The Lord’s Prayer Explained Like You’re Five

Quick Insights

• The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer that Jesus Christ Himself taught His disciples when they asked Him how to pray, making it the most important prayer in all of Christianity.
• It appears in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, and Catholics pray it at every single Mass and many times throughout each day.
• The prayer has seven parts, and each part asks God for something important, starting with praising His name and asking for His Kingdom to come, before asking for our own needs.
• When Jesus taught this prayer, He showed us that we can speak to God as our Father, which means God is not a distant, frightening power but a loving parent who wants to hear from us.
• The Lord’s Prayer is shared by Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and most Protestant Christians, making it the most universally prayed prayer among all followers of Jesus.
• Every word of the Lord’s Prayer was chosen carefully by Jesus, and learning what each phrase truly means can transform this familiar prayer from a recitation into a genuine conversation with God.

What the Lord’s Prayer Is

The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer Jesus Christ gave directly to His disciples as the model and pattern for all Christian prayer, and its importance in the life of the Catholic Church cannot be overstated. Every other prayer in the Catholic tradition, from the Rosary to the Liturgy of the Hours to the private prayers of the saints, finds its origin and its orientation in the prayer that Jesus Himself taught. The Catechism of the Catholic Church calls the Lord’s Prayer the summary of the whole Gospel, citing the great third-century theologian Tertullian who first used this phrase, meaning that every major truth of the Christian faith finds expression in some form within the prayer’s compact and carefully ordered petitions (CCC 2761). This is a remarkable claim, and it rewards close examination, because the more carefully one reads the Lord’s Prayer the more one finds that each phrase is theologically dense and practically challenging in ways that a quick recitation can easily miss. The prayer exists in two versions in the New Testament: a longer version in the Gospel of Matthew, which appears in the context of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:9-13), and a shorter version in the Gospel of Luke, which appears in response to a direct request from one of the disciples (Luke 11:2-4). The version used in Catholic liturgical prayer follows the Matthean text, which is the more complete of the two, and the traditional doxology added at its conclusion, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever,” though not part of the original Matthean text, reflects an ancient liturgical addition attested in early Christian sources. Understanding the Lord’s Prayer in its fullness transforms it from the most familiar of all Catholic prayers into one of the most inexhaustible, a prayer that a person could spend their entire life praying and still not exhaust its depth.

Why Jesus Taught This Prayer

The immediate occasion for the Lord’s Prayer, as recorded by Luke, is a specific and personal request from one of the disciples: “Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples” (Luke 11:1). This simple request reveals something important about the original disciples of Jesus: they recognized that prayer was something to be learned rather than something that comes naturally without guidance, and they looked to their master as the source of that learning. John the Baptist had given his disciples a form of prayer, and the disciples of Jesus wanted the same gift from their own teacher. Jesus’ response was not to give them a theological lecture about prayer but to give them a prayer, a specific set of words addressed to God that could be prayed as given while also serving as the model for all personal prayer. Matthew places the Lord’s Prayer in the middle of the Sermon on the Mount, framing it with warnings against two faulty approaches to prayer: the hypocritical approach that seeks human admiration through public displays of piety (Matthew 6:5), and the pagan approach that multiplies words in the belief that sheer volume or repetition will eventually compel God to respond (Matthew 6:7). The Lord’s Prayer is the corrective to both errors: it is addressed to God with simplicity, directness, and humility, and it contains exactly what is needed without excess or performance. The fact that Jesus gave His disciples a set form of words to pray is itself significant, because it shows that the use of established prayer formulas is not mechanical or inauthentic. Jesus sanctioned it by providing the most important prayer in Christian history in precisely that form. The Catechism teaches that the Lord’s Prayer is truly the summary of the whole Gospel because it contains not only what we are to desire but also the order in which we are to desire it (CCC 2763).

