About 40 years ago, Capuchin Franciscan Father Michael Crosby, wrote a book with the title “Thy Will Be Done: Praying the Our Father as a Subversive Activity.”
He was right on many counts, beginning with the first two words: “Our Father, our Abba, our Daddy.”
We do not pray “my Father,” or “the Father of my group, of my race, of my economic or social group,” but “Our Father.”
To call God “Father” means that all lives matter and, as a Caucasian, I can’t rest until “Black lives matter,” and “Brown lives matter,” and “Red lives matter,” and “Yellow lives matter” as much as “White lives matter.” Because if everyone else’s life doesn’t matter as much as my life matters, then I am rejecting God’s Fatherhood in His children, who are my brothers and sisters.
Furthermore, since Jesus has identified Himself with those on the margins – “Whatever you do to the least of my brothers and sisters, you do to Me” (Mt. 25:31-46) – then we are standing with Pontius Pilate, the Roman soldiers and the Sanhedrin in crucifying Jesus once again. As Jesus said to Saul on the road to Damascus, “Why are you persecuting Me?”
In persecuting Jesus in our black, brown, red or yellow brothers and sisters, we are rejecting too our loving Abba, God the Father. Thus, it is good that we pray, “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. … Deliver us (our nation and our world) from evil.”
Father, give us a new heart so that Your will might be ”done on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen.
Jesuit Father John Michalowski is parochial vicar of St. Peter Church in Charlotte.