[Sidenote: The Preface]
The Preface and Preparation for offering the Seven Petitions to God:
_Our Father Who art in heaven_.
_This means--_
O Almighty God, Who in Thy boundless mercy hast not only granted us
permission, but by Thine only beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, hast
bidden and taught us through His merit and mediation to look to Thee
as Father and call Thee Father, though Thou mightest in all justice be
a stern Judge of us sinners, who have sinned so often and so
grievously against Thy divine and gracious will, and thus have angered
Thee: Put in our hearts, by this Thy mercy, a comfortable confidence
in Thy fatherly love, and make us feel and taste the sweetness of
childlike trust, so that we may joyfully name Thee Father, and know
Thee and love Thee, and call upon Thee in all our necessities. Have us
in Thy keeping, that we may remain Thy children, and not be guilty of
making Thee, dear Father, a terrible Judge, and ourselves Thine
enemies, and not Thy children.
It is Thy will that we not only call Thee Father, but that all of us
together call Thee our Father, and thus offer our prayers with one
accord or all: Grant us, therefore, brotherly love and unity, that we
may know and think of one another as true brethren and sisters, and
pray to Thee, our one common Father, or all men and for every man,
even as one child prays or another to its father.
Let no one among us seek his own things or forget before Thee the
things of others; but, all hatred, envy and dissension laid aside
[Phil. 2:4], may we love one another as good and true children of God,
and thus say with one accord not "my Father," but "_our_ Father."
Moreover, since Thou art not a father according to the flesh nor upon
earth, but art in heaven, a spiritual Father, Who diest not and art
not weak, but unlike an earthly father who cannot help himself,
whereby Thou showest us how immeasurably better a Father Thou art, and
teachest us to hold as nothing in comparison with Thee all earthly
fatherhood, fatherland, friends, goods, flesh and blood: Grant us,
therefore, O Father, that we may also be Thy heavenly children; teach
us to think only of our souls and of our heavenly inheritance, that
our temporal fatherland and earthly lot may not deceive and hold and
hinder us, and make us altogether children of this world, so that with
real and true cause we may say, "Of our _heavenly_ Father," and may be
truly Thy heavenly children.