"Our Father": The Final Four Petitions

• The final four petitions present our wants to God. They go up from us in our present world: "give us...forgive us...lead us not...deliver us..."

• They are an offering up of our expectations which draws down the eyes of the Father of mercies.

• They ask that our lives be nourished and healed of sin.

• They concern our battle for the victory of life-that battle of prayer...that we may be made victorious in the struggle of good over evil. (CCC 2805)

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread...

• The Father who gives us life, cannot but give us the nourishment life requires-all appropriate goods and blessings, both material and spiritual. (CCC 2829)
• "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." (Mt. 4:4) For this reason, this fourth petition [also] concerns the Word of God accepted in faith, and the Body of Christ received in the Eucharist. (CCC 2835)
• Eucharist is at one level, bread for today...our daily bread. But it is also the food we need to keep going, a foretaste of the bread of heaven, a foretaste of enjoying the presence of Jesus in heaven at his table.
• In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus insists on the filial trust (that which is due from a son or daughter) that cooperates with our Father's providence. He is not inviting us to idleness, but wants to relieve us from nagging worry and preoccupation. (CCC 2830) "Pray as if everything depended on God, and work as if everything depended on you." St. Ignatius Loyola
• The presence of those who lack bread opens up another meaning of this petition. The drama of hunger in the world calls Christians who pray to exercise responsibility toward their brethren. (CCC 2831) Julian of Norwich says that we cannot say 'our bread' justly if we know of another who lacks it and to whom we do not give it.

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

• This petition is astonishing. Our petition asking God to forgive our sins will not be heard unless we have met a stricter requirement "as we forgive others" and this comes first. (CCC 2838) God is placing a limitation on his forgiveness! If we insist on the right to nurse a grudge towards someone, God may insist on his right to do the same to us!
• This is daunting. This outpouring of mercy cannot penetrate our hearts as long as we have not forgiven those who have trespassed against us. (CCC 2840) Failure to forgive others is a major human problem. Failure to forgive routinely tears apart families, neighborhoods, and even nations. Jesus stressed mercy and forgiveness in numerous ways such as when he asked the Father to forgive those who crucified him. (Lk 23:34)
• The parable of the merciless servant (Mt. 18:23-35) ends with these words: "So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart." In the depths of the heart, everything is bound and loosed. It is not in our power not to feel or to forget an offense; but the heart that offers itself to the Holy Spirit turns injury into compassion and purifies the memory in transforming the hurt into intercession. (CCC 2843)
• We beg God's mercy for our offences, mercy which can penetrate our hearts only if we have learned to forgive our enemies, with the example and help of Christ. (CCC 2862)
• We pray to God that we may be able to forgive as much as we are forgiven.

And lead us not into temptation...

• Would God lead us into temptation? This petition can be misleading due to the difficulty translating the Greek verb used in it. It means both "do not allow us to enter into temptation" and "do not let us yield temptation." God cannot be tempted by evil and he himself tempts no one. On the contrary, he wants to set us free from evil. Our sins result from us consenting to temptation. (CCC 2846)
• This petition is a prayer to the Holy Spirit who makes us discern between trials which are necessary for the growth of the inner man, and temptation, which leads to sin and death. We must also discern between being tempted and consenting to temptation. Finally, discernment unmasks the lie of temptation, whose object appears to be good, a "delight to the eyes, and desirable, when in reality its fruit is death." (CCC 2847)
• God will not let you be tempted beyond your strength. (CCC 2848) Such a battle and such a victory become possible only through prayer. It is by his prayer that Jesus vanquished the tempter, both at the outset of his public ministry (Mt 4:1-11) and in the ultimate struggle of his agony (Mt 26:36-46).
• The Holy Spirit constantly seeks to awaken us to keep watch. This petition takes on all its dramatic meaning in relation to the last temptation of our earthly battle; it asks for final perseverance. "Lo, I am coming like a thief ! Blessed is he who is awake." (Rev 16:15) (CCC 2849)

But deliver us from evil...

• We close the Our Father with this blunt admission of evil and our inclination to submit to it. (ibid. Huebsch)
• "I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one." (Jn 17:15)
• In this petition, evil is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. (CCC 2851) Through him, sin and death entered the world and by his definitive defeat all creation will be "freed from the corruption of sin and death." (CCC 2852)
• It is always "we" who pray, in communion with the whole Church, for the deliverance of the whole human family. Our interdependence in the drama of sin and death is turned into solidarity in the body of Christ, the communion of saints. (CCC 2850)
• When we ask to be delivered from the Evil One, we pray as well to be freed from all evils, present, past, and future, of which he is the author or instigator. In this final petition, the Church brings before the Father all the distress of the world. Along with deliverance from the evils that overwhelm humanity, she implores the precious gift of peace and the grace of perseverance in expectation of Christ's return. (CCC 2854)
• As the priest says after the Lord's Prayer at Mass, "Deliver us, Lord, we beseech you, from every evil and grant us peace in our day, so that aided by your mercy we might be ever free from sin and protected from all anxiety, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Savior, Jesus Christ."

Huebsch. What is the Lord's Prayer. 23rd Pub.,2005.
Libreria Editrice Vaticana.Catechism of the Catholic Church.New York:William H. Sadler, Inc, 1994.
United States Catholic Catechism for Adults.Washington, DC:United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, 2006.