Digital Continent Digital Continent Easter 2017 | Page 58

perfected used the Lord’s prayer as part of their
initiation process and only those who received
consolamentum were allowed to pray the prayer.
When the perfected prayed the Lord’s prayer, which
they did “sixteen times in one sequence” throughout
their day, it was a distortion of God’s words, since
they did not believe that the daily bread was the bread of life, the Son of God. 144 God’s people
are meant to share in recitation of the Lord’s prayer as a means for Christians to “learn to share
in Christ’s own spiritual experience and to see all things through his eyes. From him who is light
from light, the only-begotten Son of the Father, we come to know God and can thus kindle in
others the desire to draw near to him” (LF, n. 46). Jesus Christ, the Son of God, gave to the
Apostles and to all generations this most perfect prayer, “His prayer to his Father is the
theological path (the path of faith, hope and charity) of our prayer to God.” 145 The holy Spirit
lives in and through “this covenantal relationship between God and man in Christ. It is the action
of God and of man, springing forth from both the Holy Spirit and ourselves.” 146 The Lord’s
prayer when prayed and lived through words and deeds becomes sacramental, as the words effect
what they signify. 147
The holy Spirit also has the mission to “convince the world concerning sin and
righteousness and judgement” (DeV, n.28). God’s people are called to conversion, to metanoia,
to turn away from sin, to turn towards love. Before conversion can happen, God’s people must
144
Walter Wakefield, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Southern France, 1100-1250, (CA: University of California
Press, 1974), 39.
145
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2607.
146
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 2564.
147
Peter J. Kreeft, Catholic Christianity: A Complete Catechism of Catholic Beliefs based on the Catechism of the
Catholic Church, (SF: Ignatius Press, 2014), 402.