October 4, 2026

Twenty Seventh Sunday of Ordinary Time

by Fr. Jonah, O.P.

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Our Father, who art in heaven, 

hallowed be thy name . . .

Before we even get to the meaning of ‘hallowed,’ pause and consider what we learn from the type of statement this is: it’s a request. We’re asking God for something. In fact, that’s going to be the rest of the prayer: the Our Father is mostly a list of requests we make of God. Remember that Our Lord himself composed the prayer, so there’s an important lesson here: it is alright, good even, to ask God for things. We’re never going to wear him out. He loves us.

So the first thing we’re asking God is that his name be hallowed. Since God is all-holy from all eternity, it cannot be that we are asking that God’s name be made to be hallowed, to be holy. Rather, we ask that his name be recognized and treated in a holy way. What does ‘holy’ even mean? It means set apart, reserved in a special way, different from all other things. To ask that God’s name be hallowed is to ask that our hearts and minds be shaped such that we truly do think of God and treat him as the most important thing in the universe, that we relate to him in a way different and higher than all others.

The order of the requests in the Our Father has its own lesson for us. The very first thing that Jesus instructs us to ask God is that his name be hallowed. As the Catechism puts it, this first petition we make in the Lord’s Prayer “carries us toward him, for his own sake. . . . It is characteristic of love to think first of the one whom we love” (CCC 2804). This is to share the love of Christ the Son for the Father: “Father, glorify your name” (Jn 12:28). The more we share in the life of Jesus (which should be our life goal), the more we will love the Father. May we all be filled with a greater love of God the Father, with a greater desire for his name to be hallowed.

This Sunday is the feast day of St. Francis of Assisi (Holy Father Francis, as we Dominicans traditionally refer to him). His own exposition on the Lord’s Prayer has been preserved down through the centuries, so I’ll leave you with this from Holy Father Francis: “Hallowed be Thy Name: may the knowledge of Thee in us be made bright, so that we may know, what is the breadth of Thy kindnesses, the length of Thy promises, the sublimity of Thy Majesty and the depth of Thy judgments.”

Know of my prayers for all of you.

In Christ,

Fr. Jonah, O.P.