"Our" Father...

Monsignor Peter Fleetwood says he once got irritated by a priest, who when he celebrated Mass invited the faithful to pray the Lord's Prayer - the Our Father - by referring to it as " the prayer of all disciples".

In this reflection Father Peter explains why: ..."Well it isn't. It is not the prayer of the disciples of the Prophet Muhammad, or the disciples of hundreds of gurus in India , or the disciples od Sigmund Freud or anybody else who has a following of faithful students. It is the prayer of the disciples of Jesus Christ , who called himself the Son of God and told us to think of God as our father too. This is the reason He was reckoned to be blaspheming by people who could never imagine God as their father.

It is one of the problems Muslims have with Christianity. it must seem presumptuous to claim such relationship with the Creator of the world . And some people would see it as bringing God too far down from heaven to our level. This is not just being pedantic, though. On the one hand I am asking this priest not to be a Christian imperialist , or at least to sound like one, because that is not what he means. On the other hand, isn't it marvellous to be told that God is our father ? What a different sort of closeness to God when we realise what Jesus meant!"...

A programme produced by Veronica Scarisbrick

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