Matthew 6:7-15
Chapter 6
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When you pray, do not use many words like the pagans do, because they think that the more they speak, the more likely they are to be heard.
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Avoid emulating them. Your Father already knows what you need before you ask.
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The Lord’s Prayer
This, then, is how you should pray:
Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
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your kingdom,
come,your will be done
on earth as in heaven.
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Give us today our daily bread.
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And forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors.
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Do not bring us to the time of trial,but deliver us from the evil one.
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If you forgive others for their wrongdoings, your Father in heaven will also forgive you;
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but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your transgressions.
Commentaries
On the Practice of Good Works.
Like most religions worldwide, almsgiving, prayer, and fasting are the three main practices of the Jewish faith. However, when these practices become formalized, they can lose their original meaning. We need to be careful to keep them as ways to connect with God and our fellow believers, not as empty routines.
The Lord’s Prayer (9-15). All religions have their own special prayer that defines their identity and stays engraved in their followers’ collective memory. For Christians, it is the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew’s version is more detailed than Luke’s, perhaps because it was already being prayed in the Christian communities to which he refers.
With this prayer, we ask, give thanks, and renew ourselves. It includes an invocation: “Our Father who art in heaven!” and seven petitions—three honoring God (his name, his kingdom, his will) and four on our behalf (our bread, our offenses, our temptations, the evils that beset us). The main novelty of the Sunday prayer lies in the first word with which it begins: “Father,” from which everything else naturally arises and gains true meaning. The first three petitions—your name, your kingdom, your will—are essentially one: the passionate desire for his fatherhood-motherhood to be truly present in the world. The remaining four petitions show us that a renewed relationship with God, our Father, is only possible through a renewed relationship among us, his children.