Traditional prayer
The Our Father (The Lord’s Prayer)
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name:
Thy kingdom come;
Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us:
and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
Amen.
Latin
Pater noster, qui es in cœlis, sanctificetur nomen tuum:
adveniat regnum tuum:
fiat voluntas tua, sicut in cœlo, et in terra.
Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie:
et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris.
Et ne nos inducas in tentationem:
sed libera nos a malo. Amen.
Latin Rev. F. X. Lasance, My Prayer-Book: Happiness in Goodness (1908), p. 224, “The Lord’s Prayer”
About this prayer
Christ gave this prayer Himself, when one of His disciples asked: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1, Douay-Rheims). St. Luke records a shorter form of five petitions; St. Matthew the fuller form of seven, which the Church has kept in her liturgy (CCC 2759). In the Douay-Rheims, St. Matthew reads: “Thus therefore shall you pray: Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our supersubstantial bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation. But deliver us from evil. Amen” (Matthew 6:9–13).
Debts and trespasses. The Gospel says “debts”; the English prayer, as the Baltimore Catechism prints it, says “trespasses.” Both name what we owe God and cannot repay, and both tie the mercy we ask to the mercy we give. It is the only petition the Lord returns to and explains at once (Matthew 6:14–15; CCC 2841).
Daily bread. Where St. Matthew uses a rare Greek word, the Douay renders it “supersubstantial bread,” and the note printed with that text explains: “In St. Luke the same word is rendered daily bread. It is understood of the bread of life, which we receive in the Blessed Sacrament.” The Catechism holds the meanings together: bread for this day, all that is needed for life, and the Bread of Life itself, the Body of Christ (CCC 2837).
Temptation. The same notes gloss “lead us not into temptation” as “That is, suffer us not to be overcome by temptation.” St. James is plain that God is not the tempter: “Let no man, when he is tempted, say that he is tempted by God. For God is not a tempter of evils, and he tempteth no man” (James 1:13, Douay-Rheims). We ask not to be left to fall.
The Catechism, following Tertullian, calls the Lord’s Prayer a summary of the whole Gospel (CCC 2761). It also notes that very early, liturgical use closed the prayer with a doxology of praise, found already in the Didache, and that at Mass today the doxology follows the priest’s prayer after the Our Father (CCC 2760). The Catholic texts printed on this page end, as the Gospel does, at “deliver us from evil. Amen.”
When to pray it
- Morning and night, and whenever no other words will come.
- At the start of each decade of the Rosary: Father Lasance’s prayer book of 1908 describes a decade as one Our Father, ten Hail Marys and a Glory be to the Father (p. 335).
- With children, one petition explained each night for seven nights.
- When forgiving is hard: pray it slowly, and stay with “as we forgive those who trespass against us.” Forgiving is not forgetting, and it never means staying in danger (CCC 2843, 2383; Code of Canon Law, can. 1153).