The Lord's Prayer

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A watercolor of lambs sitting in a circle under a shelter lit from the roof, sharing a round loaf and small bowls, two of them joining hooves

Why has the Lord's Prayer been called, from the earliest times, “the summary of the whole Gospel”?
1. It is the shortest of the prayers recorded in the Gospels, and so the easiest to learn by heart
2. The Lord taught it with his own lips, and everything the Gospel proclaims is held within it
3. It was drawn up as a stand-in prayer for people who have no time to read the Gospels through to the end
4. The apostles composed it by boiling the Gospels down
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Answer ② The Lord taught it with his own lips, and everything the Gospel proclaims is held within it
The Lord himself handed this prayer over to us — “Pray then like this” — and everything the Gospel hopes for is contained in it. The fourth choice is the common slip of crediting the prayer to the apostles; the third takes it for an abridgement standing in for the reading of Scripture.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2759, 2761-2763
The Lord's Prayer is handed down in two places, the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, and the form the Church prays in the liturgy is Matthew's.
1. Yes
2. No
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Answer ① Yes
Yes. Luke hands it on with five petitions and Matthew with seven, and the liturgical tradition of the Church took up Matthew's form. That the two differ does not make either of them wrong; it is the trace of one and the same prayer as each community kept it.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2759, 2760
How are the seven petitions handed on by Matthew divided?
1. The first three are turned toward the Father's glory; the last four lay our own condition before him
2. The first four are for the body, the last three for the soul
3. The first three are for myself, the last four for the Church
4. The seven petitions are simply listed in no particular order, so there is nothing to divide
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Answer ① The first three are turned toward the Father's glory; the last four lay our own condition before him
We ask first for the Father's name, his kingdom and his will, and only then speak of bread, forgiveness, temptation and evil. That order — looking to God first and bringing ourselves up afterwards — is itself a lesson in how to pray. Divide them as the second or the third choice does and you lose the fact that the first three petitions are turned wholly toward God.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2803-2806
Why does the Lord's Prayer begin with “Our Father” rather than “My Father”?
1. Because it is a prayer to be used only when a number of people are gathered together
2. Because it is no more than an old turn of phrase left as it stands, so that it sounds humble
3. Because it is prayed together by the People of God, made one body in Christ
4. Because God has many children, and it would be discourteous for one of them to say “my”
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Answer ③ Because it is prayed together by the People of God, made one body in Christ
“Our” is the word called out together by those who have become the brothers and sisters of Christ in the new covenant. So the prayer is still “our” when it is prayed alone behind a closed door, and that one word becomes a call toward the unity of divided Christians. Take it as the first choice does, as a prayer for gatherings only, and the meaning is turned on its head.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2786-2793
What do the words “who art in heaven” mean?
1. That God is in some place very far away from the earth
2. That God takes no part in the affairs of the earth
3. They point to one region of the created world, the one called heaven
4. They point not to a place but to God's way of being, and say at the same time that he is close to the hearts of the righteous
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Answer ④ They point not to a place but to God's way of being, and say at the same time that he is close to the hearts of the righteous
Heaven is not a seat that shuts God in; it is a word for his majesty and his holiness. The first and the third choices both try to park God somewhere in the universe, and the second supposes that a God so far off must be indifferent — when in fact he is nearer to our hearts than anything else.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2794-2796
Why are we able to call God “Father”?
1. Because everyone is a creature of God, and so is entitled to call him that by nature
2. Because in the Holy Spirit we have been made one with Christ and born again as children of God
3. Because it is a form of address the Church settled on so that we would feel close to God
4. Because God is male
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Answer ② Because in the Holy Spirit we have been made one with Christ and born again as children of God
This way of calling on God does not come from anything we are entitled to; it comes from the adoption we received in baptism. That is why the liturgy says “we dare to say” before the prayer begins. The fourth choice reads the word father as a statement about sex, but God is neither man nor woman, and his fatherhood points to his being the origin of all things, and love itself.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 239, 2777-2782
“Hallowed be thy name” is a petition in which we undertake to make holy a name of God that is not yet holy.
1. Yes
2. No
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Answer ② No
No. God's name is already holy without anything we add to it. This petition asks that his holiness be recognized and made manifest in us and through us. So how we live is bound up in this petition too.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2807-2815
In “Thy kingdom come”, what is the “kingdom” we are asking for?