“Our Father” — The Most Revolutionary Opening

The two words with which the Lord’s Prayer begins, “Our Father,” are among the most theologically revolutionary words in the entire Bible, and their familiarity to modern ears has made it easy to miss how radical they were when Jesus first spoke them. In the Judaism of Jesus’ time, God was addressed as Father in certain specific liturgical and theological contexts, but the directness and intimacy of address that Jesus uses was genuinely new. Jesus habitually addressed God as “Abba,” an Aramaic word of close familial intimacy that His contemporaries found startling in its immediacy. Saint Paul records that this very word, “Abba,” is the word the Holy Spirit prompts in the hearts of the baptized when they cry out to God (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6), showing that Jesus shared His own relationship with the Father with those who came to believe in Him. The word “our” is equally important and equally easy to overlook. Jesus does not say “my Father” or “your Father,” as if the prayer is addressed to a personal God belonging to each individual separately. He says “our Father,” placing every person who prays this prayer immediately in relationship not only with God but with every other person who prays it alongside them. The Lord’s Prayer is inherently communal, a prayer of the whole community of disciples, not a private communication between a solitary individual and a remote deity. The Catechism teaches that when we call God “our Father,” we recognize that He is the origin of everything, the authority over everything, and the goal of everything, while simultaneously acknowledging our brotherhood and sisterhood with every other human being as children of the same Father (CCC 2800). To pray “Our Father” with genuine awareness is to commit oneself both to God and to the neighbor whose Father He equally is.

“Who Art in Heaven” — Where God Lives

The phrase “who art in heaven” has sometimes been misread as placing God at a great physical distance from the world, up in the sky somewhere beyond the clouds, but the Catholic tradition reads it very differently and much more richly. Heaven, in the language of Scripture and the Christian tradition, is not a geographical location above the earth. It is the mode of God’s being, the dimension of reality in which God exists in His fullness, which is present everywhere but experienced directly only by those who see God face to face in the beatific vision, meaning the direct sight of God that the saints in glory enjoy. When Jesus says the Father is “in heaven,” He is not saying that the Father is far away. He is saying that the Father transcends the created order, that He is not simply another being within the world like human beings are, and that His mode of existence differs from ours in a way that the word “heaven” is meant to convey. At the same time, the phrase grounds the prayer in the reality that God is truly distinct from the world and from us, that He is genuinely other and genuinely great, and that approaching Him requires acknowledging this greatness before making any requests. The address “Our Father, who art in heaven” thus does two things simultaneously: it draws the one praying into intimate personal relationship with God by calling Him Father, while also maintaining the proper reverence that acknowledges God’s transcendence and majesty. Saint Augustine, reflecting on this phrase in his commentary on the Sermon on the Mount, observed that the word “heaven” here refers not to a physical place but to the dignity and excellence of God, and that those who become like God in holiness can also be called “heaven” in a derivative sense. The Catechism teaches that the expression “in heaven” refers not to a place but to God’s majesty and His presence in the hearts of the just (CCC 2802).

“Hallowed Be Thy Name” — The First Petition

The Lord’s Prayer contains seven petitions, and the first three are directed toward God and His glory before a single personal need is mentioned. This ordering is itself a lesson in how Christian prayer is properly oriented: God’s concerns come before our own, and genuine prayer begins with attention to who God is rather than a list of what we want. The first petition, “Hallowed be thy name,” asks that God’s name be treated as holy, that it be regarded with the reverence, the awe, and the respect that it deserves from every creature. The name of God in the Jewish and Christian tradition is not merely a label or an identifier. It expresses the very being and character of God, and to hallow a name is to treat the person whose name it is with complete reverence. When we ask that God’s name be hallowed, we are first acknowledging that His name already is holy in itself and always will be, and we are then asking that this holiness be recognized and honored throughout the created world and especially in our own hearts and lives. The petition includes an implicit commitment: we cannot honestly ask God to be hallowed without committing ourselves to hallow Him in our own conduct. To pray “hallowed be thy name” while living in a way that dishonors God is a contradiction in terms. The Catechism teaches that this first petition is both praise and desire, an acknowledgment of God’s holiness and a longing for that holiness to be recognized by all (CCC 2807). The petition also recalls the great prophetic tradition of the Old Testament, where God repeatedly declares that He will hallow His own name through His saving acts on behalf of His people, and where Israel’s failure to keep the covenant brought God’s name into disrepute among the nations. In the New Testament, Jesus hallows the Father’s name supremely through His perfect obedience, His death, and His Resurrection, and the disciples who pray this petition are asking to participate in that same hallowing.

