Prayer - Part 1

Prayer - Part 1

In this introduction to prayer, we will be examining three of the most common prayers that all Catholics should know and can always know more about. They are:

The Three Fundamental Catholic Prayers:

• Our Father
• Hail Mary
• Glory Be

There are many forms of prayer, from meditative to spoken, private to public, but most often any and all forms of prayer will include one or more of those prayers listed above. There are four types of prayer as well, as we will see in the discussion on the Mass in Module 2.

Our Father

This is probably one of the most known prayers across any form of Christianity, be it Catholicism (East and West), Orthodoxy, or Protestant denominations. There are traditional and more modern translations; below you will see them in Latin, Greek, and English.

Latin: Pater Noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo 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.

Greek: Πάτερ ἡμῶν ὁ ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς· ἁγιασθήτω τὸ ὄνομά σου· ἐλθέτω ἡ βασιλεία σου· γενηθήτω τὸ θέλημά σου, ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς· τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον· καὶ ἄφες ἡμῖν τὰ ὀφειλήματα ἡμῶν, ὡς καὶ ἡμεῖς ἀφίεμεν τοῖς ὀφειλέταις ἡμῶν· καὶ μὴ εἰσενέγκῃς ἡμᾶς εἰς πειρασμόν, ἀλλὰ ῥῦσαι ἡμᾶς ἀπὸ τοῦ πονηροῦ.

English: 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.

I have included the prayer in three languages for two reasons. First, Latin and Greek are both liturgical languages, among others in the Orthodox Rites, but Latin and Greek are the most common. Latin and Greek were the original languages for the Old Testament and the New Testament. English is included simply due to its commonality and to reinforce the usage of the original languages to help people better understand the scriptures that they read. I have also formatted them according to the seven petitions found in the prayer, which I will explain below. If my Greek is incorrect, please let me know.

The Seven Petitions

"Hallowed be thy Name."

Why not start with "Our Father" as the First Petition? Because we are making it clear to whom we are praying, not petitioning for anything yet. What is meant by the petition "Hallowed be thy name"? In this petition we are asking and declaring that the Name of the Lord be hallowed—be made sacred or holy. It reminds us of these things, and it reminds others that it is to be so.

"Thy Kingdom Come"

This refers to a three-fold kingdom of God—the Spiritual Kingdom. In particular, it is about the reign of grace, His Church, and Heaven itself. We are asking that the grace of God reign in us, by which He, being the King of Kings, dwells in us. We are asking that His Church reign supremely on Earth and spread across the Earth. As for Heaven, we beg that we can be admitted to Paradise, as we were originally created for being in Heaven with Him.

"Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven"

We clearly are asking for the Divine Will to be done, and not our will. We are asking for the necessary graces to be able to follow His will in all things and to obey His commandments in all things.

"Give us this day our daily bread"

As the Hebrews wandering in the desert relied on the manna from heaven for their physical nourishment, we are asking for our spiritual nourishment. Not only are we asking for this, but we are also asking for the necessary physical sustenance in this temporal life to do His will.

"And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us"

Trespasses have been called "debts" in other translations; this is due to the nature of sins in the "economy of grace," which we will examine in Module 2. However, this petition is asking for the forgiveness of our sins against God, as we forgive those who sin against us.

"And lead us not into temptation"

Here we are asking God to deliver us from temptation by either allowing us not to be tempted or by giving us the graces to resist temptation.

"But deliver us from evil"

Here we ask God to free us from all evil—past, present, and future. Particularly the evil of sin and its penalty of damnation. We ask this in the general form of evil, and not in all forms of evil, namely "evils." We do this because we ask for liberation from what God deems to be bad for us, and not from all evils. It is good to pray for freedom or liberation from a particular evil, like sickness, but in all things we submit our will to His Will.

The Our Father in the Mass

Note: This section pertains specifically to the liturgical celebration of the Mass, rather than the daily recitation of the Our Father.

During the Communion Rite of the Mass, the Our Father is prayed in a special liturgical context that includes additional elements:

The Pater - The complete Our Father prayer as prayed by priest and congregation together.

The Embolism (Versicle) - After the Our Father, the priest continues with a prayer that expands upon the final petition "deliver us from evil": "Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ."

The Doxology (Responsorial) - The congregation responds: "For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and forever." This ancient conclusion to the Our Father appears in some early manuscripts of Matthew's Gospel and in the Didache, connecting our liturgical prayer to the earliest Christian traditions.