The Our Father: The Prayer Christ Gave Us

Every Catholic prayer, however beautiful, however ancient, is a human composition — a creature's attempt to speak to the Creator. The Our Father alone is different. It is the only prayer in the tradition of Christianity that was given, word for word, by God Himself. It is, as the Catechism calls it, "the summary of the whole Gospel" (CCC 2761).

Given on the Mountain

The Our Father appears in the Gospel of St. Matthew (6:9–13), delivered during the Sermon on the Mount, in the section where Our Lord is teaching on prayer. He had just warned against vain repetitions and against praying to be seen by men. Then, with characteristic economy, He said: "Thus therefore shall you pray: Our Father, who art in heaven..."

A shorter version appears in the Gospel of St. Luke (11:2–4), given when a disciple asks: "Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples." Both versions are substantially the same — the Matthean text has been used liturgically in the Western Church since at least the third century.

The Seven Petitions

St. Thomas Aquinas, following the Fathers of the Church, identified seven petitions in the Our Father:

1. Hallowed be Thy name — that God be known and glorified throughout creation
2. Thy kingdom come — the final establishment of God's reign over all things
3. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven — perfect conformity to the divine will
4. Give us this day our daily bread — our material needs, and the Eucharist
5. Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us — the condition of Christian mercy
6. Lead us not into temptation — preservation from the occasions of sin
7. Deliver us from evil — liberation from the power of the devil

The Pater Noster in the Latin Rite

The Latin version — Pater noster, qui es in caelis... — has been at the heart of the Roman Rite for nearly two millennia. It is prayed at every Mass, immediately before the Agnus Dei; it opens the Liturgy of the Hours each day; it is incorporated into every major Catholic devotion from the Rosary to the Divine Mercy Chaplet. No prayer in the Catholic tradition occupies a more central place.

The doxology that Protestant versions typically append — "For Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever" — is not part of the original prayer as recorded in Matthew or Luke. It entered some early manuscripts (particularly the Didache) and was widely used in Eastern Christianity, but the Roman Rite has historically treated it as a separate embolism: the priest's prayer "Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil..." is the Roman equivalent, concluding with the doxology spoken together at Mass.

The Prayer That Contains All Prayer

The Fathers are unanimous in their veneration of the Our Father. Tertullian called it the breviarium totius Evangelii — the compendium of the whole Gospel. St. Augustine wrote an extended commentary on its seven petitions. St. Thomas Aquinas said that in the Our Father "we ask, in the right order, all the things we can desire." Whatever else we pray, however many devotions we undertake, we return always to these words — the only words that God Himself has placed on our lips.