Our Lord’s prayer

I love today’s Gospel, because it puts the Lord’s Prayer in context.

He said to them, “When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread
and forgive us our sins
for we ourselves forgive everyone in debt to us,
and do not subject us to the final test.”

Luke 11:2-4

So often I just fall into thinking of this prayer as a standalone thing. I want to talk to God, but I don’t know quite what to say, so I’ll rely on the formula I’ve been practicing since I was 3.

Or, in Mass, we want to pray together, so we rely on the form given to us by our liturgy.

But in Luke, this is given to us in answer to Apostles asking how they are to pray to God.

Following this, we find that this leads to a lesson about how to love your neighbor. So the Lord’s Prayer isn’t the end, even though we traditionally add our “amen!” to it.

No, the prayer is the launching point for developing us into individuals and a society based on love. And love based on giving, welcoming, and doing.

My God, help me to love.


If you want to look at the other context for this prayer, check out Matthew 6:9-13.

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