Our Father

See also: Rosary, The "Hail Mary" (Ave Maria), To Pray, Prayer, Supplication, To ask.

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Jesus reciting the Our Father (Le Pater Noster) - James Tissot, Brooklyn Museum.

"Sometimes, when my spirit is in such great dryness that it is impossible for me to draw a thought to unite myself with the Good God, I recite very slowly an "Our Father" and then the angelic salutation (Ave Maria); then these prayers delight me, they nourish my Soul Good more than if I had recited them hastily a hundred times..." St. Thérèse of the Child Jesus, Manuscript C Folio 25 Verso.

"My dear disciples who are to continue My work in future, come near Me. Many a time you have said to Me: “Teach us to pray as You pray. Teach us, as John taught his disciples, so that we may pray with the same words as our Master”. And I always replied to you: “I will do that when I see in you the minimum sufficient preparation so that the prayer may not be a vain formula of human words, but a real conversation with the Father."

The Our Father, "Pater Noster" in Latin, is called a prayer or Lord's prayer in reference to the Lord (Dominus) who himself taught it to us in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:1-4. It is the fundamental prayer of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians. It draws its importance from its Author:

"The Pater, or Lord's Prayer, derives its primary excellence from its author, who is not a man or an angel, but the King of Angels and men, Jesus-Christ. [...] The wisdom of this divine Master appears Good in the order, the gentleness, the strength and the clarity of this divine prayer; it is short, but rich in instruction, understandable for the simple and full of mysteries for the learned. The Pater contains all the duties we must render to God, the acts of all the Virtues and the requests of all our spiritual and bodily needs. It contains, says Tertullian, the summary of the Gospel: Cf Saint Louis-Marie Grignion de Montfort, "The Admirable Secret of the Most Holy Rosary to Convert and to Save" and Tertullian, "On the Lord's Prayer § 1".

It is a privileged prayer:

We can adore the Father because he has made us reborn to his Life by adopting us as his children in his unique Son: through Baptism, he incorporates us into the Body of his Christ, and through the Anointing of his Spirit which flows from the Head into the members, he makes us "christs" CCC § 2782 . Thus, through the Lord’s Prayer, we are revealed to ourselves at the same time as the Father is revealed to us. CCC § 2783

Coming from the Lord, it is the perfection of prayer recalled by Jesus in the work of Maria Valtorta:

""In the 'Our Father' the perfectionof prayer is found. "Observe: no act is absent in the brevity of the formula. Faith, hope, charity, obedience, resignation, abandonment, entreaty, contrition, and mercy are present. In saying it, you pray with all Paradise, during the first four petitions; then, leaving Heaven, which is the dwellingthat awaits you, you return to the earth, remaining with your arms upraised towards Heaven to make entreaties for your earthly needs and to ask for aid in the battle to be won in order to go back up above."

The Prayer

The Our Father is composed of an invocation followed by seven petitions.

• Invocation: Our Father who art in Heaven
• Petitions:

1. Hallowed be thy Name
2. Thy Kingdom come
3. Thy will be done
4. Give us this day our daily bread
5. Forgive us our offenses
6. Lead us not into Temptation
7. Deliver us from Evil

The translation of the Latin text, itself derived from Jesus' original formulation, has undergone changes notably between the translation known by Maria Valtorta and the one we know since the 1966 reform and that of 2017 for the sixth petition (Temptation).

TEXT OF THE Our Father
Latin text	Before 1966 text	Current text
Pater noster qui es in cælis : sanctificétur Nomen Tuum; advéniat Regnum Tuum; fiat volúntas Tua, sicut in cælo, et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidiánum da nobis hódie; et dimítte nobis débita nostra, sicut et nos dimíttimus debitóribus nostris; et ne nos indúcas in tentatiónem; sed líbera nos a Malo.	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 today our daily bread, Forgive us our offenses, as we forgive those who offend us. And do not let us succumb to Temptation but deliver us from Evil.	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. Forgive us our offenses, as we forgive those who have offended us. And lead us not into Temptation but deliver us from Evil.

