history of salvation, shedding many lights on the mystery of God’s mercy. In looking for a quotation that might fit into this column, and yet also summarize the main theme of Cardinal Kasper’s book, I came upon comments that he has written about Jesus’ prayer, the Our Father.
Because I cannot quote the entire book, the following quote will have to serve as central to Cardinal Kasper’s vision. He writes:
“The message about God as our Father occupies the center of Jesus’ message. Jesus’ way of addressing God as ‘Abba, Father,’ indeed as his Father (Mark 14:36) was imprinted on early Christianity. … this way of addressing God was regarded as characteristic for Jesus and for Christians. Therefore, the Our Father, which Jesus taught us to pray in response to the request of his disciples (Matt 6:9; Luke 11:2) has rightly become the best known and most widely disseminated Christian prayer. It expresses the innermost core of our understanding of God and of our relationship to God. It tells us that we stand in a personal relationship to a divine thou, who knows us, hears us, bears us up, and loves us. … Our Father in heaven (Matt. 5:16; 18:10, 14, 32f.) is not distant from us. He is the Father of heaven and earth. (Matt 11:25, cf. 6:10). Our life on earth is directed by our one Father in heaven. We may detect the Father’s hand in everything, we know ourselves are secure within him in every situation, and we may call on him as our Father in our every need. Thus, we don’t live in a boundless, unfeeling, and fatherless cosmos. We are not the product of an accident or the product of a meaningless and directionless evolution.”
Occasionally when I give a retreat or a day of recollection, I slowly read the Our Father to those who are attending. What is different about my reading is that I read the prayer backwards.
I do this to try to break the routine way that we recite the prayer. Another reason I do this is that the most important words in the prayer are the first two: “Our Father,” and when the prayer is read backwards these two words have a special power. Many people have commented to me that hearing the prayer recited backwards has deeply touched them. It has deeply touched me as well.
I have a confession to make. When I recite the Our Father, an image of an old man with a white beard spontaneously comes into my mind. The image resembles the Michelangelo’s depiction of God the Father on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome. I know that God the Father is not an old man with a white beard, but images that we pick up in childhood do not die easily. I must make an effort to go way beyond that image from childhood and try to appreciate the reality of God the Father in my life.
For the childish image I am going to try to substitute “Infinite Love” or “Infinite Mercy.” If our faith is supposed to mature, develop and deepen, the images we use in relation to God are important. Also, the images we have of Jesus and the Blessed Mother are important. I find many depictions of Jesus too saccharine and weak.
Before I sat down to write this column, I read through a group of essays from my students at St. John’s. Their assignment was to visit a museum in Manhattan and write about some work of art in relation to a course I am teaching about the mystery of God.
What impressed me was the number of religious paintings the students discovered. I suspect that some artists, who would not think of themselves as believers, find Christian teaching so attractive and interesting that they are drawn to depict scenes from the Gospel. It fascinates me that someone, who may not be a believer, can create art that inspires those who are believers. The Holy Spirit breathes where it will!
Father Robert Lauder is a philosophy professor at St. John’s University, Jamaica, and author of “Pope Francis’ Spirituality and Our Story” (Resurrection Press).