Why pray “Hallowed be thy name” when He is already holy?

St. Augustine says, “When you ask that His Name may be hallowed, do you not, as it were, pray to Him for Him, and not for yourself? No. Understand it aright, and it is for your own self that you ask. For this is what you ask, that what is always in itself holy, may be hallowed in you. What is ‘be hallowed’? ‘Be accounted holy,’ be not despised. So then you see, that the good you wish, you wish for your own self. For if you despise the Name of God, for yourself it will be ill, and not for God.”¹⁸¹

“The Name of God is hallowed in you when you are baptized. Why will you offer this prayer after you have been baptized, but that that which you shall then receive may abide ever in you?”¹⁸²

“If the name of God is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of the wicked, then, on the contrary, it should be hallowed and glorified because of the faithful and believers.”¹⁸³

Abba Isaac says, “But where it is said ‘Hallowed be Your 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 Your name’ we say in other words, make us, O Father, such that we may be able both to understand and take in what the hallowing of You is, or at any rate that You may 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 who is in heaven’ (Matt. 5:16).”[184 ]

St. Cyprian says, “After this we say, ‘Hallowed be Your name’; not that we wish for God that He may be hallowed by our prayers, but that we beseech of Him that His name may be hallowed in us … We ask and entreat, that we who were sanctified in baptism may continue in that which we have begun to be. And this we daily pray for; for we need daily sanctification, that we who daily fall away may wash out our sins by continual sanctification … [The Apostle] says that we are sanctified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit of our God. We pray that this sanctification may abide in us and because our Lord and Judge warn the man that was healed and quickened by Him, to sin no more lest a worse thing happens unto him, we make this supplication in our constant, we ask this day and night, that the sanctification and quickening which is received from the grace of God may be preserved by His protection.”[185 ]

180 St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures 23.12 (NPNF II/7:155)

181 St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament 6.5 (NPNF I/6:275) amended.

182 St. Augustine of Hippo, Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament 9.3 (NPNF I/6:289) amended.

183 In Matthew 6:9

184 St. John Cassian, The Conferences 9.18 (NPNF II/11:394) amended.

185 St. Cyprian of Carthage, Treatise 4: On the Lord’s Prayer 12 (ANF 5:450).