For centuries, the Bible has been one of the most important books for many cultures, including the Jews, the Christians and the Muslims. All these cultures were united by the first books of the Bible, and interestingly enough, they all have pretty much the same understanding and interpretation of the events written in there. But when the New Testament was written, the cultures split. Christianity started to worship Jesus as the only prophet and his Father as the only God. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’ disciple teaches us how to live a proper life and be in peace with everyone and with God. One of the most important instructions that he gives is how to pray. “The Lord’s Prayer” stays one of the most important nowadays. It is one of the most crucial parts of everyday masses, and it’s the moment when everyone remembers the words and is able to join the prayer. This prayer is taught to Catholic children starting very early, and is known to almost all of them in any given language. In this exegesis paper, I’m going to analyze “The Lord’s Prayer” in a detailed way, and I am going to answer many questions about its initial purpose and meaning, and also look into how the prayer changed with time. I will also briefly compare it to another tradition to emphasize its importance in Christianity.
“The Lord’s Prayer” was included in the Bible when Matthew was describing how a proper Christian should behave. Before introducing “The Lord’s Prayer”, he talks about how to deal with one’s anger, how to give to those in need, and how to forgive one’s enemies. All of those were the rules and ethics that Jesus introduced when he was teaching his disciples. We can surely state that “The Lord’s Prayer” is a summary of all those teachings. After the prayer, he goes on talking about the essential things that have to be done in order to ease one’s mind: “Do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on” (Matthew 6:25-26). Of course, performing all these deeds loses its power if one doesn’t pray, that’s why “The Lord’s Prayer” is in between all the rules. It shouldn’t be done either before or after all these things. It should be done throughout one’s life and together will all those good deeds that are described.
The structure of the prayer is very special. It doesn’t have a rhyme, but it’s very easy to remember as it has a rhythm. This is due to a number of repetitions “thy kingdom come, thy will be done” or “forgive us our trespasses” “as we forgive those who trespass against us”. Almost every line contains a word from the previous line, which makes the prayer very melodic. It’s also very short and it contains powerful words, and many people feel especially overwhelmed when they read the Prayer. They may even cry.
According to Lanier, “The Lord’s Prayer” is divided into two parts and six petitions (Lanier 59) The first part is there to praise Our Father and ask him to establish his kingdom not only in Heaven, but also on Earth. Jesus starts not with his and people’s demands, but with glorifying God and emphasizing His greatness. “God has promised that the kingdom of Christ shall be exalted above all kingdoms” (Da 7:14-27) Barnes emphasizes that the word “kingdom” also means “reign”, and this part of the Prayer tells the God that all of his rules will be followed.
After mentioning his Father, Jesus goes on talking about the needs of all the people. He asks to give them their daily bread, which just meant to make sure nobody is starving. Bread has been one of the most important meals of the Catholics (also because it is the body of Christ), and even nowadays, having bread at home means being safe from hunger. Personally, I do remember my grandmother having a special respect for bread and never putting in into trash, which was considered a sin in some traditions. Here again, Jesus asks for everyone, not only for himself. Later on, we understand that the bread is not enough for salvation, and so Jesus asks something more – for forgiveness and protection. Being protected from physical suffering (like hunger) didn’t mean being saved from all the other evil that existed on Earth. Moreover, it is known that the saints who experienced physical suffering managed to purify their minds. But the majority of people are not saints, and they are afraid of pain.
When establishing relationship with the God, Catholics had to make sure they properly demonstrated their need of Him. The line “lead us not into temptation” goes back to God constantly testing people and trying to check their faith (Wendel 8) Christians apparently don’t want to undergo such tests again, because the one with Eve didn’t end well. They remember how Heaven on Earth was destroyed by a single temptation and pray for that not to happen again, although there is no Heaven on Earth anymore. However, the experiment with Job was hard but pretty successful – Job managed to stand the temptation of Satan and passed the test of God. Being afraid of temptations that are directly connected to Satan, people prayed to be delivered from that and from all the evil that they encountered on an every-day basis.
