The Lord’s Prayer
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.
For thine is the kingdom,
The power and the glory,
For ever and ever.
Amen
Here is a modern paraphrase, which I think is true to the content of the above words.
Big Daddy, up there in heaven (but you knew that),
I hope you are being flattered a lot.
Let’s also hope your monarchical lifestyle gets widely adopted;
And people do what you tell them,
Where we live just like where you live.
Please give us something to eat today (but not only bread).
And don’t blame us for our bad behavior;
Like we shouldn’t blame other people for their bad behavior towards us;
Even when their bad behavior (and ours) is really bad and blameworthy.
And also, please don’t tempt us to commit horrible acts (why would you do that?),
But prevent bad things happening to us (this part is particularly important).
Because you are the boss of everything,
You have all the power and celebrity.
And you always will.
That’s the way it goes.
We were required to intone the Lord’s Prayer (isn’t every prayer a prayer to the Lord?) every day at school from the age of five onwards. I didn’t have much idea what the words really meant but they seemed vaguely serious. I can still remember it, though I haven’t recited the prayer in over fifty years. As an exercise, I decided to make a paraphrase. I don’t think the prayer emerges all that well, either in what it includes or what it leaves out. I don’t know why we were asking God to feed us every day when the school cafeteria was doing a perfectly good job. And what kind of temptations were we talking about (we were too young for sex and alcohol)? Did God do the tempting? How were we to avoid blaming anyone for bad behavior when we were blamed for bad behavior every day in school (I was caned on a number of occasions, as was everyone else)? Did it mean we could skip homework and get away with it? It all seems pretty bizarre stuff. And why all the shameless sucking up to Our Father? And why “hallow” his name (what name?) instead of him? Use-mention confusion? It just doesn’t seem very well thought out.
“isn’t every prayer a prayer to the Lord?” But doesn’t “The Lord’s Prayer” mean a prayer by the Lord to someone else? “Joe’s question” isn’t a question we ask of Joe.
No: God isn’t praying to someone else; we are praying to him.
I know that’s what is intended, but that’s not what it says, is it?
True, it’s a bad description, but it is the traditional description. It’s rather like “the holy Roman empire”, an inaccurate description that functions as a name.
Dear Professor McGinn,
It’s called the “Lord’s Prayer” because it is the prayer that Christ (the Lord) instructs his followers to say (Matthew 6: 9-13; Luke 11: 2-4). As for your “modern paraphrase”, you might benefit from reading Saint Augustine’s short commentary on the prayer:
“We need to use words so that we may remind ourselves to consider carefully what we are asking, not so that we may think we can instruct the Lord or prevail on him.
Thus, when we say: Hallowed be your name, we are reminding ourselves to desire that his name, which in fact is always holy, should also be considered holy among men. I mean that it should not be held in contempt. But this is a help for men, not for God.
And as for our saying: Your kingdom come,it will surely come whether we will it or not. But we are stirring up our desires for the kingdom so that it can come to us and we can deserve to reign there.
When we say: Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven, we are asking him to make us obedient so that his will may be done in us as it is done in heaven by his angels.
When we say: Give us this day our daily bread, in saying this day we mean “in this world.” Here we ask for a sufficiency by specifying the most important part of it; that is, we use the word “bread” to stand for everything. Or else we are asking for the sacrament of the faithful, which is necessary in this world, not to gain temporal happiness but to gain the happiness that is everlasting.
When we say: Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, we are reminding ourselves of what we must ask and what we must do in order to be worthy in turn to receive.
When we say: Lead us not into temptation,we are reminding ourselves to ask that his help may not depart from us; otherwise we could be seduced and consent to some temptation, or despair and yield to it.
When we say: Deliver us from evil, we are reminding ourselves to reflect on the fact that we do not yet enjoy the state of blessedness in which we shall suffer no evil. This is the final petition contained in the Lord’s Prayer, and it has a wide application. In this petition the Christian can utter his cries of sorrow, in it he can shed his tears, and through it he can begin, continue and conclude his prayer, whatever the distress in which he finds himself. Yes, it was very appropriate that all these truths should be entrusted to us to remember in these very words.
Whatever be the other words we may prefer to say (words which the one praying chooses so that his disposition may become clearer to himself or which he simply adopts so that his disposition may be intensified), we say nothing that is not contained in the Lord’s Prayer, provided of course we are praying in a correct and proper way. But if anyone says something which is incompatible with this prayer of the Gospel, he is praying in the flesh, even if he is not praying sinfully. And yet I do not know how this could be termed anything but sinful, since those who are born again through the Spirit ought to pray only in the Spirit.”
An ingenious paraphrase, to be sure, but far from the mind of the average petitioner (especially a child). Yes, I knew it came from the New Testament, but now I’m wondering if Jesus is supposed to say this prayer himself. This seems odd. Matthew of course is very committed to finding precendents in the Old Testament.
Thank you for your response. Of course, a child need not understand at Augustine’s level to appreciate its meaning. The broader context in Matthew indicates that Jesus offers this prayer as an alternative to the empty prayers offered by the hypocrites and the Gentiles:
“When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then in this way…” (Matthew 6: 7-8)
Christ does pray in the Gospels and when the prayer is recorded by Matthew, I suppose we might assume He himself did say it. But its purpose as it appears in the Gospels is pedagogical: This is how you should pray. This is how to put your life in order. This is how to live. Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex videndi (“the law [or manner] of prayer is the law of believing, which is the law living”).
Of course, I don’t agree with any of this.
Of course, I did not suspect you would. But considering the discourse about your “cancelation”, the Gospel message contained in the Lord’s Prayer (which for some reason you were thinking about fifty years hence) might be worthy of reconsideration. In any case, it was generous of you to engage me, I wish you all the best.
I appreciate your concern. I thought about it because I had been reading Dawkins’ Outgrowing God.