Page:TheParadiseOfTheChristianSoul.djvu/501

This page needs to be proofread.

CHAPTER II.

THE LORD'S PRAYER,

VARIOUSLY ADAPTED TO CHRIST AND HIS PASSION.


First Method of Reciting

THE LORD’S PRAYER,

By commemorating each of the principal Titles of Christ.

Our Father, who art.

O most dear Father, Jesus Christ! who, by thy Blood, hast regenerated us, by the defect of our first birth, children of wrath and perdition, to be children of God, and heirs of eternal life: whence thy prophet justly calls thee the Father of the world to come.[1] We truly, indeed, confess, worship, and adore thee as the Father and author of the new creature,[2] or our regeneration, the Father of a new love unheard of hitherto. And behold, how good a Father thou art, and how ready to assist thy children, thou amply showest in this very thing, that thou suppliest us with a form of prayer, — with the very words by which we may easily and effectually obtain whatever we ask of thee, or of the Father in thy Name.

O Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, look upon the face of Christ, thy Son, as often as we make our supplication to thee, as by his instruction we are taught.

And thou, too, Jesus our Father, hear us as often as in thy own words we humbly address thee, saying: Hallowed be thy name.

O Jesus, the great Priest, who in thy days didst please God, and wast found just, and in the time of wrath wast made a reconciliation;[3] who, not by the blood of others, but by thy own, hast entered once into the Holies! For it was fitting that we should have such a High Priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners,[4] who needed not, as the other priests, to offer sacrifices, first, for his own sins, and then for the people’s.

Behold, thou art holy, and holy is thy Name; for such art thou declared to be by the Angels, at and even before thy birth; and thy eternal

  1. Isa. ix. 6.
  2. 2 Cor v. 17.
  3. Ecclus. xliv. 17.
  4. Heb. vii. 26.