In the Our Father, the petitions unfold like the seven colors of the rainbow of the New Covenant; they are a luminous path that leads us to the treasures of divine mercy.
Newsroom (16/10/2022 15:34, Gaudium Press) Jesus went throughout Galilee, preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom and healing every disease. Great multitudes flocked to Him, for soon His fame had spread to the surrounding countries.
One day He climbed a mountain and began to teach: Blessed are those who have a poor heart… Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you… Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect… (cf. Mt 4:23-25; 5:1-48).
More than the multitude that Christ had before Him, of course, His divine gaze was considering at that moment also all the faithful souls who throughout the millennia would listen attentively to His words.
Therefore, He had in view each one of us when He taught us the most perfect of prayers: “This is how you must pray: Our Father, who art in heaven…” (Mt 6:9). Such a consoling appeal – Our Father! – could only come from the lips of God’s only begotten Son. By taking on our flesh, He revealed to us that we have a Father in Heaven.
Summary of the whole Gospel
The Lord’s Prayer has served as a guide for Christians of all times. Various Fathers and Doctors of the Church made enthusiastic comments about it.
Tertullian called it “the summary of the whole Gospel”. For St. Cyprian, it is a compendium of the heavenly doctrine. In the same vein, St. Augustine assures us: “If you go through all the words of the prayers of the Sacred Scriptures, you will find nothing that is not contained in the ‘Our Father.’ And the Angelic Doctor writes: “In the Our Father, not only is everything asked for that which we can rightly desire, but also in the order in which we should desire it; so that this prayer teaches us not only to ask, but is also normative of our feelings.”
Indeed, in the Our Father, the petitions unfold like the seven colors of the rainbow of the New Covenant; they are a luminous path that leads us to the treasures of divine mercy.
The first three petitions put the theological virtues (faith, hope and charity) into practice, because they are addressed directly to God: “your name”, “your kingdom” and “your will”; the next four implore protection and help in the exercise of the cardinal virtues (justice, temperance, fortitude, and prudence) and constitute appeals of children to the Father: “give us”, “forgive us”, “do not let us fall” and “deliver us”.
Seven requests presented in perfect order
The Our Father Prayer begins with the comforting invocation: “Our Father, who art in heaven.” The seven petitions follow, in the order in which they are to be made, according to St. Thomas‘ observation:
Hallowed be thy name: We recognize first and foremost the glory of God. Therefore, this petition includes all the others. Tertullian teaches us: “When we say ‘hallowed be your name,’ we ask that it be hallowed in us who are in it, but also in others whom God’s grace still awaits, in order to conform to the precept that obliges us to pray for all, even for our enemies.”
Your Kingdom Come: This request aims at our participation in God’s glory, and for this, driven by hope, we implore the “final coming of the Reign of God through the return of Christ”, so that He reigns definitively in all hearts.
Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven: For men to deserve to enter heavenly glory, we ask that all observe the commandments of the divine law. “It is by prayer that we can ‘discern what the will of God is’ and obtain ‘the perseverance to do it. Jesus teaches us that we enter the Kingdom of Heaven not by words, but ‘by doing the will of my Father who is in heaven’ (Mt 7:21).”
Give us this day our daily bread: In this petition we do not aim only at our material sustenance. “This request and the responsibility it implies are also valid for another hunger from which men suffer […]. There is a hunger on earth, ‘not for bread, nor for water, but for hearing the word of God’ (Am 8:11). Therefore, the specifically Christian meaning of this fourth request refers to the Bread of Life: the Word of God to be welcomed in faith, the Body of Christ received in the Eucharist”.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us: We implore forgiveness for all our sins, in which we exchanged friendship with God for ungrateful love for some creature. And as a pledge to be answered, we offer Him the sacrifice of forgiving “those who trespass against us”. Our petition will not be answered without the fulfillment of this demand. The Apostle also urges us to do this: “Forgive one another, just as God in Christ forgave you” (Eph 4:32).
Lead us not into temptation: After having implored in humility the forgiveness of our sins, we beseech God for vigilance, fortitude, and above all, the help of grace, so that henceforth we will not offend Him again.
But deliver us from evil: In this last supplication of the Lord’s Prayer, “evil” is not an abstraction, but designates a creature, Satan, “the angel who personally opposes God and his plan of salvation. In it we ask “to be delivered from all evils, present, past and future, of which he is the author or instigator.”
Whoever conforms his life to the principles contained in the Our Father is a perfect Christian. Let us not spend a single day without reciting it! It accompanies us from the beginning of our journey towards salvation, since our parents and godparents prayed it in the ceremony of our Baptism. And it will be prayed by the priest at the sepulcher, when our body is placed in its final resting place, waiting for the resurrection.
By Father Leandro Cesar Ribeiro, EP
Text extracted from the magazine Heralds of the Gospel, Oct. 2015, n. 166.
Compiled by C. Mittermeier