“Thy Kingdom Come” — The Second Petition

The second petition, “Thy kingdom come,” is perhaps the most theologically capacious phrase in the entire Lord’s Prayer, and understanding it requires grasping what the Kingdom of God actually means in the teaching of Jesus. The Kingdom of God is the central theme of Jesus’ preaching throughout the Synoptic Gospels, appearing more than one hundred times in His teaching in various forms. The Kingdom of God is not primarily a geographical place or a political territory. It is the active reign of God, the state of affairs in which God’s will is done completely and His love governs all relationships, all structures, and all hearts. Jesus announced at the beginning of His ministry that “the kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15), meaning that in His own Person, in His teaching, His healings, His exorcisms, and His death and Resurrection, the Kingdom was breaking into the present age in a new and decisive way. When we pray “Thy kingdom come,” we are asking for this reign to extend and deepen in the world, in the Church, and in our own hearts. We are asking for the full establishment of God’s reign at the end of time when Christ returns in glory, for the spread of the Gospel to every people and culture in the present time, and for the transformation of our own wills into instruments of God’s reign right now. The petition implies a commitment: we cannot ask for God’s Kingdom to come while resisting its demands on our own lives, clinging to the habits of sin and self-will that are incompatible with the Kingdom’s values of love, justice, mercy, and purity. The Catechism teaches that this petition applies primarily to the final coming of God’s reign at the end of time, but also to the growth of the Kingdom in the present through the mission of the Church and the conversion of hearts (CCC 2818). Praying “Thy kingdom come” is therefore one of the most missionary acts any Catholic can perform.

“Thy Will Be Done on Earth as It Is in Heaven” — The Third Petition

The third petition, “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” is intimately connected to the second and completes its meaning by specifying what the Kingdom of God looks like when it comes. God’s Kingdom comes when God’s will is done, and the measure of that doing is the perfection with which His will is done in heaven, meaning by the angels and saints in the direct presence of God. Heaven is the place where God’s will meets no resistance, no delay, no misunderstanding, and no competing agenda, where every created being does what God wills with complete joy, complete understanding, and complete love. The petition asks that earth come to look like this, not in a spirit of resigned submission to whatever happens as if God wills every tragedy and every injustice, but in a spirit of active cooperation with the divine plan of love and salvation that God is working out through human freedom and history. Jesus prays this petition most intensely in the Garden of Gethsemane, where He says: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39). His prayer in Gethsemane is the ultimate fulfillment of the third petition of the Lord’s Prayer, the moment when a human will, fully aware of the cost, surrenders completely to the Father’s plan out of love. Every Christian who prays “Thy will be done” is invited to make this same surrender in their own life, not just in moments of great crisis but in the ordinary decisions and the ordinary disappointments of daily existence. The Catechism teaches that this petition involves the discernment of God’s will in specific situations of our lives and the courage to carry it out (CCC 2825). It also involves the work of prayer itself, because discerning God’s will requires the kind of attentive, trusting, open-hearted communication with God that the Lord’s Prayer as a whole embodies.

“Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread” — The Fourth Petition

With the fourth petition the prayer turns from God’s concerns to human needs, and this transition is itself instructive: only after God’s name, Kingdom, and will have been addressed does Jesus lead His disciples to express their own needs, and even then the needs are placed in a specific and revealing order. The first human need the prayer addresses is bread, the most basic physical necessity of human life, and the petition asks for it in a very specific way: “this day,” meaning today, not for the week or the month or the year but for the present moment. This daily, present-tense request for bread reflects a theology of dependence: human beings are creatures who depend on God for everything they need, at every moment, and the prayer teaches us to acknowledge this dependence daily rather than assuming self-sufficiency. The word translated “daily” in most English versions is a Greek word, “epiousios,” that appears nowhere else in all of ancient Greek literature, meaning it seems to have been coined specifically for this prayer or translated from an Aramaic original with no exact Greek equivalent. Its meaning has been debated by scholars since the early Church, and the most common interpretations include “necessary for existence,” “for today,” and “supernatural” or “heavenly,” opening the possibility that the petition refers not only to physical bread but to the Eucharist, the bread of eternal life that the Church has always seen as prefigured in the manna God gave to Israel in the desert. The Catechism teaches that the petition for daily bread encompasses both the material food needed for physical life and the Eucharistic bread, the Body of Christ that is the food of eternal life (CCC 2837). The prayer therefore holds the physical and the spiritual together in a single petition, affirming that both kinds of nourishment are genuine needs and that both come ultimately from the hand of God.

