A. Answer with one of these words: disciples, acquaintances, hell, heaven, God or Virgin.

1. The Our Father, main Christian prayer

    The most important prayer for a Christian is the Our Father, which the Apostles learnt from Jesus’ mouth. For that reason, it is known as the Lord’s prayer, because had its origin in God. Tertullian says that “the Lord’s prayer is truly a summary of the whole Gospel”. It is, then, obvious that it is the more perfect prayer of all, the first of the Church. Logically, the Our Father embroided the prayers of the Church and of every Christian: during the mass, in the sacraments, in the Liturgy of the Hours, in the sacraments, during the Rosary...

2. Jesus Christ taught us the Our Father

    As we know, Jesus Christ Himself taught us the words we must use while we speak to our Father in Heavens. We are His sons by grace, we know He loves us and is prepared to give us anything we asked Him in the name of His son Jesus. This is why the Our Father is, without doubt, God’s prefered prayer.

    We must pray it with attention and devotion, being aware of what we are saying and making an effort to be honests with their meaning. It helps to a better understanding of the Our Father.

  We must pray it with attention and devotion, being aware of what we are saying and making an effort to be honests with their meaning. It helps to a better understanding of the Our Father.  

3. Contents of the Our Father

    The Our Father has an initial invocation and seven petitions, which are about the Glory of God Father- the three first ones-: the sanctification of His name, the coming of His realm and the fulfillment of His divine will; the other four present our wishes and necessities to our Father.

    First invocation: Our Father in Heaven. We recognice ourselves as His offspring, and we say “our” because the Lord is our God and we are their faithful, members of His Church and brothers of the rest of men.

    1ª petition: May your name be hold holy. We ask for the sanctification of the saint Name of God- because only He is infinitely saint-, and for its recognition and honour in every nation and by every man.

    2ª petition: Your kingdom come. We ask God to rule among souls by grace, extending His kingdom over the whole world and giving us the kingdom of glory.

    3ª petition: Your will be done. We ask for a union of everybody over the will of our Lord Jesus Christ, to always fulfill His will, as the blessed ones in heaven do.

    4ª petition: Gives us this day our daily bread. We ask Him for what we need everyday to our sustenance and maintenance of our physical and spiritual life.

    5ª petition: Forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us. We ask for God’s mercy in the forgiveness of our sins- an impossible thing if we don’t forgive those who have acted bad against us by hearth-, following Jesus example and with his help.

    6ª petition: And lead us not into temptation. We ask for help to defeat temptations and persevere in His grace. It implies judgement, strenght, vigilance and the ultimate grace of perseverance.

    7ª petition: But deliver us from evil. At the end, the Christian- together with the Church- ask God to reveal the victory of Christ against Satan, prince of demons, who is against God and Hs salvation plan. We ask, then, to be free of evil, mainly from sin and eternal death.

    To confirm the petitions we say: Amen, which means: I ask it to God and I hope it from His divine mercy. Amen means “It will be”, the desire of having what we have asked for.

4. Praying the Our Father

    Being the Our Father a beautiful prayer, and liking it so much to God, it is logical to pray it with careful attention; we can’t do it as robots, repeating words from our mouth, but with intelligence and hearth, with attention and devotion.

Curso de Catequesis. Don Jaime Pujol Balcells and Don Jesús Sancho Bielsa. EUNSA. Navarra. 1982. With permission from the authors.

  C. Choose the correct answer.

  Questions from the Catechism

1. How Jesus taught us to speak with God?  Jesus taught us to speak with God saying: “Our Father, Who is in Heaven...”

2. Which is the most excellent prayer?   The best prayer is the Our Father, which Jesus taught to his Apostles.

3. What compounds the Our Father?  The Our Father is composed by an invocation and seven requests: the first three are about God Father while the rest presents God our requests.

D. Choose the correct answer. Options are below:

  Intentions for a Christian life

- To revise- for a better knowledge- the Our Father and the Hail Holy Mary (you find them in the section "Profesión de fe").

- Pay attention and devotion in vocal praying, specially while praying the Our Father and the Hail Holy Mary.

- Meditate about the Our Father and the Hail Holy Mary for a better understanding.

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