Pope prays the 'Our Father' in
Romanian Orthodox Cathedral: full text
 |
| Pope Francis and the Romanian Orthodox Patriarch in Bucharest's Orthodox Cathedral (AFP) |
On the first day of his 3-day apostolic visit to Romania,
Pope Francis prayed the 'Our Father' in Bucharest's Orthodox People's Salvation
Cathedral and addressed the congregation. Here is the full text of his address:
Your Beatitude, Dear Brother,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
I am grateful and moved to
be in this holy temple that brings us together in unity. Jesus called the
brothers Andrew and Peter to leave their nets and to become together fishers of
men (cf.Mk 1:16-17). The calling of one brother was
incomplete without that of the other. Today we wish to raise, side by
side, from the heart of this country, the Lord’s Prayer. That prayer
contains the sure promise made by Jesus to his disciples: “I will not leave you
orphaned” (Jn 14:18), and gives us the confidence to receive and
welcome the gift of our brothers and sisters. I would like therefore to
share some thoughts in preparation for this prayer, which I will recite for our
journey of fraternity and for the intention that Romania may always be a home for
everyone, a land of encounter, a garden where reconciliation and communion
flourish.
Each time
we say “Our Father”, we state that the word Father cannot
stand on its own, apart from Our. United in Jesus’ prayer, we
are also united to his experience of love and intercession, which leads us to
say: “My Father and your Father, my God and your God” (cf. Jn20:17).
We are invited to make my become our, and our to
become a prayer. Help us, Father, to take our brother or sister’s lives
seriously, to make their history our history. Help us to not judge our
brother or sister for their actions and their limitations, but to welcome them
before all else as your son or daughter. Help us to overcome the
temptation to act like the elder brother, who was so concerned with himself
that he forgot the gift of the other person (cf. Lk 15:25-32).
To you,
Father, who art in heaven, a heaven that embraces all and in which
you make the sun rise on the good and the evil, on the just and the unjust
(cf. Mt 5:45), we implore the peace and harmony that here on
earth we have failed to preserve. We ask this through the intercession of
all those brothers and sisters in faith who dwell with you in heaven after
having believed, loved and suffered greatly, even in our own days, simply for
the fact that they were Christians.
Together
with them, we wish to hallow your name, placing it at the heart of
all we do. May your name, Lord, and not ours, be the one that moves and
awakens in us the exercise of charity. How many times, in prayer, do we
limit ourselves to asking for gifts and listing requests, forgetting that the
first thing we should do is praise your name, adore you, and then go on to
acknowledge, in the brother or sister whom you have placed at our side, a living
image of you. In the midst of all those passing things in which we are so
caught up, help us, Father, to seek what truly lasts: your presence and that of
our brother or sister.
We wait in
expectation for your kingdom to come. We ask
for it and we long for it, because we see that the workings of this world do
not favour it, organized as they are around money, personal interests and
power. Sunken as we are in an increasingly frenetic consumerism that
entices us with glittering but fleeting realities, we ask you to help us,
Father, to believe in what we pray for: to give up the comfortable security of
power, the deceptive allure of worldliness, the vain presumption of our own
self-sufficiency, the hypocrisy of cultivating appearances. In this way,
we will not lose sight of that Kingdom to which you summon us.
Thy
will be done, not our will. “God’s will is that all be
saved” (SAINT JOHN CASSIAN, Spiritual Conferences, IX, 20).
We need to broaden our horizons, Father, lest we place our own limits on your
merciful, salvific will that wishes to embrace everyone. Help us, Father,
by sending to us, as at Pentecost, the Holy Spirit, source of courage and joy,
to impel us to preach the good news of the Gospel beyond the confines of the
communities to which we belong, our languages, our cultures and our nations.
Each day we
need him, our daily bread. He is the bread of
life (cf. Jn 6:35.48) that makes us realize that we
are beloved sons and daughters, and makes us feel no longer isolated and
orphaned. He is the bread of service, broken to serve us, and
asking us in turn to serve one another (cf. Jn 13:14).
Father, as you give us our daily bread, strengthen us to reach out and serve
our brothers and sisters. And as we ask you for our daily bread, we ask
also for the bread of memory, the grace to nurture the shared roots
of our Christian identity, so indispensable in an age when humanity, and the
young in particular, tend to feel rootless amid the uncertainties of life, and
incapable of building their lives on a solid foundation. The bread that
we ask begins with a seed, slowly grows into an ear of grain, is then harvested
and is finally brought to our table. May it inspire us to be
patient cultivators of communion, tireless in sowing seeds of
unity, encouraging goodness, working constantly at the side of our brothers and
sisters. Without suspicion or reserve, without pressuring or demanding
uniformity, in the fraternal joy of a reconciled diversity.
The bread
we ask today is also the bread of which so many people today are lacking, while
a few have more than enough. The Our Father is a prayer
that leaves us troubled and crying out in protest against the famine of
love in our time, against the individualism and indifference that
profane your name, Father. Help us to hunger to give freely of
ourselves. Remind us, whenever we pray, that life is not about keeping
ourselves comfortable but about letting ourselves be broken; not about
accumulating but about sharing; not about eating to our heart’s content but
about feeding others. Prosperity is only prosperity if it embraces
everyone.
Each time
we pray, we ask that our trespasses, our debts, be forgiven.
This takes courage, for it means that we must forgive the trespasses of others,
the debts that others have incurred in our regard. We need to find the
strength to forgive our brother or sister from the heart (cf. Mt18:35),
even as you, Father, forgive our trespasses: to leave the past behind us and, together,
to embrace the present. Help us, Father, not to yield to fear, not to see
openness as a threat, to find the strength to forgive each other and move on,
and the courage not to settle for a quiet life but to keep seeking, with
transparency and sincerity, the face of our brothers and sisters.
And when
the evil that lurks at the doorway of our heart (cf. Gen 4:7)
makes us want to close in on ourselves; when we feel more strongly the temptation to
turn our back on others, help us again, Father, for the essence of sin is
withdrawal from you and from our neighbour. Help us to recognize in every
one of our brothers and sisters a source of support on our common journey to
you. Inspire in us the courage to say together: Our Father.
Amen.
And now, let us recite the prayer that the Lord has taught
us.