“Forgive Us Our Trespasses” — The Fifth Petition

The fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer is unique among all its petitions in that it contains an explicit condition: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” No other petition in the prayer conditions our asking on something we must first do or already be doing, and this conditionality is not incidental but central to the petition’s meaning. Jesus underscores this connection immediately after completing the prayer when He says: “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:14-15). The petition for forgiveness and the commitment to forgive are not two separate acts that happen to be placed side by side. They are constitutively linked, meaning the willingness to forgive is part of what it means to genuinely receive God’s forgiveness. This is not because human forgiveness earns divine forgiveness, as if God’s mercy were conditional on our merit. It is because genuine reception of God’s forgiveness, which is limitless and freely given, must overflow into our treatment of others, and a person who refuses to forgive has not truly received the forgiveness they claim to have accepted. The word “trespasses” in the Matthean version, translated in some liturgical traditions as “debts,” refers to sins understood as failures to give God and neighbor their due, the falling short of the love that every human being owes to God and to every other person. The Catechism teaches that this petition is extraordinary because it requires the one praying to actively extend forgiveness to others as a precondition for asking God’s forgiveness (CCC 2838). Praying this petition honestly is one of the most morally demanding acts in the entire Christian life, because it commits the one praying to a standard of forgiveness that most human hearts find genuinely difficult.

“Lead Us Not into Temptation” — The Sixth Petition

The sixth petition, “Lead us not into temptation,” has sometimes puzzled readers who wonder why we should need to ask God not to lead us into temptation, since the Letter of James explicitly states: “God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one” (James 1:13). The puzzlement dissolves when the petition is understood correctly. The petition is not suggesting that God is in the habit of tempting people and that we need to ask Him to stop. It is asking God for the grace to resist temptation when it comes, to be protected from the circumstances and the spiritual pressures that could lead to serious sin, and not to be left to face the trials of life without divine assistance. The Greek word translated “temptation” here, “peirasmos,” carries the broader meaning of trial or testing as well as the narrower meaning of temptation to sin, and the petition encompasses both: we ask to be spared from overwhelming trials and from situations in which our weakness might lead us to fall into sin. The petition is an act of humility, an acknowledgment that human beings on their own are not strong enough to resist every temptation and that we need God’s help at every moment to remain faithful. The Catechism teaches that this petition implores the Holy Spirit not to allow us to take the road that leads to sin, and that it connects to the great tradition of seeking God’s protection in times of spiritual danger (CCC 2863). Saint Ambrose, the great fourth-century bishop of Milan, wrote that we should not trust our own strength in the face of temptation but should ask to be guided away from the very situations that might lead to our fall. The petition is therefore a prayer of ongoing dependence on God’s grace, a daily renewal of the recognition that the Christian life requires God’s active assistance at every moment, not just at crisis points.

“But Deliver Us from Evil” — The Seventh Petition

The final petition of the Lord’s Prayer, “But deliver us from evil,” brings the prayer to a conclusion that is both realistic about the dangers facing those who seek to follow Christ and confident in God’s power and willingness to protect His children. The phrase “from evil” in the original Greek can be read as either “from evil” in the abstract sense of moral evil and sin, or as “from the evil one,” meaning the devil, the personal spiritual being who, according to Catholic teaching, actively seeks the ruin of human souls. The Catholic tradition has generally understood the phrase to encompass both meanings: deliverance from the power of sin and from the influence of the one who tempts toward sin. This final petition is not a prayer of defeat or fear but a prayer of trust, an acknowledgment that the battle against evil is real and serious and that victory in that battle belongs ultimately to God rather than to human strength or wisdom. It echoes the great Pauline teaching that “we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places” (Ephesians 6:12). The Catechism teaches that this petition asks for the freedom from every evil that afflicts humanity, for the grace of the peace and security that come from God’s protection, and for the final deliverance from evil that will be fully accomplished only in the Kingdom of God at the end of time (CCC 2854). The petition also connects to the great liturgical tradition of the Church, where it is expanded in the Mass with a prayer called the embolism, a short prayer following the Lord’s Prayer that develops the final petition by asking for deliverance from all distress and the protection of peace as the community awaits the coming of Jesus Christ.

