The Lord’s Prayer: a series of sermons

“Our Father who art in the Heavens, hallowed be Thy Name.” (Matt. 6:9)

While we preached a series of sermons on the Lord’s Prayer some years ago, the most essential things of worship are of such great importance that it is good to reconsider them from time to time; we will therefore again take the Lord’s Prayer as a text for this and the following sermons.

Swedenborg once saw the Lord’s Prayer represented as a pyramid commencing from the highest point and descending to its base. In the Greek the Prayer commences with the word “[pater]*” “Father.” Father represents the Lord as the Divine Love, thus the Lord as the source of all things. It is the Lord’s Divine Love which rules in all things of the Prayer. It spooks of Our Father who art in the heavens. The Lord is present in the Heavens as Divine Love in Human form; or what is the same, He has His dwelling place in the inmost reception of the human mind, that is, in the celestial degree, whence comes the Doctrine which is the Name of the Lord, and which is spiritual from a coеlestial origin. The second phrase of the Lord’s Prayer is therefore, “Hallowed be Thy Name.”

The Prayer commences with “Our Father” of “Father of us.” Calling the Lord “Our Father” expresses a desire to be His children. The Lord in a sense is the Father of all, both the good and the evil, but with the evil the Lord above the Heavens is their Father; where there is no reception of the Lord’s Divine Love, Ho is not their “Father in the Heavens.” It is only by regeneration that men become the children of Their Father in the Heavens.

To desire to be truly the children of the Lord, implies a desire not to be led by oneself, but by the Lord it implies an acknowledgment that one has neither the strength nor the wisdom to lead oneself; it also implies a total trust that the Lord provides everything necessary with infinite Love and Wisdom and that man can provide nothing. It implies that man willingly and with Love accepts all things whether they be obvious blessings, or punishments and temptations, as being in the Mercy of the Lord, and necessary for the salvation of the man. The evil as well as the good are willing to ascribe their obvious blessings to God; but only the good are willing to perceive and love their trials, their punishments, their sorrows, the apparent rejection of their prayers, as being of the Mercy of the Lord for the sake of their salvation; not that such things are from the Lord, but they are in the Mercy of the Lord for the sake of the salvation of man.

In the other world many from the Christian world commence by worshipping the Lord, but when they come into trials, when their prayers are not answered, when the Lord appears to shame them, they first resent the things of the Lord, and afterwards hate the Lord. A man or woman of the Church will not consciously to himself hate the Lord. Yet he may hate the things of the Lord in another; particularly will he hate the true things of justice in so far as they shame him, and deprive him of what he considers his duo, his honor, and his just reward. In so far as one hates these true things of justice in another, so far in the other life he comes into open hatred of the Lord.

Read the first sermon on the Lord’s Prayer by Rev. Theodore Pitcairn
Read the second sermon on the Lord’s Prayer by Rev. Theodore Pitcairn
Read the third sermon on the Lord’s Prayer by Rev. Theodore Pitcairn
Read the fourth sermon on the Lord’s Prayer by Rev. Theodore Pitcairn
Read the fifth sermon on the Lord’s Prayer by Rev. Theodore Pitcairn
Read the sixth sermon on the Lord’s Prayer by Rev. Theodore Pitcairn