COURSE LEARNING PACKETS Document Code FM-STL-014

Saint Louis University Revision No. 01

School of Teacher Education and Liberal Arts Effectivity June 07, 2021
Page 1 of 4

CHURCH TEACHING
Let us reflect further on the Biblical Meaning of the Lord's Prayer:

This short prayer takes a mere 15-20 seconds to say yet is filled with significant
meaning. If ever there was a prayer that summarized our faith and what’s expressed in
the Gospels, the Our Father is it. In his reflection on this prayer, St. Cyprian of Carthage, a
third-century bishop, wrote, “My dear friends, the Lord’s Prayer contains many great
mysteries of our faith. There is great spiritual strength in these few words, for this summary
of divine teaching contains all of our prayers and petitions.” If you’ve been a practicing
Catholic since you were little, you’ve been reciting this prayer more times than you can
count. Like anything we repeatedly do, saying this prayer silently or out loud becomes
second nature (Technology, 2018).

It’s important to remind ourselves to stop and reflect on the words we are saying.
With the help of religious scholars and clergy, let’s take a closer look at each line and
how we can apply this prayer to our lives. Because as Pope Benedict XVI wrote, “The
meaning of the Our Father goes much further than the mere provision of a prayer text. It
aims to form our being, to train us in the inner attitude of Jesus.”

1. Our Father, Who art in heaven

We start this prayer by professing our core religious belief that God is our
heavenly Father—the one who is all-knowing and all-powerful. Notice that
Jesus didn’t instruct us to say, “My Father,” but stressed “Our Father.” Scripture
scholar John Meier explains that in God’s kingdom, we don’t live as isolated
individuals, but “we experience God’s fatherhood as members of the church,
the family of Jesus the Son.” This reminds us that we recognize all those around
us as children of God and treat them accordingly.

2. Hallowed Be Thy Name

Hallowed is another word for holy or sanctified. When we say “hallowed be Thy
name,” we are not only telling God, “I recognize that you are holy,” but more
importantly, we’re asking that Everyone throughout the world recognize his
name as being the ultimate holy power—that one day (sooner rather than
later) all will know Him to be righteous, powerful, and everyone’s one true God.

3. The Thy Kingdom come

This petition has a two-fold meaning. First, we ask that God’s kingdom (where
there’s only goodness, honesty, and love for one another) surround us in our
everyday lives. Secondly, we are praying to fulfill the Lord’s promise that we will
enjoy eternal life with Him in the end.

4. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in Heaven

 COURSE LEARNING PACKETS Document Code FM-STL-014
Saint Louis University Revision No. 01
School of Teacher Education and Liberal Arts Effectivity June 07, 2021
Page 2 of 4

We pray these words asking God’s grace to move us to do His will throughout
our lives. That means doing all the things that matter to our families and
communities, those difficult and easier ones that make others a little happier.

5. Give us the day our daily bread

Here we recognize that all things we need come to us from God. We’re asking
that God continue to give us the food we need for nourishment and the
spiritual nourishment of the Eucharist. We are asking God for our nourishment
and food, especially for those who struggle because of hunger and thirst.

6. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us

This is a tough one. It may be easy for us to ask God to forgive us our
“trespasses” or sins, but God, in His infinite wisdom, teaches us that for Him to
forgive our wrongdoings, we must first forgive those who’ve hurt us. God isn’t
demanding; instead, He’s teaching us that when there is bitterness and anger
in our hearts, there’s no room for His love to fill our hearts. How can we ask God
to be merciful and forgive our sins if we hold a grudge or refuse to forgive
someone who’s wronged us? Forgiving someone is often easier said than
done. Only God can give us the strength to do it through prayer.

7. And lead us not into temptation,

Temptation and sin go hand in hand. When we come face to face with
temptation, it can sometimes be challenging to resist. That’s why we need our
Father to set up the roadblocks and lead us far from the path of temptation.

8. But deliver us from evil.

Evil is an unfortunate reality in our world. The devil is always trying to tempt us
and makes it his full-time job to look for ways to steer us from the right path and
onto the wrong one. The devil has no power over God, and when we pray to
God for protection against all that is evil, He will shield us — always.

We can say many moving prayers, but when it comes to one prayer that takes the
main aspects of our faith and summarizes them in several short lines, the Our Father is the
perfect prayer.