The Lord’s Prayer at Mass — Its Liturgical Context

The Lord’s Prayer occupies a specific and theologically significant place in the celebration of the Mass, appearing near the conclusion of the Eucharistic Prayer and immediately before the distribution of Holy Communion, and this placement reveals how the Church understands the prayer’s relationship to the Eucharist. The position of the Lord’s Prayer just before Communion is not accidental or merely traditional. It reflects the conviction that the prayer for “our daily bread” is fulfilled most completely in the Eucharistic bread, the Body of Christ, that the community is about to receive. The petition for forgiveness immediately precedes the sacred encounter with the Lord in the Eucharist, preparing the hearts of the faithful for worthy reception. The petition for deliverance from evil frames the entire act of Communion as a spiritual battle in which the grace of the Eucharist strengthens the soul against the forces that seek to harm it. Saint Thomas Aquinas taught that the Lord’s Prayer is the most perfect of all prayers because it asks for everything that can legitimately be desired, in the right order, and with the disposition of a child approaching a loving Father, and its placement at the climactic moment of the Mass honors this perfection by making it the immediate preparation for the most intimate encounter with God available in this life. The Catechism teaches that in the Eucharistic liturgy the Lord’s Prayer appears as the prayer of the whole Church and that it reveals the eschatological character of the Eucharist, meaning it points forward to the final fulfillment of God’s Kingdom when Christ comes again (CCC 2770). The assembly’s singing or recitation of the Lord’s Prayer together immediately before Communion is therefore one of the most communally significant moments of the entire Mass, the whole people of God speaking with one voice the prayer of the Son of God.

The Doxology — “For Thine Is the Kingdom”

The traditional ending of the Lord’s Prayer, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen,” is not found in the oldest manuscripts of the Gospel of Matthew and does not appear in Luke’s version of the prayer, but it has deep roots in early Christian liturgical practice and reflects a very ancient tradition. It echoes similar doxological language, meaning language of praise and glory directed toward God, found in the Old Testament, particularly in King David’s prayer in 1 Chronicles: “Thine, O LORD, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory, and the majesty” (1 Chronicles 29:11). The Didache, an early Christian document from around the turn of the second century, includes the doxology at the end of the Lord’s Prayer, showing that the Christian community very early added this concluding praise as a fitting liturgical conclusion to the prayer Jesus taught. The Catholic Mass includes this doxology in a distinctive way: the priest sings or recites an extended embolism prayer, asking for deliverance from evil and praying for peace, and then the congregation together sings the doxology as their response. Protestant liturgical practice typically includes the doxology as an integral part of the prayer itself, while Catholic practice separates it as the congregation’s acclamatory response to the priest’s embolism. In both cases, the doxology brings the prayer full circle: it began by hallowing God’s name, asking for His Kingdom to come, and seeking to do His will, and it ends by acknowledging that the Kingdom, the power, and the glory belong to God alone and always will. The Catechism notes that the final Amen of the Lord’s Prayer expresses the entire community’s assent to everything the prayer has asked and proclaimed (CCC 2856).

