As I suggested several weeks ago, I believe that one way that we can begin to acquire the mind if Christ is by understanding how He prayed. The Our Father is the prayer that Tradition tells us Jesus gave us when He taught His followers to pray in this way.

So, Jesus taught us that the God we pray to is Our ABBA, whose name we truly reverence and cherish. He is not some abstract, far-away deity but, rather, someone Who has chosen to share His Life with us, through the instruments of our parents.

After we acknowledge God as Our ABBA, we express something very important. We express our desire for HIS KINGDOM TO BECOME A REALITY in our lives and world. I suspect that we don’t always realize that for this to happen we must make every effort to bring it into existence. When you think about it, this has a direct relation to the exhortation that both John the Baptizer and Jesus articulated during their earthly ministries: Repent – change your hearts and minds – for the Kingdom of God is at hand. The only way that God’s Kingdom becomes a reality in the here-and-now is by the actions of people who are followers of Jesus and make every attempt to LIVE LIKE JESUS.

When you think about the life of Jesus, you can see where He made every attempt to make God’s Kingdom real. He treated everyone with respect! He unconditionally loved others! He unconditionally forgive others, even those who did Him bodily harm! He treated all others as He Himself wanted to be treated! He lived His life in complete harmony with His beliefs!

If we express our desire for God’s Kingdom to come, we must also be willing to work to make it a reality! We must be determined to not be seduced by the values, attitudes and things of this world but, rather, to make the real establishment of God’s Kingdom the foremost priority in our lives.

Some might want to say that this is impossible, that one person cannot change the world. Jesus changed the world in which He lived. We can influence the immediate world in which we live by being determined to live in accord with our beliefs and our Christian values. Don’t look to the entire world. Look to the world in which you live, work and play. That is the world that you can possibly influence. Just try and then leave it up to God to determine the influence!