A set of reflections on the Lord’s Prayer by Paul Pace SJ
Originally published on jesuitreflections.wordpress.com
This set of reflections are dedicated to prayer, specifically to the prayer that Jesus himself taught us. It is He Himself who suggests we use it as a model for our own prayer. The Our Father is perhaps the prayer we know best, a prayer we probably recite more than once a day. Hence the need to revisit it, to dwell on its richness and to discover how it can be the model for our own prayer. Like the disciples in Luke’s gospel, we do desire to learn to pray, and we turn to Jesus, who responds by suggesting the Our Father. The very simplicity of this prayer tells us something important about prayer: good prayer tends towards greater simplicity. Prayer is not a technique or a skill, but somehow entering into personal contact with God. Like other relationships, the less complicated it is, the better and the more effective. One way to pray simply, and to discover that prayer is mostly God’s work in us, is to follow the wise advice of John Chapman, former Benedictine Abbot of Downside, who famously said, ‘Pray as you can, not as you can’t’. Praying the Our Father will enable us to discover in ourselves how we pray best and the desire and trust to pray better.
The Our Father also shows us that true prayer always bears fruit, fruit that will be shared with others as our heart becomes more open and generous. True prayer always leads to action, to greater openness to others, and this in turn makes us feel the need to pray. As we embark on this journey into the Lord’s prayer, let us ask for the grace of the joy and consolation of personal prayer. As part of this Lenten journey, you can pray the Our Father every day, slowly and gently, dwelling on the different petitions. Find a good time, not too long, not too short every time, at a time of the day and in a place where you feel calm and quiet: as soon as you wake up, or before going to sleep, or popping into a church for a couple of minutes. You will be rewarded a hundredfold. With each post you will find a short video/song which may help you with your prayer.
Click on the icon to watch and listen to a beautiful rendition of The Lord’s Prayer by Andrea Bocelli.
“Our Father” ‘The Our Father begins with a great consolation: we are allowed to say “Father”’. These simple yet powerful words by Pope Benedict bring us to the very core of this prayer. This is really the core of the good news that Jesus came to proclaim. We are not slaves but sons and daughters of God. He is not just our distant creator or formidable law enforcer, but our loving father. Yet, it is not always easy to call God ‘Father’. It is only natural that our image of God is coloured by that of our own father who perhaps was not always totally caring or loving to us. Only Jesus can help us understand what this word means, for he is the Son from all eternity, and we become his brothers and sisters, the Father’s adopted children, through him. Calling God our Father is saying something about our very identity, about who we are at the most basic level: we are children of God, members of his family, brothers and sisters of Jesus. We can call him Father because first of all he makes us his sons and daughters. It is his greatest gift to us. ‘You have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you received God’s Spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call
him, “Abba, Father.” (Rom 8:15) For Jesus, the Father is the source of all good, whose mercy is greater than all his works. Jesus invites us to be like our Father in heaven, above all in his great mercy: ‘He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust’. (Mt 5:45). Jesus enables us to be true sons like him, capable of saying, ‘My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not as I will, but as You will’, joining him in his last words, ‘Into your hands I commit my spirit’. (Lk 23:46) O God our Father, we know you only because your son Jesus, told us of your name of Father. We cannot explain its deep meaning, yet you let us experience it every day. Grant us, if you so wish, to live it with our mind and not just with our heart so as to enter into the mind and heart of your son, Jesus Christ. (Card. Carlo M. Martini)
Click on the icon to watch and listen to a beautiful rendition of The Lord’s Prayer to accompany your reflection
“…Who art in heaven” This can be one of the more perplexing petitions of the Our Father. Does it mean that our Father is somewhere else, far from our struggles here on earth, in heaven, where everything is peaceful and in order? The Gospel tells us that it cannot be so. In the person of Jesus we meet the Christian God who is the Emmanuel, the God-with-us. Jesus, the one whom came to live among us, said, ‘Who sees me sees the Father’. Moreover, in the Gospel we find many instances where earth and heaven are closely linked: Jesus said to his disciples that ‘Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father’. (Mt:18:18-19) We can understand these words as first of all distinguishing our earthly father from our heavenly one. More importantly, they remind us that God is living in a world of transcendence, of definitive peace and total justice, to which we all aspire. During our earthly life we are travellers, pilgrims on our way to the Father’s house, towards this state of total peace. Our Father is already there, and Jesus assured us that in his Father’s
