16 August 2026

16 August 2026 - Part three on the Our Father

Transcript

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First of all, I want to tell you about the spiritual warfare that I endured last weekend and that I asked for your prayers to overcome before I began each Mass. I have never faced as serious an attack as I did last weekend in all of my time as a priest. Let me explain what happened.

I actually considered – for much of the weekend – calling the Archbishop and requesting an immediate retirement. That is how serious the attack was. But, thanks to my training as a spiritual director, I knew I could not respond in that way because: I was in trouble. Saint Ignatius of Loyola would have referred to it as being in a “desolation.”

It was brought on by my learning that there are some people at Midtown Catholic who think I am here to close the parishes, and that I am not completely invested here as pastor – that I am only marking time until I retire. That I do not really care. I was horrified that there should be people thinking that way. If that is indeed how some people think, I questioned what good I was doing here. [pause]

I have been involved in two church closings during my priesthood. I never want to go through that again. They were necessary but devastating actions that the Archdiocese needed to take. Closing parishes takes a toll on the pastor as it does the people. Believe me, I speak from experience. Some priests have the honor of starting a new parish. I, unfortunately, have had the opposite and dubious “honor” of being involved in closing parishes. That is not happening here and that is not why I am here! I was not sent here to either: close the parishes – or to be placed here in a last assignment before I retire. When I took this assignment it was with the understanding that I was expected to give myself as pastor – as Father – to Midtown Catholic. No equivocation. No holding back.

Saint Boniface is quoted as having said this: “I would gladly give up the task of guiding the church which I have accepted if I could find such an action warranted by the example of the fathers or Holy Scripture.” I completely agree with his sentiment. I expect to expend the rest of my life here for all of you. For better or worse, I have been asked to lead Midtown Catholic. I hope and pray that God will make it for the better, not the worse.

I know I do not have the energy of a thirty-five-year-old priest. I am more than twice that age. And there are times when I feel that age. But I find it appalling and distressing that people do not believe I have invested myself in Midtown Catholic. I do not know how many people think this way, but if it is even one family – or one person – it means I am failing in some ways. No priest can reach everyone. Jesus didn’t reach everyone in his own lifetime, in his own circle of acquaintances. All I can do… is what I can do.

I am pleased that I can say I have reached retirement age. But that does not mean I want to retire – or that I am not invested in being pastor. I do not know how I can say that any clearer.

As I said, this was a kind of spiritual attack that I have never experienced before. I recognized it for what it was, but it took a concerted effort to knock it down. I could not have done that without your prayers. From the bottom of my heart: thank you. And… I apologize for – even briefly – giving room for those thoughts.

Now, briefly, back to the Lord’s prayer.

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I covered the first two words last weekend. So we move on. “Who art in heaven…” A simple enough statement, but there is reason to pause here. We talk about different levels of heaven. There is of course the throne room of God which is the highest heaven. Then there is the heaven of the angels, sometimes called the second heaven. And there is the heaven that is this earth – the physical plane. God is in heaven. Period. Which one? The simple answer is: all of them. We know that God is everywhere. But he is not everything – that is a heresy. God is other. God is distinct from his creation. But I think it is a very important thing to remember that heaven includes this earth! Yes, it is wounded by sin, but it is nonetheless God’s creation and therefore part of heaven. It is interesting that – despite the wound of sin – God still considers this part of his heaven, his creation. That is how much he loves us. And by the work of Jesus he has begun the healing of all wounds caused by our foolishness.

So we must admit that God is with us regardless of where we are, and he rules from his throne. He rules in righteousness and mercy, which leads me to the next phrase that Jesus tells us to pray: “hallowed be thy name…” The word hallow and the word holy both come from the same root in “Old English.” [By the way, have you signed up for the Hallow app that the parish offers to everyone in the parish? You will be hearing more on this soon.] 

In Hebrew the word for holy is “kadosh”. You have heard me talk about this before. In Hebrew there is no progression of words from holy to holier to holiest. So instead they would simply say kadosh three times to describe the holiest. We say that just before the Eucharistic prayer: “holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts…” It is a very Jewish way of putting it, as are so many of our prayers. God is most holy – he is the holiest – and he is over all the hosts of heaven – every heaven. holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts – kadosh, kadosh, kadosh Elohei tseva’ot

So this is what the Our Father is calling us to recognize here in the opening phrases. God is in his throne – in his heaven, which includes earth, and he is… holy, which means other-than-us. And we are called to be holy as well, which means we are called to be something more – something… other than just human beings. We are called to be sacred beings. This is what it means to be adopted into the family of God and why we can call God: Our Father.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…” We are staking a claim to our adoption in the start of the Our Father. We are declaring that God is God and he is on his throne. We are also acknowledging both that he is other-than-us and that he has called us to be other-than-we-are: we are called to be holy as God is holy.

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