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Chapter 36. Jesus Taught Us to Pray • 493
DOCTRINAL STATEMENTS
• “The Lord’s Prayer is the most perfect of prayers. . . . In it we ask, not
only for all the things we can rightly desire, but also in the sequence
that they should be desired. This prayer not only teaches us to ask
for things, but also in what order we should desire them” (CCC, no.
2763, citing St. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae
, II-II, 83, 9).
• The Church includes the Our Father in her liturgies. The communal
praying of the Lord’s Prayer at Mass gathers up the intercessions
that accompany the consecration of the bread and wine into Christ’s
Body and Blood and prepares the worshipers for Holy Communion.
• The divine mystery is beyond our understanding and imagining. We
call God “Father” only because Jesus, the Son of God made man,
revealed him as such.
• Because of our union with Jesus through Baptism, we are given the
grace of an adopted, filial relationship with the Father. This begets
in us a new self-understanding based on this extraordinary intimacy
with the Father and the Son.
• Prayer to the Father inclines us to be like him and to acquire a
humble and trusting heart (cf. CCC, no. 2800).
• ‘Who art in heaven’ does not refer to a place but to God’s majesty
and his presence in the hearts of the just. Heaven, the Father’s house,
is the true homeland toward which we are heading and to which,
already, we belong” (CCC, no. 2802).
• “In the Our Father, the object of the first three petitions is the glory
of the Father: the sanctification of his name, the coming of the king-
dom and the fulfillment of his will. The four others present our
wants to him: they ask that our lives be nourished, healed of sin, and
made victorious in the struggle of good over evil” (CCC, no. 2857).
•
Hallowed
means “to be made holy.” We do not make God’s name
holy; God is the source of his own holiness that is his perfection and
glory. We hallow God’s name by showing honor, respect, and adora-
tion to God (cf. CCC, no. 2807). We give witness to God’s holiness
by doing his will, being people of prayer, and establishing the earthly
conditions by which God’s holiness is manifested.