THE REVELATION OF PRAYER - THE UNIVERSAL CALL TO PRAYER - Creation - source of prayer - Prayer is lived in the first place beginning with the realities of creation. The first nine chapters of Genesis describe this relationship with God as an offering of the first-born of Abel's flock, as the invocation of the divine name at the time of Enosh, and as "walking with God." Noah's offering is pleasing to God, who blesses him and through him all creation, because his heart was upright and undivided: Noah, like Enoch before him, "walks with God." "As an offering for Yahweh, Abel for his part brought the first-born of his flock and some of their fat as well. Yahweh looked with favour on Abel and his offering." - Genesis 4:4 - "Adam had intercourse with his wife, and she gave birth to a son whom she named Seth, 'because God has granted me other offspring' she said 'in place of Abel, since Cain has killed him (Abel).' A son was also born to Seth, and he named him Enosh. This man was the first to invoke the name of Yahweh." - Genesis 4:25-26 - "In all, Enoch lived for three hundred and sixty-five years. Enoch walked with God. Then he vanished because God took him." - Genesis 5:23-24 -

Noah's offering is pleasing to God, who blesses him and through him all creation, because his heart was upright and undivided; Noah, like Enoch before him, "walks with God." "Noah was a good man, a man of integrity among his contemporaries, and he walked with God. Noah became the father of three sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth." - Genesis 6:9-10 - "Noah built an altar for Yahweh, and choosing from all the clean animals and all the clean birds he offered burnt offerings on the altar. Yahweh smelt the appeasing fragrance and said to himself. 'Never again will I curse the earth because of man, because his heart contrives evil from his infancy. Never again will I strike down every living thing as I have done. 'As long as the earth lasts, sowing and reaping, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night shall cease no more.' - Genesis 8:20-22 -

The new world order - God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, 'Be fruitful, multiply and fill the earth. Be the terror and the dread of all the wild beasts and all the sea; they are handed to you. Every living and crawling thing shall provide food for you, no less than the foliage of plants. I gave you everything, with this exception: you must not eat flesh with life, that is to say blood, in it. I will demand an account of your life-blood. I will demand an account from every beast and from man. I will demand an account of every man's life from his fellow men. "He who sheds man's blood, shall have his blood shed by man, for in the image of God man was made." 

'As for you, be fruitful, multiply, teem over the earth and be lord of it.' God spoke to Noah and his son. 'See, I establish my Covenant with you, and with your descendants after you, also with every living creature to be found with you, birds, cattle and every wild beast with you: everything that came out of the ark, everything that lives on the earth. I establish my Covenant with you: no thing of flesh shall be swept away again by the waters of the flood. There shall be no flood to destroy the earth again.'

God said, 'Here is the sign of the Covenant I make myself and you and every living creature with you for all generations: I set my bow in the clouds and shall be a sign of the Covenant between me and the earth. When I gather the clouds over the earth and the bow appears in the clouds, I will recall the Covenant between myself and you and every living creature of every kind. And so the waters shall never again become a flood to destroy all things of flesh. When the bow is in the clouds I shall see it and call to mind the lasting Covenant between God and every kind that is found on the earth.'

God said to Noah, 'This is the sign of the Covenant I have established between myself and every living thing that is found on the earth.' - Genesis 9:1-17 - This kind of prayer is lived by many righteous people in all religion. In his indefectible covenant with every living creature, God has always called people to prayer. But it is above all beginning with our father Abraham that prayer is revealed in the Old Testament. - C C C 2569 -

"THE  SUMMARY  OF  THE  WHOLE  GOSPEL" - The Lord's Prayer "is truly the summary of the whole gospel." - Tertullian De orat. 1:PL 1, 1155 - Since the Lord... after handing over the practice of prayer, said elsewhere, 'Ask and you will receive,' and since everyone has petitions which are peculiar to his/her circumstances, the regular and appropriate prayer [the Lord's Prayer] is said first, as the foundation of further desires." - Tertullian De orat. 10:PL 1, 1165; Cf. Luke 11:9-13; C C C 2761 - 'So I say to you: Ask, and it will be given to you; search and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you. For the one who asks always received; the one who searches always finds; the one who knocks will always have the door opened to him/her. What father among you would hand his son a stone when he asked for bread? Or hand him/her a snake instead of a fish? Or hand him/her a scorpion if he/she asked for an egg? If you then, who are evil, know how to give your children what is good, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!' - Cf. Luke 11:9-13 -

