The Our Father

It is the prayer that Jesus Himself taught when His disciples asked Him, «Lord, teach us to pray». For this reason it is called «the Lord's Prayer» and stands as the foundational model of all Christian prayer: within it we ask, with the precise words and in the perfect order, for everything that a human soul can uprightly desire.

Because this is the revolutionary good news brought by Jesus. A pious Jew scarcely dared utter the holy name of God; Jesus commands us to address Him as Father (*Abba*), as an affectionate child speaks to his father at home. Jesus is the Son by eternal nature; we become sons by adoption and grace (divine filiation). Praying the Our Father means entering into that profound filial intimacy with «humble boldness».

Because the same divine sonship that unites us to God makes us brothers and sisters of one another. The word «Our» shatters personal selfishness: one cannot genuinely pray this prayer while harboring unforgiving resentment. Even when prayed in solitude in one's room, it is uttered in the plural: the soul brings before God the whole Church and the entire human family (charity).

After invoking the «Father who art in heaven», seven petitions follow: the first three focus entirely on God (His name, His kingdom, His will); the remaining four focus on our human needs (bread, forgiveness, temptation, deliverance from evil). Spontaneously, we tend to pray in reverse: placing our immediate anxieties first, leaving God for whatever time remains. Jesus rightly orders our desires: prioritize what belongs to God, and our human needs find their true peace.

This is the only petition bound by an explicit condition: we ask to be forgiven «as» we forgive. It is not that God rations His mercy: it is that a heart hardened by resentment becomes impermeable to it, just as parched, baked clay cannot absorb refreshing rain. Forgiving others is the key that opens our heart to receive the forgiveness God eagerly desires to pour out upon us.

Praying the Our Father forms us to trust in God just as a little child trusts completely in his father: asking with absolute confidence—even «asking for the moon», as Saint Josemaría playfully put it—and resting in Him without paralyzing anxiety. This is the heart of «spiritual childhood»: knowing ourselves to be beloved children who place all our worries safely in the hands of the Father (Providence).

By praying it slowly, pausing attentively upon each phrase to make it our own. Saint Teresa of Avila noted that souls have reached the heights of contemplation simply by praying the Our Father with quiet, recollected attention. There is no need for many words: savoring a single petition from the heart can transform one's entire prayer.