Why do we address God thus: “Our Father who art in Heaven”?

In our prayers, as children of God, it is fitting for us to raise our hearts to heaven and entreat Him who is heavenly, eternal, and divine.

St. Augustine says, “Parents sometimes when they have begotten one, or two, or three children, fear to give birth to anymore, lest they reduce the rest to being beggars. But because the inheritance which He promises us is such as many may possess, and no one is left in poverty; therefore has He called into His family the peoples of the nations, and the Only Son has numberless brethren; who say, ‘Our Father, which art in heaven’ (Matt. 6:9). Let us then consider, beloved, whose children we have begun to be; and let us live so as becomes those who have such a Father. See, how our Creator has condescended to be our Father!”¹⁶⁸

166 St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament 9.2 (NPNF I/6:288) amended.

167 St. Cyprian of Carthage, Treatise 4: On the Lord’s Prayer 8 (ANF 5:449).

168 St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament 7.2 (NPNF I/6:280–281) amended.

“We have found then a Father in heaven; let us take good heed how we live on earth. For he who has found such a Father, ought so to live that he may be worthy to come into his inheritance.”¹⁶⁹

“If our Father be there [in heaven], there is the inheritance prepared for us. But He is such a Father, that we can possess with Him what He gives. For He gives an inheritance; but He does not leave it to us by dying [as happens with legal inheritance]. For He does not depart Himself, but He abides forever, that we may come to Him.”¹⁷⁰

“Remember that you have a Father in heaven. Remember that you are born of your father Adam to death but you are born again from God the Father unto life, and what you say, say in your hearts.”¹⁷¹

Abba Isaac says, “When then we confess with our mouths that the God and Lord of the universe is our Father, we profess immediately that we have been called from our condition as slaves to the adoption of sons, adding next ‘Who 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.”¹⁷²

Origen says, “everyone who says, ‘Our Father who art in heaven,’ ought not have ‘a spirit of servitude in fear, but a spirit of the adoption of children’ (Rom. 8:15). But the person who does not have ‘a spirit of adoption of sons’ and says ‘Our Father who art in heaven,’ lies when he calls God his Father since he is not a son of God.”¹⁷³ He also says, “If what we have said on prayer without ceasing (1 Thess. 5:17) is understood, then all our life must be a prayer without ceasing in which we say: Our Father who art in heaven . Let us in no way have our citizenship upon earth (cf. Phil. 3:20), but in every way in the heavens which are God’s thrones; for God’s kingdom is built on all those who bear the image of the Heavenly One (1 Cor. 15:49) and so have become heavenly themselves.”[174 ]

St. Athanasius says, “But if He wills that we should call His own Father our Father, we must not on that account measure ourselves with the Son according to nature, for it is because of the Son that the Father is so called by us; for since the Word bore our body and came to be in us, therefore by reason of the Word in us, is God called our Father. For the Spirit of the

169 St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament 8.2 (NPNF I/6:284) amended.

170 St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament 9.2 (NPNF I/6:288) amended.

171 St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament 6.5 (NPNF I/6:276) amended.

172 St. John Cassian, The Conferences 9.18 (NPNF II/11:393).

173 Origen of Alexandria, The Commentary of Origen on the Gospel of St. Matthew. Vol. 2 , trans., Ronald E. Heine (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2018) Series 1–8, 2: pp. 542–543.

174 Origen of Alexandria, On Prayer 22.5 (ACW 19:76).

Word in us names through us His own Father as ours, which is the Apostle’s meaning when he says, ‘God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father’ (Gal. 4:6).”[175 ]

St. Cyprian says, “But how great is the Lord’s indulgence! How great His condescension and plenteousness of goodness towards us, seeing that He has wished us to pray in the sight of God in such a way as to call God Father, and to call ourselves sons of God, even as Christ is the Son of God, a name which none of us would dare to venture on in prayer unless He had allowed us thus to pray! We ought then, beloved brethren remember and to know, that when we call God Father, we ought to act as God’s children; so that in the measure in which we find pleasure in considering God as a Father, He might also be able to find pleasure in us. Let us converse as temples of God, that it may be plain that God dwells in us.”[176 ]

St. Cyril of Jerusalem says, “O most surpassing loving-kindness of God! On them who revolted from Him and were in the very extreme of misery has He bestowed such a complete forgiveness of evil deeds, and so great participation of grace, as that they should even call Him Father. Our Father, which art in heaven ; and they also are a heaven who bear the image of the heavenly (1 Cor. 15:49), in whom is God, dwelling and walking in them (2 Cor. 6:16).”[177 ]

The scholar Tertullian says, “Happy are they who recognize their Father! This is the reproach that is brought against Israel, to which the Spirit attests heaven and earth, saying, I have begotten sons, and they have not recognized me (Isa. 1:2) … Again, in the Father the Son is invoked; for ‘I,’ says He, ‘and the Father are One’ (John 10:30). Nor is even our mother the Church passed by, if, that is, in the Father and the Son is recognized the mother, from whom arises the name both of Father and Son. In one general term, then, or word, we both honor God, together with His own, and are mindful of the precept, and set a mark on such as have forgotten their Father.”[178 ]