-  AT THE CENTER OF THE SACRED SCRIPTURE / HOLY BIBLE  -

After showing how the psalms are the principal food of Christian prayer and flow together in the petitions of the One Father. Saint Augustine of Hippo concludes: Run through all the words of the holy prayers [in Scripture], and I do not think that you will find anything in them that is not contained and included in the Lord's Prayer. - St. Augustine, Ep. 130, 12, 22:PL 33. 503 - C C C 2762 - 

All the Scriptures - the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms - are fulfilled in Christ. - "Then Jesus told them, 'This is what I meant when I said, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses, in the Prophets and in the Psalms, has to be fulfilled.'" - Cf. Luke 22:44 - The Gospel is this "Good News." Its first proclamation is summarized by Saint Matthew in the Sermon on the Mount; - "Happy the merciful: they shall have mercy shown them." - Matthew 5:7 - the prayer to our Father is at the center of this proclamation. It is in this context that each petition bequeathed to us by the Lord is illuminated: "The Lord's Prayer is the most perfect of prayers...In it we ask, not only for all the things we can rightly desire, but also in the sequence that they should be desired. This prayer not only teaches us to ask for things, but also in what order we should desire them." - St. Thomas Aquinas, Ep. 130, 12, 22, PL. 33, 503 - C C C 2763 - 

The Sermon on the Mount is teaching for life, the Our Father is a prayer; but in both the one and the other the Spirit of the Lord gives new form to our desires, those inner movements that animate our lives. Jesus teaches us this new life by his words; he teaches us to ask for it by our prayer. The rightness of our life in him will depend on the rightness of our prayer. - C C C 2764 -

"THE  LORD'S  PRAYER"

The traditional expression "the Lord's Prayer" - oratio Dominica - means that the prayer to our Father is taught and given to us by the Lord Jesus. The prayer that comes to us from Jesus is truly unique: it is "of the lord." On the one hand, in the words of this prayer the only Son gives us the words the Father gave him: "Now at last they know that all you have given me comes indeed from you; for I have given them" - John 17:7 - he is the master of our prayer. On the other, as Word incarnate, he knows in his human heart the needs of his human brothers and sisters and reveals them to us: he is the model of our prayer. - C C C 2765 -

But Jesus does not give us a formula to repeat mechanically. "In your prayer do not babble as the pagans do, for they think that by using many words they will make themselves heard. - Matthew 6:7 - "Call on the name of your god but light no fire. They took the bull and prepared it, and from morning to midday they called on the name of Baal. 'O Baal, answer us!' they cried, but there was no voice, no answer, as they performed their hobbling dance round the altar they had made. Midday came, and Elijah mocked them. 'Call louder,' he said 'for he is a god: he is preoccupied or he is busy, or he has gone on a journey; perhaps he is asleep and will wake up.' So they shouted louder and gashed themselves, as their custom was, with swords and spears until the blood flowed down them. Midday passed, and they ranted on until the time the offering is presented; but there was no voice, no answer, no attention given to them." - 1 Kings 18:26-29 -

As in every vocal prayer, it is through the Word of God that the Holy Spirit teaches the children of God to pray to their Father. Jesus not only gives us the words of our filial prayer, at the same time he gives us the Spirit by whom these words become in us "spirit and life." - "It is the spirit that gives life, the flesh has nothing to offer. The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life." - John 6:63 - Even more, the proof and possibility of our filial prayer is that the Father "sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!"" "The proof that you are sons and daughters is that God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts: the Spirit that cries, 'Abba, Father', and it is this that makes you a son and daughter" - Galatians 4:6 - Since our prayer sets forth our desires before God, it is again the Father, "he who searches the hearts of men," who "knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." "God who knows everything in our hearts know perfectly well what he means, and that the pleas of the saints expressed by the Spirit are according to the mind of God." - Romans 8:27 - The prayer to Our Father is inserted into the mysterious mission of the Son and of the Spirit. - C C C 2766 -

                                 THE  LORD'S  PRAYER: "OUR  FATHER!"

