The disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray, and he did (cf. Lk 11:1-2). His teaching was simple—to pray not with many words, as the pagans do, but instead to make this short prayer, just seven petitions: Pray, then, like this: Our Father, who art in heaven… (Mt 6:9-13). The Lord’s Prayer—the “Our Father”—is a prayer for all seasons, a prayer for all people. Those who meditate on it join a school of prayer where little children sit alongside the Church’s greatest teachers and mystics. Together we learn from the Son how to pray to the Father. Everything our Lord said and did was suffused with the utmost wisdom and love, perfectly attuned to our needs. And when his disciples asked to be taught to pray, the wisest teacher lovingly gave us the wisest prayer. Saint Thomas Aquinas calls it “the most perfect of prayers,” 1 and Saint Teresa of Ávila marvels that in the few words of the Our Father “everything about contemplation and perfection is included; it seems we need to study no other book than this one.” 2 If we wish, like the first disciples, to learn from Jesus how to pray, this prayer is our school. “If you run through all the words of holy petitions,” Saint Augustine writes to the widow Proba, “you will not find, in my opinion, anything that this prayer of our Lord does not contain and include.” 3 When Jesus first spoke these seven “words,” he had in mind not only those first disciples, but all who would come to believe through their word (Jn 17:20)—each one of us. With this prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, he teaches us all to pray in the Spirit. This book is meant to enrich your prayer life by exploring the depths of the Our Father. We hope to offer you a guided tour through the Church’s massive treasury of writings on the Lord’s Prayer. From Scripture, the Church’s liturgy and magisterium, and the wisdom of the saints, we find insights about the Our Father for our daily life. TEACH US TO PRAY Learning our prayer of hope The Sermon on the Mount Fra Angelico (1387–1455) 7
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