“The Lord’s Prayer”, although in a different form, can be found in two other Gospels. A similar passage can be found in the gospel of Luke, who introduces the same prayer but in a little different form. According to Lanier, Matthew’s version might have been an expanded one, while the one in the Gospel of Luke is a shorter version of the same teaching. On the other hand, the two prayers could be two different teachings introduced by Jesus at different times. They do have some essential structural differences: “Basically Luke omits "our," "who are in heaven," and one of the six petitions, having only five in all. The third petition, "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," is missing as is the restatement of the sixth petition, "but deliver us from the evil one" (Lanier 59) With time, of course, the passage changed even more for the modern Catholics to understand the prayer better. For example, we omitted “thy” and replaced it with “your”, as not all the people know what “thy” stood for. In one of the older versions, Catholics said “Our Father who art in Heaven”, and in the modern editions, “who art” was omitted.
A similar passage can be found in the Gospel of Mark: “And whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father also who is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses” (Mark 11:25). This short sentence seems to contain a lot of what we encountered in Matthew’s “The Lord’s Prayer”. Just like a number of other stories, “The Lord’s Prayer” connects the Gospels together and shows that all of them carry the same meaning and the same interpretation of a proper relationship with God.
In the next part of the paper, I would like to focus on the most important words in “The Lord’s Prayer.” The most important word is “Father”. God is called “Father” because “He is the Creator and the Great Parent of all” (Barnes 98). God is called “Father” in order for every Catholic to imagine the importance of God, which equals the importance of father in a household. Father is someone who feeds and protects his family, and so does God. Father is usually the oldest family member, the wisest and the one who is most respected and taken care of when he becomes old. In some ways and for some conservative families, the words “God” and “Father” are indeed synonyms. Notice also that in “The Lord’s Prayer”, it is said “Our Father” versus “My Father”. This is due to the sense of unity and equality among all the people, which Jesus promoted, and which is such an essential part of “The Lord’s Prayer”. Because “Father” is such a universal word, everyone could connect to it, which brought people even closer together.
“Heaven” is an important word. Heaven is the place where all Catholic want to go after their physical death. This word goes back to the Old Testament, where we encounter it for the first time. According to the Old Testament, Heaven is one of the first things God creates. He also creates Heaven on Earth (Garden of Eden), which is later destroyed by humans’ weaknesses and temptations. Completion of “The Lord’s Prayer”, just like everything that Matthew states before and after it, can save one and lead him to Heaven. According to Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible, “All our prayers should correspond with that which is our great aim as Christians, and that is, to be with God in heaven.” Every prayer should mention Heaven in order to establish relationship with God’s kingdom and to eye the place where we will all go eventually. The beauty of Heaven should be pictured in order to help find strength in oneself to be good and to fight one’s temptations.
Another word, which is worth attention, is “debts”. Jesus prays for his Father to forgive everyone their debts (or trespasses), just like they forgive their debtors. Here, the word is not used literally, as we don’t owe anything material to God. But our sins are counted as debts and as something that offends God (Barnes 98), and therefore, one should ask God for forgiveness. Notice the use of “our” again here in the passage. Jesus doesn’t only pray for himself, but for everyone around him and for all later generations. This might also go back to the Old Testament, when the original sin was committed by Eve. It is known that this sin is carried on by all the later generations, and Christians still have to pray to God to forgive it.
“Temptation” is also a word, which attracts our attention. God is all-ruling, so he can send us temptations by making us undergo his tests, but he can also deliver us from them if we pray. “The word temptation, however, means sometimes trial, affliction, anything that tests our virtue” (Barnes, 100) I have always had a trouble understanding the difference between Satan’s and God’s temptation, which proves the fact that the good and the evil have a very thin borderline between them. Both of these Bible characters are capable of tempting people. Apparently, God’s temptations are just tests that lead people to salvation if they pass them. Devil’s temptations are not tests and thus, cannot be passed. They can only be followed, and if one buys them, he is forever in the power of evil. Or they can be rejected, which Job essentially did and got rewarded for his faith.
The importance of “The Lord’s Prayer” is obvious. From this short passage we can see what the attitude towards God and Christianity in general was. The early Christians worshipped God and prayed not only for themselves, but for Him and his kingdom as well. They also feared hunger, evil and temptations, and asked for protection against all those things. During the tough times, when their kings were overthrown, people didn’t have anyone but God to rely on. And it is a scientific fact that the power of prayer exists. It doesn’t mean that it works directly through God, but the persuasion is so strong that when many people pray, all their mental powers unite together for one will.