house there are many rooms: he himself is going there to prepare a place for us. (Jn 14:2) These words should fill us with confidence and deep inner peace, as we face so many intractable situations and conflicts in our world. When we feel overwhelmed by the darkness and hopelessness that surround us we can remind ourselves that we are journeying towards our Father’s house, a place of definitive peace, where justice and love reign supreme. “One day I entered the cell of our dear little sister [Therese of Lisieux] and I was struck by her expression of profound meditation. She was absorbed in her sewing and yet seemed lost in deep contemplation: “What are you thinking,” I asked her? “I meditate on the Our Father,” she replied. It is so sweet to call the good God our Father! … “And tears shone in his eyes. […] ” Oh ! yes, he is my father and it is sweet to me to give him that name “» (Counsels and Memories).
Click on the icon to watch and listen to a hauntingly beautiful Aramaic rendition of the Our Father sung in the presence of Pope Francis in Georgia
“Hallowed be your name” Father, may your name be made holy! It is not immediately evident what we are praying for in this petition: certainly God does not need our prayers so that his name is made holy, it is holy of itself and cannot be made holier by our prayer. John Cassian, writing in the 5th century, says this about this petition: ‘The hallowing of God is our perfection. And so when we say to him: “Hallowed be your name,” we are saying in other words: Make us such, Father, that we may deserve to understand and grasp how great your hallowing is and, of course, that you may appear as hallowed in our spiritual way of life. This is effectively fulfilled in us when “people see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven”. On the one hand we are asking to recognise ever more our Father’s loving, powerful presence among us and within us: he is our Father, and we pray that this fact may take real and deep roots in our hearts and minds. May this relationship grow stronger, may our steps be enlightened by this loving presence of our Father in our life. We aspire to join the angels, saying, ‘Holy, holy, holy’. These words also remind us of what Jesus said shortly
before teaching us the Our Father: ‘In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven’. (Mt 5:16) We do not perform good deeds to impress others, even less to impress God, but it is only natural that if we lead good lives others will be attracted to give glory to our Father in heaven. We pray to lead good lives so that our witness may enable more men and women to recognise God’s name as holy. As we pray the Our Father we realise how our prayer and the way we live are closely united. Moreover this petition makes us ask ourselves to what extent we really wish that all may come to know God, or whether we are content that we have a good relationship with him. We are reminded of Jesus’ last command before he ascended into heaven, to make this good news of God’s love known by all peoples so that God’s name may be hallowed by all.
Click on the icon to watch and listen to a popular hymn written by Reginald Heber, music by John B Dykes (1823 – 1876)
“Your kingdom come” This is another petition whose meaning is not immediately clear, one which raises questions: What is this kingdom? Isn’t God already reigning, why does he need our prayer so that his Kingdom may come? Even the most superficial reading of the Gospel will show us how central the Kingdom was to the message of Jesus. According to the Gospel of Mark, his first words as a preacher were, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel’. (Mk 1:15) He once declared that the kingdom is ‘in our midst’. (Lk 17:21) Yet, Jesus never defined the kingdom. He preferred to speak of it in parables: ‘The kingdom of God is like…’ a seed that falls on different types of soil, a small quantity of leaven that raises the whole dough, a net that catches all sorts of fish, a field where both wheat and tares grow together until the final judgement. The kingdom is presented as having small beginnings, often mysterious ones. Externally it looks less powerful than the kingdom of Satan. Yet is powerful, it grows inexorably, day and night even while the farmer is asleep, it gives an extraordinary harvest, even a hundredfold
when it finds good soil. Jesus’ words on the kingdom and this prayer do not in any way put into doubt that God is sovereign, reigning supreme over all his creation. Our king is merciful and gentle, who washes the feet of his subjects, insists on calling us his friends and not his servants, who even calls us his brothers and sisters, for we have the same Father. He ardently desires that this kingdom and its values take root in every person’s heart. Not through force but in full freedom of heart: the Father offers us his own Spirit, which slowly transforms us and the world into the image of his Son Jesus. For St Paul the kingdom is ‘not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit’ (Rom 14:17), and its spirit is best set out in the Beatitudes. What we pray for is that the Father’s lordship may grow in people’s hearts, that more people accept the urgent call of Jesus, ‘The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand, repent and believe in the Gospel’. It is certainly a good prayer for Lent.
