Our Father

“Above all, he who preaches peace and unity did not want us to pray by ourselves alone. We do not say ‘My Father, who are in heaven,’ nor ‘Give me this day my daily bread.’ It is not for himself alone that each person asks to be forgiven, not to be led into temptation or to be delivered from evil. Rather, we pray in public as a community, and not for one individual but for all. For the people of God are all one.

...My dear friends, the Lord's prayer contains many great mysteries of our faith. In these few words there is great spiritual strength, for this summary of divine teaching contains all of our prayers and petitions. And so, the Lord commands us: Pray then like this: ‘Our Father, who art in heaven.’

We are new men; we have been reborn and restored to God by his grace. We have already begun to be his sons and we can say ‘Father.’ John reminds us of this: ‘He came to his own home, and his own people did not receive him. But to all who received him, who believe in his name, he gave the power to become children of God.’ Profess your belief that you are sons of God by giving thanks. Call upon God who is your Father in heaven.

...Moreover, how great is the indulgence of the Lord, how great the abundance of His regard for us and His goodness, that He has thus wished us to celebrate prayer in the sight of God, so as to call the Lord ‘Father’ and, as Christ is the son of God, ourselves also so to be pronounced the sons of God, which name no one of us would dare to take in prayer, had not He Himself permitted us so to pray. So, most beloved brethren, we ought to remember and to know that, when we speak of God, we ought to act as sons of God, so that, just as we are pleased with God as Father, so too He may be pleased with us. Let us live as if temples of God, that it may be clear that the Lord dwells in us. Let not our acts depart from the Spirit, that we who have begun to be spiritual and heavenly may ponder and do nothing except the spiritual and the heavenly, since the Lord God Himself has said: ‘Those who glorify me, I shall glorify; but they that despise me, shall be despised.’ (1 Samuel 2:30) The blessed Apostle also in his Epistle has laid down: ‘You are not your own, for you have been bought at a great price. Glorify God and bear him in your body.’” (1 Corinthians 6:20)

~St. Cyprian ("Treatise on the Lord’s Prayer")