“The Lord’s Prayer” also addresses problem of that time and the values of the people of that time. From the prayer we know, as I said, what people feared, and we also know that they understood the importance of unity. Even if Jesus wasn’t a Son of God but just a prophet, he definitely taught people a lot of ethically correct things. By repeating this prayer, a Christian reminds himself of what’s right to do. He also might ask himself “Do I thank God for everything I have?”; “Am I generous enough to forgive my enemies?” and “What will happen to me once I die?”
We know that the Old Testament unites the three biggest religions together. In Christianity, however, praying and pilgrimage are less important than that in Islam, for example. It is known that in Islam, people pray five times a day, and for each part of the day there is a different prayer. Pilgrimage existed in Christianity before, but lost its value, although many people do visit the sacred places nowadays. But if we compare Christian traditions to, for instance, Muslim Hajj, we can see that in Islam, the traditions are stronger. Hajj is a ritual, or better to say – a pilgrimage that every Muslim has to perform at least once in his life. Hajj in included in five pillars of Islam that essentially name all the things that a Muslim has to do in order to qualify for a Muslim and be granted freedom and taken to the kingdom of Allah (which is like Christian Heaven) upon his death. To perform Hajj, Muslims travel to Mecca, a sacred city of prophet Muhammad. There are a great number of rules that they have to follow in order to come back clean from all the sins (which is the ultimate purpose of Hajj). One of the most interesting rituals are changing clothes upon arrival and wearing white clothes instead. People have to keep an eye on their language and keep it free from cursing. They also must not kill animals or even cut plants. Using sharp objects is strictly prohibited, and people are not allowed to shave or cut their nails. The ultimate purpose of the pilgrimage is to touch or at least see and pray to Ka’ba, which is the box that indicates the direction of all the Islamic prayers. People walk around Ka’ba seven times in a counterclockwise direction and pray. I am including this comparison in order to show that in Christianity, there is no such thing. People don’t have to go anywhere to become pure from their sins. It seems much more simple in Christianity, where one prayer stands for everything. “The Lord’s Prayer” is fundamental, and it can be read at any time and any occasion. It can be read when one is scared or sick, or when he needs help during a tough period of his life. Of course, there are lots of other prayers for different occasions, but somehow not many people learn them.
This paper analyzed “The Lord’s Prayer” from different points of view. During this research, I have found out how the Prayer was perceived by the people of the past, what it meant for them and how it portrayed their values. I mentioned its specific structure and explained some of its most important words. I also compared the Christian tradition to Islam in order to emphasize the importance of “The Lord’s Prayer”. This paper proved that “The Lord’s Prayer” was a foundation for every Christian’s faith; it was also something easy to remember, so that during the hard periods, people could remember it and rely on their faith. “The Lord’s Prayer” is still read during every mess in Catholic Churches, and it is a moment where the Church becomes especially loud (because everyone knows “The Lord’s Prayer”), and people feel especially close to each other. “The Lord’s Prayer” is usually ended with giving peace to each other, when people shake their hands, which embraces unity even more.
Works Cited
Wendel, Richard. "THE INTERPRETATION OF THE LORD’S PRAYER, Q 11:2b-4, IN THE FORMATIVE STRATUM OF Q (Q1) ACCORDING TO THE LITERARY AND CULTURAL PERSPECTIVES AFFORDED BY THE AFFIXED APHORISMS, Q 11:9-10, 11-13." Http://ecommons.luc.edu. 2010. Web. 27 Feb. 2016.
Lanier, David. "THE LORD'S PRAYER: MATT 6:9-13- A THEMATIC AND SEMANTIC- STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS." Https://faculty.gordon.edu. 1992. Web. 27 Feb. 2016.
Henry, Matthew. Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible. New York: F.H. Revell. Web. 27 Feb. 2016.
"English Standard Version." Biblia. Web. 27 Feb. 2016.
Barnes, Albert. Notes on the New Testament. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983. Web.