Click on the icon to watch and listen to a chant from the Taize repertoire - ‘The Kingdom of God’
“Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” Cyprian, a North African bishop of the third century, explains this petition in this way: We say, ‘Your will be done, as in heaven so in earth’; [we pray] not that God do what He wills, but that we may be able to do what God wills. For who can resist God, that He may not do what He wills? But since we are hindered by the devil from obeying God’s will in all things, we pray and ask that God’s will may be done in us; and that it may be done in us we need God’s good will, that is, His help and protection, since no one is strong in his own strength, but he is safe by the grace and mercy of God. This is the prayer of those who understand themselves as sons and daughters of God, and not his slaves. The more we see God as our loving Father, the more we desire that his will be done, not out of fear but out of trust: we realise that fulfiling his will is the best thing that can happen to us. But we are not perfect sons and daughters, we sometimes feel afraid of his will, we are not sure of what he is asking of us. So Jesus suggests we pray for the Father’s will to be done in us. We ask him to let us know his will for us: we know his commandments and we listen to his word, but we know that often these are not enough: we need to pray to know
better what he wants of us. Sometimes, his will is difficult for us, so we pray that we may be able to trust him: even here, Jesus is our great model, for we can be bold enough to repeat what he prayed in the Garden of Olives: ‘Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me. Nevertheless not as I will, but as You will’. (Mt 26:39) When Jesus asks us to pray for God’s will to be done, he is reminding us to pray for others. The Gospel insists that the sum of God’s will is the salvation of all: like God our Father, who makes His sun to rise upon the good and bad, and sends rain upon the just and the unjust, we too pray for the salvation of all.
Click on the icon to watch and listen to a choral piece written and composed by Marty Parks
“Give us this day our daily bread” In what must be one of the most challenging passages of the Gospel, Jesus tells us, ‘Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble’. (Mt 6:34) So when he teaches us how to pray, he tells us to pray for our daily bread. Like the Israelites in the desert who received enough manna for each day, we ask our Father to give us enough of what we need every day. Often we are too preoccupied and anxious when we face our many problems, we feel overwhelmed because we are convinced that our own strength is not enough. We end up paralysed by our anxieties and fears, actually doing very little to deal with our difficulties. Yet, Jesus reassures us we are never alone, we can turn every day to God whom we can trust never to abandon us. He even reassures us that he is there even when we do not follow his will, for he sends the sun and the rain on all, good and bad alike. At the same time, Jesus is clearly encouraging us to ask God for what we need. Not because God needs to be informed or reminded of what our needs are, but because it is good for us to acknowledge our need of God. It is anything but demeaning to remind ourselves
that we are cared for every day in all our needs by someone who loves us unconditionally. Moreover, praying for our daily bread helps us clarify to ourselves what we really need, what we consider more important and worth having. Jesus was very clear on this, he advised us ‘to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these [other] things will be added to you’. (Mt 6:33) Jesus once told the crowds, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst…If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. ’ (Jn 6:35, 51) Let us ask to be given this bread every day, so that we can have the same filial sentiments of our brother Jesus. Let us pray that our relationship with Jesus may grow every day, and that our faith in his presence in the Eucharist may flourish.
