NO GREATER LOVE: THE LORD’S PRAYER 

Practicing Catholics know the Lord’s Prayer (the Our Father) by heart. Thus, this very profound prayer taught us by the Lord Himself, tends to “roll” off the tongue without us really thinking about what we say when we pray it. Pope Benedict, in Volume 1 of Jesus of Nazareth devotes an entire chapter to this prayer examining each petition in detail. The Our Father, then, like the Ten Commandments, begins by establishing the primacy of God, which then leads naturally to a consideration of the right way of being human. Here, too, the primary concern is the path of love, which is at the same time a path of conversion. If man is to petition God in the right way, he must stand in the truth. And the truth is: first God, first his Kingdom (cf. Mt 6:33). The first thing we must do is step outside ourselves and open ourselves to God. Nothing can turn out right if our relation to God is not rightly ordered. For this reason, the Our Father begins with God and then, from that starting point, shows us the way toward being human. At the end we descend to the ultimate threat besetting man, for whom the Evil one lies in wait---we may recall the image of the apocalyptic dragon that wages war against those "who keep the commandments of God and bear testimony to Jesus" (Rev 12:17).

Yet the beginning remains present throughout: Our Father---we know that he is with us to hold us in his hand and save us. In his book of spiritual exercises, Father Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, the Superior General of the Jesuits, tells the story of a staretz, or spiritual advisor of the Eastern Church, who yearned "to begin the Our Father with the last verse, so that one might become worthy to finish the prayer with the initial words---'Our Father’" In this way, the staretz explained, we would be following the path to Easter. "We begin in the desert with the temptation, we return to Egypt, then we travel the path of the Exodus, through the stations of forgiveness and God's manna, and by God's will we attain the promised land, the kingdom of God, where he communicates to us the mystery of his name: 'Our Father'" (Der ősterliche Weg, pp, 65f.).

In order to avoid the mechanical recitation of the Lord’s Prayer, we might consider the reverse order of the petitions in this prayer, as suggested by the spiritual advisor from the Eastern Church. The last petition speaks of evil. (Mt 6:13) The ultimate evil is mortal sin where we willfully choose to disobey God. The Church teaches that this evil could cause us to lose our salvation. What could be a worse evil than that? Jesus tells us the way out of this evil. First, we must want to be free of this evil of mortal sin. Then we need to sincerely repent of our sin or sins and sincerely register this repentance to the priest in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. Of course, we need the grace of God to go to confession or even to repent. That is why we need to ask God to deliver us from evil. We need Him to avoid being destroyed by evil, but we also need to cooperate with the Graces we get from God through the Church. 

When we are in the world, we are bound to be either in the grip of evil, if we are in the state of mortal sin, or at least exposed to it from the world where it comes to us as consistent and ongoing temptation. The secular world, which openly rejects God, is constantly tempting the God fearing to join in their rejection of God, since the God fearing are an irritation to the world. In the next to last petition of the Lord’s Prayer (Mt 6:13), Jesus instructs us to seek the help of God in the struggle against the temptations of the world. Being exposed to temptations is not in itself sin but it is the doorway to sin. When we pass through this life, we will encounter many “open doors” to sin, but we must not even approach the doorway. That is why in the traditional Act of Contrition we resolve to avoid the “near occasion of sin”. The next to last petition of the Lord’s Prayer is strongly linked to the last petition dealing with evil. Both deal with the problem of evil, and both give us the Lord’s solution to this problem which is grace. We need the grace of God to fight off the temptation thrown at us by the devil, the world, or anybody else. If the temptation does take hold, we need grace to keep us from giving in so as to fall into mortal sin. 

The third from last petition (Mt 6:12) concerning forgiveness deals with what happens if we do fall into venial or mortal sin. We need to sincerely repent of our sin, but we need to also ask God to forgive us. We cannot earn forgiveness for we need to seek it. Jesus gave us the way to do this though the Sacrament of Reconciliation (confession) to be administered by the Church. (Jn 20:19-23) However, Jesus adds that God forgiving us depends on our forgiveness of others. The Lord must have considered this forgiveness of others to be very important since at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, He reiterates it. ((Mt 6:14-15) On the Cross, the Lord cries out “Father forgive them; for they know not what they do.” (Lk 23:34) He does what He commands us to do. For followers of Christ, the seeking of forgiveness and the forgiving of others is liberating. Our seeking of forgiveness from God breaks the power of evil (sin) over us. Our forgiveness of others breaks the power of the sins of others over us. We are imprisoned by the sins of others when we refuse to forgive. Our modern Western secular culture does not value forgiveness. Those who are prominent and are not on top of the current politically correct “right” actions can easily be disgraced by those in power and toppled from any position of influence which they had. This occurs even when it is clear that the person thought they were doing nothing wrong.

The fourth from last petition deals with our physical needs, “our daily bread”. (Mt 6:11). Just as we are dependent on God for our spiritual needs, we also are dependent on Him for our physical needs. We do need to ask Him for what we need and also thank Him for what He has given us. In contrast, our modern secular Western society is self-sufficient without Him. It imagines that we can take care of everything and create a peaceful, prosperous, abundant, and just world without Him. When it is obvious that we do not have this wonderful world, the blame is not placed on our own sins and injustices, but on “global warming”, or racism, or sexism. Once God is lost, then sin, repentance, and forgiveness, and our dependence on God are no longer understood. 

The first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer (Mt 6:9-10) concern our relationship with God. Our modern affluent Western society does not understand our need for God because it has lost God. This loss of God has been a gradual process which has been greatly accelerated by modern technology and especially modern communications, especially, radio, TV, movies, and the internet. Of course, many of the “elites” lost faith long before the coming of these technologies, but technology made it possible to drum the “new” ways of thinking into the minds of ordinary people. A person, whether young or old, has to purposely and consciously reject what the “world” is telling them. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer with thought, we can see that we are rejecting what the “world” teaches us. For example, the “world” does not reverence (hallow) the name of God. Even now, politicians use the name of God or even Jesus without really wanting His Will to be done or His Kingdom to come. We want exactly what they do not want. We want His name to be honored; We want His Will to be done everywhere. We want His Kingdom to come so that true peace and justice can come. One of the requirements of the Confraternity of Penitents involves loyalty to the Magisterium of the Church and believing all that the Church teaches. This does not equate the Church with God or the Kingdom of God. It does foster the obedience which flows from the Love of God which we will need to be a citizen of heaven. Unfortunately, those who do not know God are often quite willing to obey authorities which care nothing about God and act in opposition to His Will. The Lord’s Prayer teaches us living in the Twenty-First Century that we need to be countercultural in order to be a follower of the Lord. 

When we consider the Lord’s Prayer in reverse order, it does not mean we can pray it in reverse order. One could rewrite it with the petitions in reverse order, but that is not the Lord’s Prayer. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer in the order that the Lord gave it to us, we need to understand the depth and profundity which is in the Prayer taught us by God. That is why the commentary by Pope Benedict in Jesus of Nazareth and other such commentaries can help us to truly pray this prayer as a real heartfelt prayer. This can help us to avoid the mechanical recitation of this Prayer which we can find hard to avoid because of its familiarity. The words of this Prayer can help us to even pray without words. – Jim Nugent, CFP