A famous prelate of the Church has considered the Lord's Prayer so clear and simple that the whole world could easily understand it - the little child as well as the learned man, the humble peasant as well as the proud aristocrat. In spite of this declaration of the famous prelate, I think it quite possible that, if some of us were suddenly asked the exact meaning of this or that petition of the Lord's Prayer, we might be puzzled to find a satisfactory answer. Today, let us consider the first petition of the Lord's Prayer, "Hallowed by Thy Name".

We might be puzzled by the word, "hallowed". It is a beautiful and solemn word, and is employed in various noble and exalted ways. We may speak of a cemetery as a "hallowed spot". We may say of a notable good man who has died, that he has left behind a "hallowed" memory. But the exact meaning of the word "hallowed" may have escaped our attention. To "hallow" is to make holy, to make sacred, to treat with peculiar reverence in a spiritual way. The word has all of these meanings. The Saints were people just like ourselves who made themselves holy by their good will aided by God's grace. They are therefore "hallowed". And we can understand that the great Missionary College in Ireland, which is called "All Hallows", could have been as well called All Saints College. We can also see that there was a beautiful thought behind the word "Hallows", for it reminds us of the Feast of All Saints, known in olden times as the Feast of All Hallows. Even in our own day the eve of the Feast is called "Halloween", or the Eve of All Hallows.

When, in the Lord's Prayer, we say "Hallowed be Thy name", we know that nothing we can say or do can make that Name holier than it is, for that Name means Almighty God Himself, the source of all holiness. What we really ask in the First Petition is, that all mankind shall give to that Name all honor and glory and praise and thanksgiving for ever and ever. We ask that His Name shall be kept sacred on the lips and in the hearts of all men, first of all on our own lips and in our hearts.

In this connection, we shall recall how President Lincoln, in his noble Gettysburg Address, employed the word "hallow". He was dedicating that field in which so many soldiers lay buried. Lincoln said that there was a sense in which he could not dedicate that ground, could not "hallow" it, because the dead who lay there had already hallowed it when, in death, they gave to their country the last full measure of devotion.

We pray to our Heavenly Father: "Hallowed by Thy Name". What we really ask - let me repeat the fact - is that all of us may ever hold His Name in the deepest reverence, may praise Him as we should, may serve Him as we should, may always exhibit to that Holy Name the evidence of a true love for it, and may thus give back to it some poor human echo of the praise it forever receives from the Saints and Angels in heaven. That sublime chorus of adoring praise is repeated every Mass said throughout the whole world, when the priest says: "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of hosts. Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory."

God's Name is Holy. Thus did the Blessed Virgin remind us in her own great song of Praise, the Magnificat, sung also every day in the year at Vespers, of our duty to hallow that Name. "for He that is mighty hath done great things to me, and HOLY is His Name".

We know that the Infinite God is our Creator, our Redeemer, our Sanctifier, and that He is thus our first beginning and our last end. We come from Him, and it is our destiny when our life it over to go back to Him. Knowing this, how is it possible that we should fail to honor His Name.