Jesus "was praying at a certain place, and when he ceased, one of his disciples said to him, 'Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples'." - Luke 11:1 - In response to this request the Lord entrusts to his disciples and to his Church the fundamental Christian prayer. Saint Luke presents a brief text of five petitions, - Luke 11:2-4 - while Saint Matthew gives a more developed version of seven petitions. - Matthew 6:9-13 - The liturgical tradition of the Church has retained Saint Matthew's text:

             Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. 

             Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, 

              and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, 

              and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. - C C C 2759 -  

Very early on, liturgical usage concluded the Lord's Prayer with a doxology. In the Didache, we find, "For yours are the power and the glory for ever. The Apostolic Constitutions add to the beginning: "the kingdom," and this is the formula retained to our day in ecumenical prayer.' The Byzantine tradition adds after "the glory" the words "Father, Son, and Holy Spirit." The Roman Missal develops the last petition in the explicit perspective of "awaiting our blessed hope" and of the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Then comes the assembly's acclamation, or the repetition of the doxology from the Apostolic Constitutions. - C C C 2760 -

              - THE  PRAYER  OF  THE  ONE,  HOLY,  CATHOLIC  AND  APOSTOLIC  CHURCH - 

This indivisible gift of the lord's words and of the Holy Spirit who gives life to them in the heaven of believers has been received and lived by the Church from the beginning. The first communities prayed the lord's Prayer three times a day, - Cf. Didache 8, 3:SCh 248, 174 - in place of the "Eighteen Benedictions" customary in Jewish piety. - C C C 2767 -

According to the apostolic tradition, the Lord's Prayer is essentially rooted in liturgical prayer: [The Lord] teaches us to make prayer in common for all our brethren. For he did not say "my Father" who art in heaven, but "our" Father, offering petitions for the common Body. - St. John Chrysostom, Hom. in Matthew 19, 4:PG 57, 278 - In all the liturgical traditions, the Lord's Prayer is an integral part of the major hours of the Divine Office. In the three sacraments of Christian initiation its ecclesial character is especially in evidence: - C C C 2768 - In Baptism and Confirmation and In the Eucharistic liturgy the Lord's Prayer appears as the prayer of the whole Church and there reveals its full meaning and efficacy... - C C C 2769, 2770, 2771, 2772, 2773, 2774, 2775, 2776 -

- WELCOME TO SACRED SCRIPTURE / WORD OF GOD / HOLY BIBLE READER'S COMMUNITY - 

Wishing you, 'Happy Reading', and may God, the Father, the Son of the living God, Jesus Christ, fills your heart, mind, thoughts, and grants you: The Holy Spirit, that is, Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, Fear of the Lord, and also His fruits of the Holy Spirit, that is, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Trustfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. Amen! God blessing be upon you!

Why do you call Me, "Lord, Lord" and not do what I say?' "Everyone who comes to Me and listens to My words and acts on them - I will show you what he/she is like. He/She is like a man/woman who when he/she built his/her house dug, deep, and laid the foundations on rock; when the river was in flood it bore down on that house but could not shake it, it was so well built. But the one who listens and does nothing is like the man/woman who built his/her house on soil, with no foundations: as soon as the river bore down on it, it collapsed; and what a ruin that house became!" - Luke 6:46-49 - 

If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ Jesus, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each separate part to work according to it function. So the body grows until it has built itself up, in love." - Ephesians 4:15-16 - 

I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now. But when the spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself, but will say only what he has learnt; and he will tell you of the things to come. He/She will glorify me, since all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said: all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine." - John 16:12-15 -