num_pages: 92
description: Excerpt from the Book (1st section): This is not a work of textual criticism. It is about the Lord's Prayer as a prayer. Nor is it an exercise in archanism, to discover precisely what it meant to those who first heard it an prayed it. If is concerned with what praying it can mean to ourselves. Catholics more often speak of it as the "Our Father", in the Middle Ages if was the Paternoster to everybody. Others speak of it as the Lord's Prayer. The title "Lord's Prayer" suggests that it was a prayer that Jesus himself prayed, but we ten to think of it rather as a pattern of prayer that he gave to his followers. Luke, we rememer, says Christ gave it in answer to the request "Teach us how to pray," Matthew show him prefacing it with "Pray then like this," Yet was we think out way through it, we shall find much of it is clearly his own prayer to his own Father. WE may find ourselves wondering if any of it is not. However we may decide about this, there is gain in having asked ourselves at every one of its petitions whether Jesus might not have prayed it before us, whether he might not have given it to us, his brothers and sisters, because he himself had prayed it and found it good.
language: English
title: The Lord's prayer: The prayer of Jesus
titlecomplete: The Lord's prayer: The prayer of Jesus
genres: Spirituality
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Seabury Press