Chapter 27
The Spirituality of the Lord's Prayer
CATECHISM OF THE
The Catechism refers to the Lord's Prayer as the fundamental Christian prayer, the summary of the whole Gospel, the foundation of further desires, the most perfect of prayers, and the center of the Scriptures (2759, 2761, 2774). Yet, since we are so familiar with the Our Father, we wonder if we can gain any deeper insight into this most crucial prayer.
The Catechism sagely cites a passage of St. Thomas Aquinas on the Lord's Prayer: "In it we ask, not only for all the things we can rightly desire, but also in the sequence that they should be desired. This prayer not only teaches us to ask for things, but also in what order we should desire them" (2763).
If the Lord's Prayer specifies the principal values of the Christian life in order of their priority and importance, what might we learn by beginning at the end and working our way through the prayer in reverse order? Such an analysis manifests to us a kind of pattern and summary of spiritual maturity - the step-by-step progression by which many people typically grow in their relationship with God. This approach serves to help us better understand the structure and integrity of the prayer so as to deepen our relationship with God.
Deliverance From Evil and Temptation
Perhaps the most primordial of all human prayer is the final petition: "Deliver us from evil." This fundamental plea appears on the lips of even the most hardened unbelievers when threatened by danger, fear, or catastrophic need, making theists of us all. In a rudimentary way it serves as the start of the life of faith for, by our plea, we reject the impending evil, we acknowledge our inability to save ourselves, and we confess that God alone has the power to deliver us from it. That is, we open ourselves up to receiving God's mercy and grace.
As we mature, we readily see how the greatest threats in our daily life rarely menace us from without. Rather, we more often are forced to contend with a conflicting terror within, namely, temptation. And so we are led to pray: "Lead us not into temptation." This petition recognizes the common dilemma in life of being confronted with competing good (and bad) things, and it implores God not to allow us to take the way that leads to sin. It asks God to strengthen our human freedom so that we will make choices that fulfill his will for us, that enrich our personal dignity, and so contribute to our ultimate happiness.
The Divine Mercy
Our encounter with temptation only points up to us the truth of our own vulnerability and feeble vincibility before the world. In turn, it humbles us before God as we recognize his gracious offer of help to us in the midst of it. We know we do not deserve the gift of God's generosity; we are enlightened to accept the richness of God's compassion and mercy as the sole motive for our redemption. Imbued with this spirit, we are impelled to pray: "Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us."
At this point the prayer turns us away from anxiety about future temptation and evil, and it focuses us on the past. Specifically, the petition fills us with holy compunction over the actual evil we have ourselves committed. We begin to see how we need to be saved, not only from what might come, but from what has already transpired. From ourselves. This petition awakens in us a healthy sense of sin.
What makes it especially healthy is the way the prayer leads us to comprehend the communal dimensions of personal failing. Even our most private sins injure others at large and the community as a whole. Therefore, we should not expect to experience the reparative power of God's mercy in isolation. Rather, in order for divine compassion to be authentically appropriated by us, it must be first given away by us . . . precisely to those others who have given us offense. And this is the only demand that the entire Lord's Prayer makes of us.
In acceding to this commandment, we are blessed with the revelation of a tremendous truth: the Lord has called us to live in holy dependence upon one another. Just as our personal sin affects the good of all, so does our grace-filled offer of forgiveness effect the reconciliation of all God's people.
This is a crucial breakthrough moment in faith. For at this moment we unite ourselves to a solution for sin that does not come from ourselves or from the world. We reverence forgiveness as a divine gift of the resurrection. And in asking for that gift, we eagerly assume our part in dispensing divine mercy without limit.
Divine Sustenance
The wonder of forgiveness makes clear to us the reality of our own weakness apart from God. So we next pray for the strength and nourishment that only God can give and that we need to receive every day: "Give us this day our daily bread." Now we are no longer looking for extreme favors, but we are asking God for the mundane and ordinary. That is to say, our prayer has become a prayer of self-abandonment and self-surrender.
Surrender to God
For what is this daily bread? "One does not live by bread alone, / but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God" (Mt 4:4). This prayer for daily bread expresses our yearning for a fervent spiritual life. Therefore, we pray: "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done." In this brazen and daring act we renounce ultimate control over our lives, and we ask God's authority to govern us. We surrender all our willfulness and invite God to be the one who forms and refashions all our desires, and whose providence directs the plan for the way we live our lives.
The Catechism tells us that it is "the Father's will 'to raise up men to share in his own divine life' (LG, 2). He does this by gathering men around his Son Jesus Christ. This gathering is the Church, on earth the seed and beginning of that Kingdom" (541; LG, 5). By our petition we ask to be drawn into this sanctified gathering around Jesus and to share in God's own life. We turn over to God our mind and our heart. We profess God's sovereignty in a way that acknowledges our own vulnerability, but in a way that does not belittle us. Rather, calling for the fulfillment of the Kingdom and will of the Father stands as the hallmark and source of our true dignity.
God's Holiness and Majesty
Up until now we have praised God for all the things that he has done for us on earth. At this moment our prayer turns heavenly, praising God, not because of what he does for us, but because of Who He Is - the Majestic One. By praying that God is in heaven, we are claiming that he is present "in the hearts of the just" (2802). Our prayer signifies our desire to be one with the Father in his heavenly home. It is a prayer that we might be transformed and recreated so that our lives become 'heavenly' - that is, worthy dwellings for the Father.
We acclaim the Father's Name so
that we might be made holy and blameless in his sight as we claim it as our
own. We pray Our Father. In confessing God's holiness, we are asking to be made
saints. This cry is a far cry from "deliver us from evil." The prayer
acknowledges the efficacy of the Name of God in our sanctification. Jesus
himself prays: "Righteous Father. . . I made known to them your name and I
will make it known, that the love with which you loved me may be in them and I
in them" (In
Our Father
And so we pray: "Our Father." Now there is no plea, no petition - just a simple cry of love from a child. This was the way Jesus himself addressed God. His revealing and sharing this intimacy with us constitutes an earth-shaking privilege. In a certain respect, these two words are all that are needed, for they sum up the content and thrust of the rest of the prayer. To utter these two words we must be children and believe the way that God loves us as a Father: simply because we belong to him - because we are his.
As we pray "Our Father" we stand in amazement at the progress we have made in the life of faith. The servile fear that once enslaved us - "Deliver us from evil" - has now been transformed into filial fear.
No longer are we threatened by
impinging evil and terrifying punishment. Instead, the only thing we fear is
the horror of ever losing God. Yet, even in this regard we remain steadfastly
confident: "My Father . . . is greater than all, and no one can take them
out of the Father's hand" (Jn.
Our maturity in faith inspires us
to ever greater perfection: "So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father
is perfect" (Mt