That Jesus is intimate with God, his Father, is suggested by the "Lord's Prayer." The
Lord’s Prayer also implies that Jesus embodies what God stands for. Some theologians
express this reality using the phrase "Jesus as the sacrament of God." Read the following
and understand what the phrase suggests:

Jesus as the Sacrament of God

The article, Jesus, Sacrament of God: A contemporary Franciscan view (n.d.),

states that the dogmatic constitution of the Catholic Church, Lumen Gentium, which is
perhaps the most critical document promulgated at the Second Vatican Council, uses
 COURSE LEARNING PACKETS Document Code FM-STL-014
Saint Louis University Revision No. 01
School of Teacher Education and Liberal Arts Effectivity June 07, 2021
Page 3 of 4

a title that indicates the profound relationship between Jesus and Church. The Church,
this document states, is not the world's light; only Jesus is the Light of the World. Cardinal
Suenens, it seems, was the one who first officially suggested the title Lumen Gentium for
the document. Gérard Philips, a critical theologian in wrote the final draft of Lumen
Gentium, indicates in his commentary on the document the profound significance of this
selection. He states that the Bishops reserved the title Light of the World for Jesus alone,
“the import of which is that the Church refuses to give itself this title. Christ alone is the
light of the gentiles, though this light is reflected in the visage of the Church. The Christo-
centric attitude, emphasized so strongly by Cardinal Montini, was solemnly affirmed in
the first lines of the declaration.”[19]

Bonaventure Kloppenburg states the theological issue even more clearly. He

writes: “Vatican II seeks to give a completely Christocentric and thus relativized idea of
the Church.”[20] He goes on to say: “If the Church is absolutized, separated from Christ,
considered only in its structures, viewed only in its history, studied only under its visible,
human and phenomenological aspects, it ceases to be a ‘mystery’ and becomes simply
one of countless other religious societies or organizations. It does not then deserve our
special attention and total dedication. Only because it is a ‘mystery’ can it arouse our
love.”[21]

For some people, this non-absoluteness of the church sounds strange. Even Ernst
Troeltsch’s volume entitled Die Absolutheit des Christentums (The Absoluteness of
Christianity), in which he tactfully questioned this absoluteness was considered suspect.
According to the teaching of the Second Vatican Council, however, Christianity in its
entirety—namely, the Christian church in its total ambit and the Roman Catholic Church
in particular—is relative to Jesus and above all to God, who alone is absolute. Today’s
evangelization does well to begin not with ecumenism as such but with this
understanding that the Light of the World is Jesus. He is the Light of the World or sacrament
of God only in His humanity.

It cannot be stressed enough that Jesus can only be considered a sacrament

through his human nature. In all sacramental discussions, there is the sacrament and the
reality to which the sacrament refers. The reality is always superior to the sacrament. For
this reason, above all, humanity alone can be the focus of Jesus as a sacrament. If the
divine nature of Jesus is the sacrament, then there is a reality superior to the divine nature,
an unacceptable Christian theology position. If the Second Person of the trinity is the
sacrament, then the First Person, the Father, is superior to the Logos, which is
unacceptable to Christian theology. Therefore, it is the human nature of Jesus which is
the sacrament of God’s presence.[22]

In this approach, Jesus in His humanness is the primordial and fundamental

sacrament. However, it must be said that the Vatican II documents do not present any
detailed Christological discussion. If Jesus is the only true Light of the World, then Jesus is
something primordial, essential, and fundamental. Anything else that bears the name
Christ, anything called Christian, does so concerning and therefore relative to Jesus. This
 COURSE LEARNING PACKETS Document Code FM-STL-014
Saint Louis University Revision No. 01
School of Teacher Education and Liberal Arts Effectivity June 07, 2021
Page 4 of 4

is true for the Christian church, which is entirely relative to Jesus. Any absolutizing of the
church is theologically unacceptable

He obliged when his disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. We can
look at the prayer he taught in two ways: as a prayer of the petition asking God to provide
for our needs, or as a means by which we can understand more bottomless Jesus’
relationship with God, which includes our relationship with God, too.

To understand more deeply the nature and implication of the Christian mission, let
us focus on the second way: the relationship between Jesus and God. We can discuss
four elements here that concern Jesus’ relationship with God and the connection
between that relationship and the Christian mission.

1. The relationship between Jesus and God is characterized by intimacy. In the

Gospels, Jesus always finds time to communicate with God in meditation and
prayer. Constant communication is a mark of intimate relationships, as we know
from experience. Jesus’ closeness with God is also indicated by the word he used
to address God, “Father.” In the prayer, Jesus used the word “Abba,” which, in
Aramaic, is an endearing term for “Father.” It signifies closeness, familiarity, and
respect and is usually used by minor children to call their dad.
2. Jesus saw his mission as fidelity or faithfulness to his relationship with God. To be
true to this relationship, Jesus had to embody or incarnate God’s mercy, justice,
and compassion in his personal life and his relationship with others in the
community. In one instance, Jesus told his disciples that his food is to do the
Father’s will. And that in the face of death towards the end of his life, he prayed
to God, “It is not my will, but you will be done.”
3. Jesus’ intimate relationship with God was the source of his passion for his mission.
He perceived God as passionate for humanity, the poor and the weak, and the
sick, for what is right and just. In his ministry, he showed the same passion for these,
such that the possibility of getting murdered (as he was ultimately murdered) by
those who opposed him was very real. He could have chosen the easy way out
by just keeping quiet amid oppression but God’s passion for those who suffered in
any way burned in his heart.