Click on the icon to watch and listen to Pope Francis as he talks about the phrase ‘Give us this day our daily bread’
“Forgive us our trespasses” Why does Jesus include a petition for forgiveness when he teaches us how to pray? He wants us to be free enough to look at ourselves in truth, take our sin seriously, in the sure knowledge that our Father’s mercy is without end.
greater honesty and humility: we are ready to be more ourselves with each other, and let the other do likewise, for we are sure that we are accepted and loved, we will not be rejected if the other knows us as we really are.
Sin is never an attractive idea, especially in our relativistic times when it seems banished to oblivion: let everybody act as they feel like, and let us all be tolerant. Yet the amount of human suffering that such attitudes generate should make us think: we see so much selfishness and abuse in interpersonal relations, while in the social sphere, the evils of corruption, war and racism are so rampant.
Our God is the loving father who embraces the son who returns after squandering all his money: the Father does not want to hear about the past, he only wants to celebrate in great style his son’s return. Jesus assures us ‘there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance’. (Lk 15:7) This does not mean that sin is not a serious matter: Jesus told us that his blood has been shed for the forgiveness of sin.
Yet we all know we find it much easier to justify ourselves before our own conscience than to admit our mistakes, our sins. More than our single mistakes and misdeeds – our sins – we need to become more aware of our sin, the sinfulness that seems to have such deep roots in our hearts. We can only do this if we know that there is someone who is always ready to forgive us. Asking and receiving pardon in any relationship strengthens that relationship more than anything else, it creates trust in an atmosphere of
Being able to ask for forgiveness to this merciful Father makes us able to enter much deeper into his loving embrace. It is never easy to believe that God does not expect us to be perfect, never to make mistakes; he wants us rather to acknowledge our limitations and accept his constant readiness to forgive.
Click on the icon to watch and listen to a beautiful prayer sung by Barbara Streisand – ‘Alvinu Malkeinu (Our Father, Our King)’
“as we forgive those who trespass against us” One of the most amazing books I have ever read is, I shall not hate, by Izzeldin Abuelaish, a Palestinian gynaecologist. Having experienced the partition of Palestine and the loss of his family’s land as a boy, he grew up in Gaza, in the most abject poverty. With the help of a couple of scholarships he was able to qualify as a gynaecologist. For many years he worked in a hospital in Israel. This meant daily harassment by the Israeli forces as he went through checkpoints, and to harsh criticism from his fellow Palestinians: ‘Why do you help Jewish mothers to have babies? When they grow up they will become soldiers and kill us’. ‘They might become doctors’, he replied. Towards the end of the Israeli invasion of Gaza in 2009, a tank fired two shots into his house. Three of his daughters and a niece were killed, and several other children suffered horrible injuries. The army said his house had been targeted because he had been hiding Hamas militants, an egregious lie. Shortly afterwards, he and his family moved to Canada, and he slowly understood that his daughters’ death must not be in vain. He became a peace activist, sharing his story and working hard to convince people that peace and forgiveness are more powerful than hate and revenge.
Most of us do not have to face such dramatic choices, but we all have to struggle with the same question: shall I forgive or shall I keep my wounds open and seek retribution? This is anything but simple because forgiveness is a long and complex journey. Yet we also know that our inability to forgive causes us real harm, hardening our hearts. I do not think that here Jesus is speaking of a condition. The parable of the merciful king and his two servants helps us to understand the Gospel logic. One had been pardoned a debt so huge he could never dream of repaying it – thousands of talents is an enormous sum even nowadays. Yet he was unable to understand this mercy, to really accept the superiority of forgiveness over retribution, so that he could not forgive his colleague’s modest debt. The king was so angry he had him sent back into prison. As we pray to be able to open our hands to receive our Father’s pardon, we also pray to keep those hands open to be able to forgive others.
