Before receiving Communion, the Church invites us to recite the prayer which Christ taught us.
Saint Cyprian said, “What prayer would the Father hear more gladly than that in which he hears the voice of his only Son, Jesus Christ?”
When we pray the Our Father, the Father recognizes the voice of his Only-Begotten Son in us.
When we pray the Our Father, we are not praying with our words, but rather with the words of God, with the same words with which Jesus taught us to pray.
The prayer is not my Father, but OUR Father. It is an invitation to love between us, to brotherhood, to sisterhood, to reconciliation.
Pope Francis has said it very clearly: “This is a prayer which cannot be recited with enemies in one’s heart, with hatred for another.”
It is a prayer that prepares our hearts because it invites us to communion.
