name of the prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, after they asked him to teach them to pray. Mateo presents the PN in the Bible as a series of seven petitions, Mt 6, 9-13; while Luke presents it as five, Lk 11, 2. The structure of the prayer consists of an invocation and seven petitions. The first three related to the glorification of God and the other four with matters of the human being. This prayer is the summary of the Christian faith, which highlights the importance of God over humanity.
Digital Bible Dictionary, Grupo C Service & Design Ltda., Colombia, 2003
Source: Digital Bible Dictionary
filial attitude
Jesus taught to pray with the words of the “Our Father” (Mt 6,9-13). It was not just a question of a formula, but of a filial attitude that corresponds to those who have been called to participate in the same divine sonship of Jesus. It is, then, a prayer that goes beyond any superficial scheme (cf. Mt 6,5) and even of all religious formula and methodology (cf. Mt 6,7).
The filial attitude of the “Our Father” is not only imitation, but also and mainly participation in the interiority of Christ himself, Son of God. It is a filial attitude of authenticity or biblical poverty, and a filial attitude of trust and union. Because of its content and because of this filial attitude of charity, “Sunday prayer is the summary of the entire Gospel” (Tertullian). It corresponds to the attitude that springs from the content of the “beatitudes”.
The Spirit makes it possible for Christ to pray in us
It has been called the “Lord’s prayer” (“Sunday” prayer), because it corresponds to Jesus’ way of praying, who addressed the Father calling him “Abba” (My Father in an intimate and real sense). Through the communication of the Holy Spirit, it is Jesus himself who prays in us with this same filial and loving attitude. Only the infusion of the Spirit can communicate this participation in the life, love and prayer of Christ himself. “And since you are sons, God sent into our hearts the Spirit of his Son, crying † œAbba †, that is, † œFather †. So that you are no longer a servant, but a son, and as a son, also an heir by the grace of God” (Gal 4,6-7).
By the fact of being children of adoption (“children in the Son”), it is the same Spirit that makes us say “Father” with the same voice and love of Christ. “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear; rather, you received a spirit of adopted children that makes us exclaim Abba, Father! The Spirit himself unites with our spirit to bear witness that we are children of God” (Rom 8:14-16).
The prayer of the missionary Church
The Church becomes missionary to the extent that she adopts the filial and fraternal attitude expressed in the “Our Father” prayer. The evangelical values are manifested by filial attitudes that reflect the beatitudes and the mandate of love, as happens in the “Our Father” if one prays authentically.
Sunday prayer has an eschatological force that derives from the Incarnation. One day, the “Our Father” will be the prayer of all humanity. This is the objective of the ecclesial mission, to fulfill “the design of the Creator, who created man in his image and likeness, since all who participate in human nature, regenerated in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, contemplating with one accord the glory of God, they will be able to say †œOur Father† ” (AG 7).
References God the Father, shared divine filiation, name of God, holiness, prayer, kingdom, will of God.
Reading documents AG 7; CEC 2759-2865.
Bibliography AA.VV., Abba, Our Father (Madrid, Narcea, 1981); S. BARTINA, The Lord’s Prayer commented according to its Semitic background (Barcelona, Balmes, 1993); J.Mª CABODEVILLA, Speech of the Our Father (Madrid, Publisher. Catholic, 1971); C. CARRETTO, Father, I put myself in your hands (Madrid, Paulinas, 1981); S. CASTRO, Our Father, in New Dictionary of Spirituality (Madrid, Paulinas, 1991) 1454-1467; I. GOMA CIVIT, “Hallowed be your name”. The first request of the Padrenuetro Catalan Journal of Theology 21/2 (1996) 289-332; J. JEREMIAS, Abba. The central message of the New Testament (Salamanca, Follow me, 1983; W. MARCHEL, Abba. Father (Barcelona, Herder, 1967); S. SABUGAL, Abba’… The Lord’s Prayer (BAC, Madrid, 1985); F. SEBASTIAN , Abba, Our Father (Madrid, Narcea, 1981), H. SCHÜRMANN, Our Father (Salamanca, Trinitarian Secretariat, 1982) See more bibliography in God the Father.
