Friends, welcome to Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.

Word on Fire is an apostolate dedicated to the mission of evangelization,

using media both old and new to share the faith on every continent

and to facilitate an encounter with Christ and his church.

The efforts of Word on Fire engage the culture and bring the transformative power

of God's word where it is most needed. Today we invite you to join Bishop Robert Barron as he

preaches the gospel and shares the warmth and light of Christ with each of us. Peace be with you.

Friends, today's gospel gives us Luke's version of the Our Father, the most beloved and popular

prayer in the Christian tradition.

A prayer offered literally millions of times every day around the world.

So it might be good for us to seek to understand it better.

How wonderful first that it comes directly from the prayer of Jesus himself.

We hear that he's been spending significant time in prayer,

and so the disciples ask him, Lord, how do we pray?

It's as though the prayer that he teaches them sums up the manner and content of his own prayer.

So, when you pray, he tells us, say, Father, Halliwood be your name.

We call God Father when we pray. Not Lord, not King, not power, though he is all those things too.

But first we call him Abba.

And you well know that was distinctive to Jesus, this way of addressing God, with a child's term for his father, something a bit like dad or daddy.

The point is the same intimacy that Jesus has with his Abba, he invites us to share.

See, the point is we don't just imitate his prayer the way we might imitate the prayer of any spiritual teacher.

So, you know, the great master teaches you a set of words and so on.

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