“After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” (Matthew 6:9). The phrase “hallowed be thy name” can be read in multiple ways. If we rearrange it a little, we might understand it as thy name is hallowed. Our Father's name is holy. Literally. Man of Holiness is one of His names. “Wherefore teach it unto your children, that all men, everywhere, must repent, or they can in nowise inherit the kingdom of God, for no unclean thing can dwell there, or dwell in his presence; for, in the language of Adam, Man of Holiness is his name, and the name of his Only Begotten is the Son of Man, even Jesus Christ, a righteous Judge, who shall come in the meridian of time.” (Moses 6:57). Our Father's name is so sacred that after the injunction to worship only Him and to refrain from creating or worshiping idols, the very next of the Ten Commandments was “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.” (Exodus 20:7). The name of God is so sacred that during the time of Jesus Christ, the name of God would be pronounced only once for the whole year, and that by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies, which is entirely appropriate, since, as we have previously established, His name is Holy. I did want to bring up a second possible reading of the phrase “Hallowed be thy name.” If we read it instead as “Hallowed Be, thy name,” we can see a second of God’s holy names. The verb to be when conjugated into the first person singular becomes I Am. “And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I Am That I Am: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I Am hath sent me unto you.” (Exodus 3:13-14). God is known as “I Am” because, first and foremost, He is. He is a fully integrated person. All of His thoughts, all of His words, all of His actions, all of His power and influence and purpose are all united and directed at a single aim - to bring about the immortality and eternal life of His children. He is more than any of us can understand, internally fractious and divided and conflicted and flawed and incomplete as we are. The original Old English source of the word holy and the word whole is the same. To be holy is to be whole, and to be whole is to be holy. When we pray with an honest heart and sincere intent, we do so that we might bring our will and desire into alignment with God's will and desire. Our prayers are an attempt to reunite ourselves with our Heavenly Father and become whole once more. This is what the Savior meant when He said “Hallowed be thy name.” Our Father's name becomes more Holy and more Whole when we do everything we can to reintegrate ourselves back into that one great whole, the Great I Am, the Man of Holiness. I hope that through our prayers we can shape ourselves and our lives in a way that will truly help to hallow our Father's name.
