(c) Josephine Lombardi 2024
The following contains excerpts from Josephine Lombardi, On Earth as it is in Heaven. Jubilee Edition (Novalis: Toronto, 2023).
On February 11, 2022, Pope Francis announced preparations for an upcoming Jubilee Year to be celebrated in 2025, with the motto “Pilgrims of Hope.” In his letter to Archbishop Salvatore Rino Fisichella, Pro-Prefect for the Dicastery for Evangelization, for the Jubilee Year of 2025, he requested a preparatory year to take place in 2024, focusing on the need for prayer, especially reflection on the Lord’s Prayer: “In this time of preparation, I would greatly desire that we devote 2024, the year preceding the Jubilee event, to a great “symphony” of prayer. In a word, may it be an intense year of prayer in which hearts are opened to receive the outpouring of God’s grace and to make the “Our Father,” the prayer Jesus taught us, the life programme of each of his disciples.”
As a contribution to this Year of Prayer, I have prepared a Jubilee Edition of my book, On Earth as it is in Heaven. My hope is that this book will be a resource for those seeking to deepen their understanding of the profound relevance and spiritual insight of the Lord’s Prayer, helping them to see the logic and the flow of the petitions and how one petition builds on the previous one, setting us up to experience fulfillment and authentic freedom. Each section analyzes one line of the Lord’s Prayer, followed by reflection questions and a short prayer, an ideal resource for personal or small group reflection.
I am grateful to Dr. Anne Jamieson, the executive director of the Institute for Catholic Education in Ontario, for encouraging me to write the new edition, and to Archbishop Salvatore Rino Fisichella, Pro-Prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization at the Vatican, for preparing the foreword for the book and for his endorsement.
I offer this reflection on the Lord’s Prayer as a contribution to this very important time of preparation. My hope is that this book will be a part of our study of the “life programme” that is revealed in this very important prayer.
If your parish or group would like to book me for an in person or virtual presentation or retreat on the Lord’s Prayer, please contact me at josephine.lombardi@utoronto.ca.
The book is available for purchase through Novalis Publishing or Amazon.ca/Amazon.com. Please note the Kindle version on Amazon is the first edition from 2010. The new edition is available in print. To view a recent You Tube presentation on the Lord’s Prayer, click here.