(ESQUERDA BIFET, Juan, Dictionary of Evangelization, BAC, Madrid, 1998)
Source: Dictionary of Evangelization
“It is a prayer in which we will never finish meditating and, when we do not know how to pray, it will be enough for us to resume slowly, word by word, the Our Father. The fundamental structure of this sentence is made up of three moments: the first is like the base of a fountain; the second is like a stream that rises upwards; the third is the stream that goes down, watering everything around it. . The base of the dispenser is the word “Father”, and it is, for the one who prays, the spirit of filiation. From the moment that living as children means living baptism, in prayer we live our baptism to the fullest. The filial spirit is the root of all prayer, it is the most important attitude, since eternal life consists in the manifestation of our being children of God. Let us observe that in the Our Father we could repeat the word “Father” in each invocation: Father, your Kingdom come; Father, your will be done; Father, forgive our offenses; Father, lead us not into temptation. . The second moment is formed precisely by the invocations that rise upwards, like a stream, that address God with the pronoun in the second person: “Hallowed be your name, your Kingdom come.” In the power of the Holy Spirit, the redeemed, baptized soul rises to the Father, . The third moment is the relapse on earth of this spiritual source, of this powerful jet of the Holy Spirit that pushes us upwards. Relapse on the earth, that is, on us who are hungry and in need of forgiveness, who must forgive each other, who are tempted to be weak and fragile. Thus, prayer implicates us in the truth of our being: Lord, lead me not into temptation. You see that I am tempted, that I am tired, weary, that I am lazy; Deliver me from everything that prevents me from trusting you, contemplating you and loving you as a Father.
Carlo María Martini, Spiritual Dictionary, PPC, Madrid, 1997″
Source: Spiritual Dictionary
Unlike the other religions of the ancient Middle East, the editors of the Old Testament show some reluctance when using the term “Father” to indicate God (Dt 32,6; 2 Sm 7 14; 1s 63,16; 64 ,7. Jr 3,4.19; 31,9; Mal 1,6; 2,10; Sal 68,6; 89,27. Tob 13,4; Wis 14,3; Eclo 23,1.4; 5l,10). Some of these texts present God as “Father” of the king; in most of these cases it is about the relationship between God and the people of 1srael; only some more recent text is related to the prayer of a particular individual. Contrary to pagan myths, the paternity of God appears totally dissociated from the idea of generation and is shown to be related rather to the concept of election.
The relationship that Jesus maintains with God never ceased to surprise the disciples, and the Gospels record the echo of this intimacy that Jesus lived with the one he calls “Father.” On Jesus’ lips, the term “Father” appears 170 times: 4 in Mk, 15 in Lc, 42 in Mt, 109 in Jn. This distribution reveals an increasingly strong tendency to introduce this term in the very words of Jesus. Although literary criticism does not allow all these uses to be attributed directly to Jesus, it is undeniable that Jesus used this term to speak of God and to invoke him in his prayer. Jesus often designates God as Father and this allows him to reveal his paternal love (Mt 6,8; Lk 15.11-32), his mercy (Lk 6,36; Mt 18,21-35), his concern with men ( Lk 12,16-32; Mt 10,19-20). Jesus speaks of “my Father” or “your Father”; he never speaks of “our Father” (except in Mt 6,9; but it is to teach the Our Father to the disciples): God is also our Father, but God is the Father of Jesus in a unique way. In addition to designating him as Father, Jesus also invokes God as Father, and these invocations are all found in the four great evangelical prayers of Jesus: the hymn of joy (Mt 11:25-26 and Lk 10:21), the prayer in Gethsemane (Mk 14,36; Mt 26,39-42; Lk 22,42; Jn 12,27-28); the prayer on the cross (Lk 23,34.46); the priestly prayer (Jn 17,1.5.1 1.21.24.25).
It must be admitted that almost all the expressions of the “Our Father” find a parallel in the Jewish prayers of the time of Jesus and that Jesus as a child and as a young man also recited especially the Tefillah, the “prayer” composed of 18 blessings, which is he prayed three times a day, and the Qaddish, the prayer that ended the synagogue liturgy. Is the Our Father then not more than a Jewish prayer? His absolute novelty is constituted by Jesus Christ, only-begotten Son of the Father, who participates in a divine filiation that is not merely adoptive and who remains united to him.
The New Testament has transmitted to us the “Our Father” in two different forms: Lk 1 1,2b-4 and Mt 6,9b-13. To the brief “Father” of Luke corresponds “Our Father, who art in heaven” of Matthew; in the first part, to the two requests of Luke, Matthew adds a third: “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven”. At the end of the prayer, only in Matthew do we find: “but deliver us from evil”. Is it possible to go back to the “Our Father” taught by Jesus? It is probably the text of Luke, which is shorter, but with the formulation of Matthew. As far as the context is concerned, Matthew inserts it in the Sermon on the Mount (cc. 5-7), as a model of true prayer, opposed to the prayer of the Pharisees. The context of Luke seems historically more plausible, since the disciples were certainly impressed by the frequency and way of praying of their Master and one day they asked him: “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples ”, (Lk 11,1).
The structure of the “Our Father” is very simple: an initial vocative (“Our Father, who art in heaven”), three wishes addressed to God and related to him (the sanctification of the name of God, the coming of the Kingdom of God, the fulfillment of God’s will), a link formula with the second part (“as in heaven, so on earth”‘), three petitions related to our needs (bread, forgiveness, deliverance from evil). “Our Father, who art in heaven”,: this is the version of Matthew, explanation of the original “Father” collected by Luke. This single word…