…That you may eat and drink with Me at my table in my kingdom

Have you ever pondered the positioning of the Our Father immediately prior to the Words of the Testament? The Words of the Testament are the Words in which Christ established His perpetual remembrance and in which He gives us a share in the Kingdom that is to come. Having given the Father thanks for every good gift He gives us in His Son and joining in the adoration of the heavenly hosts, we proceed to ask our Father for everything in the Our Father that through the Words of Institution Christ will then most surely grant and deliver to us.

Our Father who art in heaven (and He is that only in Christ, who gave us this prayer)

Hallowed be Thy name (that is, may we remember and confess Your Holy name into which we were baptized and that by the great gift of the Savior’s body and blood may we keep that name holy in our words and deeds)

Thy kingdom come (which transpires through the gift of His Holy Spirit who alone enables us to believe his holy Word: “This is my body, my blood, for you…”)

Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven (and what is His will but that we enter into the Kingdom where He has prepared a place for us through His Son and that we feast with Him, communing with all the saints and the holy angels).

Give us this day our daily bread (the bread we need for each day is not mere earthly bread, for “man does not live by bread alone.” Indeed Christ warns us against laboring for the bread that perishes and instead to receive the bread that He gives. We need the bread of life. The very flesh and blood of Christ, of God in the flesh, to be our sustenance)

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us (and this is exactly what He imparts to us through the Testamental Words and in the Supper: the love that has forgiven absolutely all sin and that alone can impart to us the strength to forgive with abandon and joy)

And lead us not into temptation (for God allows no one to be tempted beyond what they can bear, but provides the way of escape so they can bear it and that way of escape above all is “the cup of blessing which we bless” and the “bread which we bread” the communion of Christ’s body and blood, in which we experience the real and genuine kingdom that is no trick or deceit and which alone exposes all the counterfeits that would have us sell them to themselves.

But deliver us from Evil (or, from the Evil One, and this is exactly what the Savior’s body and blood, given into death for the forgiveness of our sins, has done for us, and continues still to do for us. He comes to us to free us from the Evil One in His Words, and in the fulfillment of those words as we eat and drink with Him. Where?)

For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever! (The Kingdom, that’s where! That is what is reached to us. That Kingdom which is the triumph of Divine Love in human flesh over all the power of the adversary, over every human sin, over death itself. We truly FEAST with Him and know that we have tasted heaven itself upon the earth and that we have been given a teasing and joyous taste of what is still to come in its fullness at our Lord’s Appearing).

Amen (It is so, and it will be so when the Amen Himself speaks His Words that cause to be exactly what they say and by the power of His Spirit through the Savior’s omnipotent Words, His body and blood are then reached to us, and given to us as our very life in the consecrated bread and wine).

Could there be a greater prayer for us to pray between the Sanctus and the Words of the Testament? I think not!