In the Work of Maria Valtorta

The Our Father is Jesus' usual prayer, as he confides to Judas. It is a fundamental prayer that condenses the essentials. The prayer of "friends":

"Nothing else is required, My friends. Everything man needs for his spirit and his flesh and blood is contained in these words as in a golden ring. With this prayer you ask for what is useful to the former and the latter two. And if you do what you ask for, you will gain eternal life. It is so perfect a prayer that neither the storms, heresies nor the course of ages will undermine it. Christianity will be split by Satan’s bite and many parts of My mystic body will be torn off and separated, forming independent cells in the vain desire to form a body as perfect as the mystical Body of Christ will be, which is the one formed by all the faithful believers united in the apostolic Church, the only true Church, as long as the earth exists. But those separated little cells, devoid of the gifts, which I will leave to the Mother Church to nourish My children, will always be denominated Christian, because of their worship of the Christ, and in their error they will always remember that they derive from the Christ. Well, they will pray with this universal prayer as well. Remember it carefully. Meditate on it continuously. Practise it in your actions. You need nothing else to sanctify yourselves. If one were alone, in a heathen place, without churches, without books, one would already have all the knowledge to meditate on in this prayer and a church in his heart for this prayer. One would have a safe rule of sanctification." 

In the work, Jesus recites it with his mother from his departure for his public life and therefore before the Apostles. On this occasion, Maria Valtorta comments in a note, on a typewritten copy:

"If Jesus taught the Our Father to his Disciples, did he not first have to teach it to his Mother? To this Mother who, when she received God in her womb, began by saying: 'Let it be done to me according to your word' and who always repeated this 'fiat', even for her newborn Son? The Our Father was not an improvisation by Jesus for the Apostles. It was "his" usual prayer, so much so that the Apostles asked him: 'Teach us to pray as you pray.' And it was the usual prayer of Jesus and Mary."

Jesus himself explains to the Apostles why he does not teach them the prayer he prayed during the night:

"«[...] we do not know how to pray! We are not capable of saying the lovely words You say.»

«Say the words you know, as best you can. It is not the words, but the sentiments with which they are uttered that make your prayers pleasant to the Father.»

«We would like to pray as You do.»

«I will teach you also to pray. I will teach you the most holy prayer. But to prevent it from being only a void formula on your lips, I want your hearts to have at least a minimum of holiness, light and wisdom… That is why I instruct you. Later, I will teach you the holy prayer.»"

Maria Valtorta notes on this subject on a typewritten copy:        

"If someone may raise or have raised objections to the Our Father prayed by Jesus and Mary on the eve of the paschal days, let them consider this answer. Mary did not need to be prepared to pray by Christ’s prayer. The Apostles did. This is why Jesus recited the Our Father with Mary before his Disciples because she was full of Grace, light and wisdom, in contrast to the Disciples."

The gift of the Our Father to the Apostles

The Pater Noster is given to the eleven Apostles (Judas having withdrawn from the group) on the Mount of Olives during the 2nd Passover. On this occasion Jesus comments on each part of the prayer.

Jesus will publicly recite the Pater Noster and comment on it in the Temple for the proselytes during the 3rd Passover. It is therefore a prayer linked to Passover. He will also recite it for the last time as the Resurrected One.

On July 7, 1943, two and a half months after Maria Valtorta's inaugural vision, Jesus dedicates an entire dictation to the commentary on the Our Father in the notebooks.

To Go Further

The meaning that Jesus gives to each part of the Our Father is of particular importance. That is why we have opened an article for each of them. In this way, one can access the entirety of his teaching on a specific point.

1. Our Father who art in Heaven
2. Hallowed be thy Name
3. Thy Kingdom come
4. Thy will be done on earth as it is in Heaven
5. Give us this day our daily bread
6. Forgive us our offenses as we forgive those who have offended us
7. Lead us not into temptation
8. But deliver us from evil

Catechism of the Catholic Church (1992).

Voluntary acceptance by man of the will of God. Ex: The fiat of Mary at the Annunciation and the mystery of the Incarnation. (From Latin fiat "let it be done")

Persons of non-Israelite origin who renounce their beliefs to join Judaism.