Click on the icon to watch and listen to a podcast from the BBC radio programme Outlook, where Dr Izzeldin Abuelaish is the first of the guest speakers (from 35th second on the clip)
“and lead us not into temptation” Some weeks ago, this petition made the headlines when the Pope said the Church must look for a better translation, one that does not give the impression that it is God who leads us into temptation. It is really one of the most difficult formulations of the Our Father, and the search for something better started centuries ago. This can be an indication the idea behind this petition is itself complex. We all know that temptation is a part of our life. It can come under many forms, a stark reminder that evil is a powerful presence in our world. We feel seduced by what we know is not right, to build our lives on sand rather than on the solid foundations of the Gospel. We are tempted to live an illusion, denying what is so obviously true in the world around us. Perhaps the biggest temptation is to hold that Jesus and his message are very nice, but ultimately irrelevant to my life: it is enough to go to church and say some prayers, for being a good Christian has nothing to do with my choices in my family life, my work, my business, my political views.
never grow into mature Christians. There is nothing of value that we have acquired without effort, without struggle, and it is no coincidence that all the major figures in the Bible had to face serious temptations: not only the good Job, but also Abraham, Moses, David, Elijah. Temptation was the way to understand better God and his presence in their lives. As a result, they grew in faith. Jesus himself was tempted very seriously, and more than once. The basic temptation was to refuse the Cross and seek an easy way of being the Messiah. He knows what it means for us to be tempted: For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Heb 2:18) At the time of his greatest temptation, in the Garden of Olives, Jesus warned his followers to watch and pray, that you enter not into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. (Mk 14: 38) Acknowledging our weakness before temptation, we ask our Father to have mercy on us and strengthen us in our weakness.
Temptation upsets us and sometimes leaves us exhausted and demoralised. Yet we know that without it we can
Click on the icon to watch and listen to a short interview with Pope Francis as he talks about praying the ‘Our Father’.
“deliver us from evil” As our last petition Jesus invites us to ask God to deliver us from evil: we have already asked to be forgiven our sins, and not to be led into temptation; now we pray to be delivered from evil. This emphasis reminds us that the struggle with the evil that inhabits us and our world is a serious one, for we find ourselves pitted against what we often feel is much bigger and powerful than us. Yet this prayer reassures us that we can always turn trustingly to our loving Father and seek his protection. Some authors believe Jesus is here referring to something that is massively evil, the evil we want God to deliver us from above all: some translations even choose to personify the evil, asking to be delivered from the Evil One.
believes it does not need forgiveness, one that does not know humility. For it is “from within, out of the heart of man, [that] come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mk 7:21-23) Jesus compared such persons to whitewashed sepulchres: beautiful outside but inside full of corruption and rot. At this point we do well to recall that the whole prayer is said in the plural, so that this last petition also opens our hearts to the massive presence of evil around us, under so many forms. The scale of human suffering we witness can often feel utterly overwhelming.
Perhaps Jesus is suggesting we ask God to deliver from the evil of a hard, corrupted heart. Jesus, who was always very friendly and understanding with sinners, showed himself unusually hard with hypocrites, those who considered themselves good but whose heart was hardened: unlike sinners, they did not even notice the malice of their actions and felt no need to ask for forgiveness.
When we feel we cannot take any more the suffering of the people of Syria, the wretchedness of the victims of hurricanes and earthquakes, the pain caused by cancer or dementia, the abuse of children and women everywhere, then we know we can turn to God and ask him to deliver humankind – all of us – from evil.
This is the evil we need to ask God to deliver us from, what Pope Francis calls the corrupt heart, a heart that
a beautiful ‘Our Father (Baba Yetu)’ sung by the Sowetu
Gospel choir against the backdrop of a run-through of
the online game called ‘Civilisation’ which shows us the
great advancements and also the pitfalls of humankind
across the centuries.
Click on the icon to watch and listen to