The Power of the Lord’s Prayer

3 minute read

The "Our Father", also known as the Lord's Prayer, is one of the best-known prayers in our religion. Jesus gave it to His disciples when they asked Him to teach them how to pray.

It is extraordinarily simple, yet its meaning is so complex that entire books have been written to decipher and interpret it.

The most widely accepted and used form is the one associated with Matthew:

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.
For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory:
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
now and ever and unto ages of ages.
Amen.

Other versions speak not simply of "daily bread" but of bread necessary for our being. I nevertheless believe the familiar form best represents what the Saviour actually gave, because the more abstract wording would have been difficult for most people of that time to understand. The Lord Jesus offered a universal prayer, not one reserved for initiates.

I once read that only two people had genuinely changed the face of the world up to our time: Jesus Christ and Gautama Buddha.

We usually waste time discussing dogmatic questions, trying to determine how true or untrue the events were, or even whether the Church genuinely represents Jesus.

There are certainly examples of that representation: secluded monasteries that preserve the ancient canons and the many hermits who gave strength to our religion.

The only thing that should matter in the life of a Christian is the practice of prayer. Nothing more. Through love of God, understanding will not be slow to appear.

I offer another argument for Absolute and Infinite Love as it is reflected within ordinary human love: every religion declares that "God is LOVE".

More concretely, Absolute and Infinite Love is the state that defines and unites the Holy Trinity: God, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

If this contained no truth, would so many people have become saints or sacrificed themselves for faith? Would religion have reached its present form without some measure of truth discovered through the practice of those who devoted themselves completely?

They sustained the true faith. The Church was only the garment surrounding them, containing both good and evil.

The Church cannot be judged only by those who serve it, but by the truth upon which it rests and by what it gives our souls.

If you wish to learn how to pray, teaching on the prayer of the mind and heart can offer a beginning.

If you are not interested, no one compels you. But remember it when suffering comes. Perhaps then you will begin helping the soul as well as the body.

You believe you are the body and the thinking that belongs to you. Yet something exists above them, and any moment is the right moment to begin knowing it.

The Lord's Prayer is often used in Romanian tradition when someone is believed to have been affected by the evil eye. Yet it has an immediate effect only in the hands of someone who possesses faith.

Use this prayer at any time, both when you are happy and when you face hardship. In doing so, you join the succession of disciples through whom this religion was once created, beginning with precisely this prayer.

Sources and recordings cited in the Romanian original

• Our Father
• The Our Father - The Lord's Prayer
• Prayer - Our Father
• On Spells, Witchcraft, Astrology and Magic
• The Lord's Prayer in Aramaic (Syriac)
• The Powerful Lord's Prayer You've Never Heard Before
• The Lord's Prayer in Aramaic (Assyrian)

First published in Romanian on 25 May 2010. This English translation preserves the perspective of that period.

Original Romanian article: Puterea rugăciunii "Tatăl Nostru".