God Our Father
Via Augustine’s Sermons on the New Testament
1. The order established for your edification requires that you learn first what to believe, and afterwards what to ask. For so says the Apostle, Whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord, shall be saved. This testimony blessed Paul cited out of the Prophet; for by the Prophet were those times foretold, when all men should call upon God; Whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord, shall be saved. And he added, How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? Or how shall they hear without a preacher? Or how shall they preach except they be sent? Therefore were preachers sent. They preached Christ. As they preached, the people heard, by hearing they believed, and by believing called upon Him. Because then it was most rightly and most truly said,How shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? Therefore have ye first learned what to believe: and today have learned to call on Him in whom you have believed.
2. The Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, has taught us a Prayer; and though He be the Lord Himself, as you have heard and repeated in the Creed, the Only Son of God, yet He would not be alone. He is the Only Son, and yet would not be alone; He has vouchsafed to have brethren. For to whom does He say, Say, Our Father, which art in heaven? Whom did He wish us to call our Father, save His own Father? Did He grudge us this? Parents sometimes when they have gotten one, or two, or three children, fear to give birth to any more, lest they reduce the rest tobeggary. But because the inheritance which He promises us is such as many may possess, and no one be straitened; therefore has He called into His brotherhood the peoples of the nations; and the Only Son has numberless brethren; who say, Our Father, which art in heaven. So said they who have been before us; and so shall say those who will come after us. See how many brethren the Only Son has in His grace, sharing His inheritance with those for whom He suffered death. We had a father and mother on earth, that we might be born to labours and to death: but we have found other parents, God our Father, and the Church our Mother, by whom we are born unto life eternal. 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 that our Creator has condescended to be our Father!
3. We have heard whom we ought to call upon, and with what hope of an eternal inheritance we have begun to have a Father in heaven; let us now hear what we must ask of Him. Of such a Father what shall we ask? Do we not ask rain of Him, today, and yesterday, and the day before? This is no great thing to have asked of such a Father, and yet ye see with what sighings, and with what great desire we ask for rain, when death is feared, when that is feared which none can escape. For sooner or later every man must die, and we groan, and pray, and travail in pain, and cry to God, that we may die a little later. How much more ought we to cry to Him, that we may come to that place where we shall never die!
