Holiness is not just the act or state of doing and being what is right. That description bears the same relationship to holiness as the wavelength 450-495 nm has to the color blue. It is the material description of it and it is useful for understanding how to generate holiness and it is useful for cutting through a lot of cant about what is and is not holiness. (In this manner, love is not just willing the good of another, although that is the material description of it and useful in the same way). But holiness has qualia. Holiness is an experience. Holiness can be perceptible and overwhelming. I know of no other experience that is as life-changing.

President Hunter gave a talk that insists that we enjoy or experience holiness. In particular, he says, we should approach our prayers with an awareness of the holiness of the Lord.
Hallowed be thy name.

Reverence and adoration were frequently declared in prayer by the Master and were beautifully expressed in the Sermon on the Mount when he gave this counsel: “After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name.” (Matt. 6:9.)

“Probably no other words in the Lord’s Prayer have been so frequently slurred and overlooked as ‘Hallowed be thy name.’ They lie …, ” as one writer said, “in the valley between the great name of God and the glorious Kingdom for which we are looking and waiting. We slide over them as though they were only a parenthesis and hasten on to ask for bread and deliverance from our greatest foe.” (Charles Edward Jefferson, Character of Jesus, Salt Lake City: Parliament Publishers, 1968, pp. 313–14.)

Jesus was careful to place the petition “Hallowed be thy name” at the very forefront of his prayer. Unless that reverent, prayerful, honorable attitude toward God is uppermost in our hearts, we are not fully prepared to pray.

….

There are wide areas of our society from which the spirit of prayer and reverence and worship has vanished. Men and women in many circles are clever, interesting, or brilliant, but they lack one crucial element in a complete life. They do not look up. They do not offer up vows in righteousness, as the requirement is stated in the Doctrine and Covenants, “on all days and at all times.” (D&C 59:11.)

That is an amazing scripture.

Other Posts from the Sunday Morning session of the October 1977 General Conference

• Practice Makes Tolerable by Nathaniel Givens
• Are We Haters or Forgivers? by Jan Tolman
• We must continually look up by Marilyn Nielson