First, in prayer, “hallowing God’s name” means rising above our begging for things, above even seeking his will for us, to a simple recognition of God’s holiness, of God being God. Perhaps it simply points to our keeping an attitude of worship toward God. Granted the obvious fact that we can’t literally make God holy, what could the statement mean? On the other hand, the line in the Gospel does say “made holy”: as if other people (us) are the ones making God’s name holy. And a pretty good place to start, and to rise to, in our prayer: to know that “hallowing” is what God is all about. That’s a pretty good definition, a pretty good name, for the Christian God.
But second, the ultimate making he does is to make us holy: to give us infinitely more than this created world, to give us himself. God’s name, we could say, is “Holy-maker.” First, “maker”: that is, he’s the one who makes everything else, the giver, the generous one. This, as we have said before, is the real meaning of holiness: sharing in God’s happiness, sharing in God’s love, sharing the internal life of the Trinity. But far more, he shares with us his nature, lets us enter into his very life. Yes, he gives us our daily bread, forgives us, delivers us. The place of holiness in the statement is nice, because it points us to the highest gift God gives us. One traditional way of interpreting “hallowed be thy name,” then, is to begin by ignoring the direction of the statement, and turning it around more towards, “Hallower be thy name”: God is the one who makes others holy. But if we have received everything from him, we have nothing to offer in return. Philosophically – and Biblically – this is really what defines God: he is the Creator, the one from whom everything else receives everything that it is. Even our worship – and this petition of the Our Father has much to do with worship – does not help God, it helps us. God is hard to talk about, because everything flows one way: we are always the ones who benefit. But this is not the only such strangeness when we talk about God. “Hallowed,” of course, means “made holy.” In English, as in the Greek of the New Testament, it is in the passive voice: the focus is not on who in particular is making God’s name holy, but just that it be made holy.
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