1. The Church taking the power of this world into its own hands
2. Something that belongs to the end of the world, and so has nothing to do with our lives now
3. The reign of Christ, already begun and to be brought to completion at the last day
4. The ideal society we are to build up on earth by human strength and effort
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Answer ③ The reign of Christ, already begun and to be brought to completion at the last day
The kingdom of God has already come with Jesus, and it will be fully revealed when he comes again. The first choice mistakes that kingdom for worldly power, the fourth turns it into a plan for people to carry out, and the second puts it off as a distant matter with no bearing on today.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2816-2821
In “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”, what is the will of God being spoken of?
1. That everyone should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth
2. That since everything that happens to us is already fixed, we should take it as it comes
3. That God should grant what we want and ask for
4. A plan God has settled in advance for each person, which we can never finally know
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Answer ① That everyone should be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth
God's will is not a riddle kept hidden to the end; it has already been made known. It is that everyone be saved, and the one who lived that will out to the full is Jesus, who said “not my will but the Father's”. The second and the fourth choices turn this petition into fatalism, and the third swaps the places of God's will and my own.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2822-2827
In “Give us this day our daily bread”, what is the “bread” we are asking for?
1. Spiritual food only; asking for what the body needs is out of keeping with this prayer
2. Only the food the body needs, with nothing to do with the Eucharist
3. A request to be given enough to lay by for tomorrow as well
4. Today's bread that keeps the body alive, and at the same time Christ, the bread of life
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Answer ④ Today's bread that keeps the body alive, and at the same time Christ, the bread of life
The Church has read this petition as bread for the body and as the Eucharist alike. “This day” and “us” stand side by side in it, which makes it a call to share rather than to store up, and it runs on into our responsibility for the neighbor who is hungry. The first and the second choices are half-truths, each holding on to one side only.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2828-2837
In “as we forgive those who trespass against us”, the “as” is only a decorative turn of phrase, and not a condition on which our own forgiveness actually hangs.
1. Yes
2. No
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Answer ② No
No. That “as” is a fearfully serious word. There is no limit to God's mercy, but if we keep our own hearts shut, that mercy cannot come inside us. And yet it is just as true of this petition that the power to forgive does not come out of us — there is nothing for it but to begin by asking the Holy Spirit.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2838-2845
How should the petition “lead us not into temptation” be understood?
1. It is a petition asking God not to tempt us, since he is the one who leads people into temptation
2. It is a petition to be kept from setting foot on the road of temptation, and from giving way if we have already set foot on it
3. It is a petition to have every trial taken away, including the trials faith needs in order to grow
4. It is a petition for forgiveness, since to feel temptation is already a sin
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Answer ② It is a petition to be kept from setting foot on the road of temptation, and from giving way if we have already set foot on it
God is not tempted by evil, and he tempts no one. Trial and temptation must not be blurred together as the third choice does: a trial makes us grow, while temptation leads to sin. The fourth is a common mistake as well — what makes a sin is not the feeling of temptation but the heart's decision to consent to it.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2846-2849
In the last petition, “deliver us from evil”, what does “evil” refer to?
1. A blanket word for the bad things scattered about the world
2. No more than another name for the weakness in a person's heart
3. Not something vague but the one who sets himself against God and his plan, the Evil One
4. The misfortunes that afflict us, such as illness or poverty
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Answer ③ Not something vague but the one who sets himself against God and his plan, the Evil One
The evil spoken of here is not a hazy force but a person, namely Satan. The first and the fourth choices turn evil into a set of circumstances or a misfortune, and the second shrinks it down to human psychology. Because Christ has already conquered him, this petition is prayed in trust and not in fear.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2850-2854
The closing doxology, “For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours, now and for ever”, is not part of the seven petitions Jesus taught but something the Church has added in the liturgy from very early on.
1. Yes
2. No
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Answer ① Yes
Yes. The oldest manuscripts of Matthew's Gospel do not have this passage, and it was the liturgy of the early Church that joined this praise on to the prayer. Being an addition does not make it a light word: it takes up the first three petitions — the name, the kingdom and the will — once more and gives them back to God.
Catechism of the Catholic Church 2760, 2855-2856