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AND so there follows after these different kinds of supplication a
still more sublime and exalted condition which is brought about by the
contemplation of God alone and by fervent love, by which the mind,
transporting and flinging itself into love for Him, addresses God most
familiarly as its own Father with a piety of its own. And that we ought
earnestly to seek after this condition the formula of the Lord's prayer
teaches us, saying "Our Father." When then we confess with our own mouths
that the God and Lord of the universe is our Father, we profess forthwith
that we have been called from our condition as slaves to the adoption of
sons, adding next "Which art in heaven," that, by shunning with the utmost
horror all lingering in this present life, which we pass upon this earth as
a pilgrimage, and what separates us by a great distance from our Father, we
may the rather hasten with all eagerness to that country where we confess
that our Father dwells, and may not allow anything of this kind, which
would make us unworthy of this our profession and the dignity of an
adoption of this kind, and so deprive us as a disgrace to our Father's
inheritance, and make us incur the wrath of His justice and severity. To
which state and condition of sonship when we have advanced, we shall
forthwith be inflamed with the piety which belongs to good sons, so that we
shall bend all our energies to the advance not of our own profit, but of
our Father's glory, saying to Him: "Hallowed be Thy name," testifying that
our desire and our joy is His glory, becoming imitators of Him who said:
"He who speaketh of himself, seeketh his own glory. But He who seeks the
glory of Him who sent Him, the same is true and there is no unrighteousness
in Him." Finally the chosen vessel being filled with this feeling wished
that he could be anathema from Christ if only the people belonging to
Him might be increased and multiplied, and the salvation of the whole
nation of Israel accrue to the glory of His Father; for with all assurance
could he wish to die for Christ as he knew that no one perished for life.
And again he says: "We rejoice when we are weak but ye are strong." And
what wonder if the chosen vessel wished to be anathema from Christ for the
sake of Christ's glory and the conversion of His own brethren and the
privilege of the nation, when the prophet Micah wished that he might be a
liar and a stranger to the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, if only the
people of the Jews might escape those plagues and the going forth into
captivity which he had announced in his prophecy, saying: "Would that I
were not a man that hath the Spirit, and that I rather spoke a lie;"--to
pass over that wish of the Lawgiver, who did not refuse to die together
with his brethren who were doomed to death, saying: "I beseech Thee, O
Lord; this people hath sinned a heinous sin; either forgive them this
trespass, or if Thou do not, blot me out of Thy book which Thou hast
written." But where it is said "Hallowed be Thy name," it may also be
very fairly taken in this way: "The hallowing of God is our perfection."
And so when we say to Him" Hallowed be Thy name" we say in other words,
make us, O Father, such that we maybe able both to understand and take in
what the hallowing of Thee is, or at any rite that Thou mayest be seen to
be hallowed in our spiritual converse. And this is effectually fulfilled in
our case when "men see our good works, and glorify our Father Which is in
heaven."
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