The Lord’s Prayer and Daily Life

The Lord’s Prayer is not only a liturgical prayer to be recited at Mass and in formal devotions. It is a pattern and a school of prayer that Jesus intended to shape the entire prayer life of His disciples across all the circumstances and situations of daily existence. The Catechism describes the Lord’s Prayer as “the quintessential prayer of the Church,” and it draws on the tradition of the Church Fathers who read it as a complete curriculum in the life of prayer (CCC 2776). Saint Augustine, in his long letter to Proba on prayer, explained that all legitimate Christian prayer can be reduced to some form of the Lord’s Prayer because its seven petitions cover every genuine human need and every appropriate desire. Saint Thomas Aquinas taught in his Summa Theologiae that the Lord’s Prayer is both perfectly ordered in its petitions, moving from God’s glory to human spiritual needs to human physical needs, and perfectly comprehensive, leaving out nothing that deserves to be asked of God. The Catechism presents the Lord’s Prayer as the model by which all other prayer is measured and the source from which all other prayer draws its orientation, so that a Catholic who truly understands and prays the Lord’s Prayer has the resources to pray well in any situation. Praying it slowly and attentively at the beginning of each day, pausing on each phrase and allowing it to shape the day’s intentions and activities, is one of the most practical and most powerful spiritual disciplines available to any Catholic. Using it in moments of crisis, fear, or confusion, when more elaborate prayers seem impossible, brings the whole of Christian faith and hope to bear on the present moment in the most compact and authoritative form possible. Praying it as the communal act at Mass, in unity with every Catholic in every church in the world, makes it a global act of faith that connects each individual to the whole Body of Christ.

The Lord’s Prayer in the Rosary and Other Devotions

Beyond the Mass, the Lord’s Prayer occupies a central and structuring role in several of the most important Catholic devotional practices, most prominently the Rosary. The Rosary begins with the Apostles’ Creed, then one Our Father, three Hail Marys, and a Glory Be, before moving into the five decades of mysteries. Each decade begins with an Our Father and concludes with a Glory Be and the Fatima prayer, with ten Hail Marys in between. This structure means that the person praying a full Rosary of five decades recites the Our Father six times, once at the beginning and once at the start of each decade, so that the Lord’s Prayer becomes the structural framework within which the meditation on the mysteries of Christ’s life takes place. The Liturgy of the Hours, the official daily prayer of the Church prayed by priests, religious, and many laypeople, also includes the Lord’s Prayer at specific points in the day, particularly at Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, ensuring that this prayer structures the daily rhythm of every person who prays the Hours faithfully. The Stations of the Cross traditionally include the Our Father at each station as part of the prayers that accompany the meditation on each moment of Christ’s Passion. Novenas, which are nine days of prayer for specific intentions, typically include the Our Father as part of their daily structure. The fact that the Lord’s Prayer appears so consistently at the structural center of so many Catholic devotional practices reflects the Church’s recognition that it is the prayer from which all other prayer draws its meaning, and that keeping it at the center ensures that every act of devotion remains properly oriented toward the Father, through the Son, in the Holy Spirit.

What This Prayer Means for Our Lives Today

The Lord’s Prayer is not simply a beautiful ancient text or a liturgical formula to be recited at prescribed moments. It is the living voice of Jesus Christ addressed to His Father and shared with every person who comes to believe in Him, and praying it with genuine attention and genuine faith is one of the most transformative acts available to any Catholic in the ordinary course of daily life. To begin a prayer by saying “Our Father” is to make a claim about reality that contradicts everything the secular world teaches about human existence: it is to say that human beings are not isolated individuals thrown into a random universe but children of a loving Father who knows us, cares for us, and desires our eternal happiness. To ask that His Kingdom come and His will be done is to place the whole of one’s life and all of one’s plans under the authority of the God who is wiser and more loving than any human planning could be. To ask for daily bread is to renew every day the acknowledgment that life is a gift, that we depend entirely on God for every necessity, and that the Eucharist is the bread most worth hungering for. To ask for forgiveness while committing to forgive is to accept the most demanding moral standard in the Christian life, the standard that Jesus modeled on the cross when He prayed for those who crucified Him. To ask for protection from temptation and from evil is to acknowledge the genuine spiritual battle that every Christian faces and to seek the divine assistance without which that battle cannot be won. The Catechism describes the Lord’s Prayer as the most perfect of prayers and the fundamental Christian prayer, and it teaches that it is at the center of the Scriptures precisely because it draws together all the great themes of the Gospel and presents them as an act of trusting, filial prayer directed toward the Father (CCC 2774). Every Catholic who prays the Lord’s Prayer attentively, honestly, and daily is placing themselves in the school of Jesus Christ Himself and receiving from Him the most direct instruction in the life of prayer that any human being has ever been given.