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Hallowed Be Thy Name

  • FATHER ALFRED DELP, S.J.

The images evoked by the Lord's prayer vividly illustrate our life.


jesusfrescoHumanity stands or falls by the things that are mentioned in it.  If this is realized we can begin to make progress.  If it is not realized, or not taken seriously, we sink and decline.  That is the real key to the grim picture of life today.

And this phrase, hallowed be thy name, teaches us to pray for the worthy ideal, for the unassailable, holy, venerated standard.  Unless they have something of supreme value, something at the center of their being which they can venerate, human beings gradually deteriorate.  Human nature is so constituted that it must have something holy that it can worship, otherwise it becomes cramped and distorted, and instead of a holy object of veneration something else will take its place....

The Word of God should evoke and receive the great veneration this phrase suggests, praise, reverence, awe.  This effects the realization of those fundamental categories of life I referred to just now.  The name of God is the holy of holies, the central silence, the thing that above all others calls for humble approach.

We not only ought to believe in the truth at the center of our being, in the purpose of our existence, but we should also bear testimony to this belief by the proper fulfillment of our life's purpose.  We should subjugate everything to this law of holiness and reject everything that does not harmonize with it.  God, the great object of human veneration, will then also be our whole life.  

This is Meaghen Gonzalez, Editor of CERC. I hope you appreciated this piece. We curate these articles especially for believers like you.

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Acknowledgement

delpfr Father Alfred Delp, S.J. "Hallowed Be Thy Name." from Prison Writings. (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2004).

Reprinted with permission from Orbis Books. This excerpt appeared in Magnificat in October 2014.

The Author

DelpDelp1Father Alfred Delp, S.J. (1907-1945) was a German Jesuit priest and a philosopher of the German Resistance. Part of the inner Kreisau Circle resistance group, he is considered a significant figure in Catholic resistance to Nazism. Implicated in the failed 1944 July Plot to overthrow the Nazi Dictator Adolf Hitler, Delp was arrested, and sentenced to death. He was executed in 1945. Father Delp is the author of Advent Of The Heart, and Prison Writings

Copyright © 2004 Orbis Books