Relearn The Lord’s Prayer
- Deacon Dan DeLuca
- Oct 5, 2022
- 6 min read
Relearn the Lord’s Prayer. That’s right, relearn the Lord’s Prayer. You are probably thinking to yourself, I have that prayer so committed to memory that I can say it forwards and backwards, and recite it in my sleep. That is probably true for most Catholics and Christians. However, when is the last time you really listened to the words and wrestled with their meaning? When is the last time you examined the rest of your prayer life through the lens of the Lord’s Prayer? As you read the Gospel slow down and read it like you hearing the Lord’s Prayer for the first time.
The Lord’s Prayer
He was praying in a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples.” And he said to them, “When you pray, say: “Father, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread; and forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive every one who is indebted to us; and lead us not into temptation.” Luke 11 : 1-4
Scriptural Analysis
The ambiguity of location is Luke’s way of telling the reader the key is what Jesus was doing and not where he was doing it. By this point, the disciples were very accustomed to seeing Jesus prayer and were inspired to enter more deeply into prayer themselves. They asked him to teach them how to pray just as John the Baptist had taught his disciples. This request would have been expected as It was common for rabbis of the time to instruct their students on how to pray.
The version of the Lord’s prayer presented in Luke is shorter than the version in Matthew. Luke’s contains five petitions whereas Matthew’s contains seven. This likely reflects the different ways that the prayer was used in the early Church with Matthew’s becoming the preferred version for liturgical use.
Jesus opens the prayer by addressing God as Father. In the Old Testament period God was called Father in relation to the entire people of Israel or to Israel’s kin in a special case. The common person never referred to God as Father. Jesus is pointing his disciples to a more intimate relationship with God: to share in the intimacy that Jesus has with the Father. It also indicates a family bond, that we may be called the children of God.
The first two petitions in Luke’s account focus on things of God while the last three focus on the needs of the one praying. This is an important divide. Before we ask for anything for ourselves, we first give God all the honor and glory due him. Only when God is given his place, will other things take their proper place.
The first petition, hallowed be thy name, is a petition to honor God as Holy. This prayer recognizes God’s absolute difference from all of creation and it also takes on an obligation to be holy as he is holy. In other words, give us the grace needed to keep one’s life from profaning God. There is also a tie here to the prophet Ezekiel:
And I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them; and the nations will know that I am the Lord, says the Lord God, when through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. Ezekiel 36 : 23
Our ability to glorify God requires God. He alone is the one who can glorify his name. We cooperate with him to do so.
The second petition, thy kingdom come, is a petition for the Kingdom of God, inaugurated by Christ, to be made effective in the world of humans. The prayer is also asking for the Kingdom of God, to reign in one’s heart. Saint Augustine writes, “When you say ’Thy Kingdom Come,’ you pray for yourself, because you pray that you may lead a good life. May the kingdom that is to come to your saints and your righteous ones also come to us.” We are praying both universally for God’s kingdom but also specifically for our place in the kingdom.
The third petition, give us each day our daily bread, for bread (artos in Greek), has several meaning. First, it is a prayer to meet our daily physical needs. Give us the food we need to sustain us. Second, there is also a spiritual component to this. Recall the temptation of Christ in the dessert where his response to Satan was that man does not live on bread alone. We need the word of God. Finally, the phrase is also understood to be referring to the Eucharist Give us each day our daily bread, harkens back to the manna, the bread given each day:
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I will rain bread from heaven for you; and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may prove them, whether they will walk in my law or not. Exodus 16:4
The next petition, forgive us our sins, has tied to it our forgiveness of every one who is indebted to us. The words used here, forgive and debts, recall Old Testament legislation around the jubilee year and the remission of debts, “At the end of every seven years you shall grant a release.” (Deuteronomy 15 : 1) In Nazareth, Jesus had declared a jubilee mission proclaiming liberty.
The final petition, and lead us not into temptation, can be more accurately phrased do not subject us to the final test. In other words, spare us the great tribulation that was expected to accompany the coming of the messiah. The Greek word used here, peirasmos, is the same word used to describe the temptation of Christ. The petition is really about asking for protection from the evil one and the strength needed to withstand trial.
Daily Application
The Lord’s prayer is recited so often that is is really easy to become numb to it: to rattle it off without actually thinking about the words and their meaning. Yet when his disciples asked him specifically how to pray, this is the prayer Jesus gave them. That means this is a prayer of immense importance: a prayer we should study and learn from. The early church recognized its importance. We see the prayer in the Didache along with the instructions to pray it three time daily. Why is this prayer so important? I think there are three reason.
First, this prayer was given to us by Jesus Christ himself. The disciples specifically asked him how to pray and he responded with these instructions. This prayer was given to mankind directly by God. When we are praying this prayer, we are uttering the words of Christ himself. That makes this prayer foundational in the spiritual life.
Second, this prayer is a model for how we should approach all prayer. It starts by first giving praise and thanks to God. So often when we pray, we forget that. We come to the Lord with our list of needs and forget to offer him praise and thanksgiving: not because of what he has done but because of who he is. This prayer does that. We need to model all of our prayer off of this prayer. Recall the words of Job, “the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21) No matter what is going on in life, always start with praising the Lord.
Lastly, the petitions related to our needs focus on what we truly need. Give me enough to sustain me: both physically and spiritually. Keep me in right relationship with my fellow man and with God. Protect me from any evil that would keep me from God. This is all we truly need. We come to God will all sorts of petitions in large part because we over complicate our lives. Consumerism creates work and financial stress. Busyness creates isolation. We lose sight of what we actually need in life and thus have a laundry list of what we think we need. In the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus is showing up what we truly need and thus the proper way to order life.
Take some time today to pray, really pray in a slow, meditative fashion, the Lord’s Prayer. Listen to the words and pay attention to what stirs in your heart as you say the prayer. Write it down and then spend some time in prayer with those thoughts. Ask God to reveal to you what they mean: why your heart was moved in those ways. Then, ask him what he wants your response to be. He is our Father and wants nothing more than for his children to come to him. Start by relearning the Lord’s Prayer.
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