The Our Father: The Lord's Prayer in Its Catholic Form, Latin and Meaning

The Our Father: Catholic Text and Other Versions

Where Is the Lord's Prayer in the Bible?

The Lord's Prayer appears twice in the Gospels: in Matthew 6:9-13, as part of the Sermon on the Mount, and in Luke 11:2-4, when a disciple asks, "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1). The Catechism notes that Luke gives a shorter text of five petitions and Matthew a fuller one of seven (CCC 2759). The Church has always prayed Matthew's form.

• Matthew says "Our Father who art in heaven" and adds "thy will be done" and "deliver us from evil".
• Luke begins simply "Father" and ends at "lead us not into temptation".
• Debts or trespasses? Matthew's Greek says "debts" (Matthew 6:12), and Luke says "sins" (Luke 11:4). English Catholics say "trespasses", a word that goes back to William Tyndale's translation of 1526 and the Book of Common Prayer of 1549, and that Jesus himself uses in the verses straight after the prayer (Matthew 6:14-15). All three words name the same thing: what we owe God and have not paid.

Very early, Christians made it the core of daily prayer. The Didache, a Christian manual from around the end of the first century, gives the Lord's Prayer and says to pray it three times a day (Didache 8:2-3).

What the Our Father Means, Petition by Petition

The Our Father is an address followed by seven petitions (CCC 2803). The first three turn us toward God: his name, his kingdom, his will. The last four bring him our needs: bread, forgiveness, protection in temptation and rescue from evil. Put God first, then ask.

• "Our Father, who art in heaven": Jesus gives us his own word for God. "Our" means you never pray alone, and you cannot call God Father while treating his other children as strangers. "In heaven" names God's majesty and the home he is bringing us to.
• "hallowed be thy name": may God's name be held holy, in the world and first of all in your own life and speech.
• "thy kingdom come": the coming of Christ's reign, now in hearts and in the end in glory, when he returns. Every Our Father is a prayer for the Second Coming.
• "thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven": the prayer Jesus lived out in Gethsemane: "not as I will, but as you will" (Matthew 26:39).
• "Give us this day our daily bread": everything we need for today, and no more. The Greek word epiousios, translated "daily", is found almost nowhere else, and the Church has long read it also as "supersubstantial", the Bread of Life in the Eucharist (CCC 2837).
• "and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us": the only petition Jesus explains straight afterwards: "if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses" (Matthew 6:15). Name the person you have not forgiven.
• "and lead us not into temptation": do not let us enter into temptation, and do not let us give in to it (CCC 2846). More on the wording below.
• "but deliver us from evil": the Catechism teaches that evil here "is not an abstraction, but refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One" (CCC 2851).

For a simple method of praying the Our Father as a meditation, one phrase at a time, see the section on how to pray the Our Father in our step-by-step guide to prayer.

The Our Father in Latin, With Pronunciation

The Latin Our Father is the Pater Noster, the prayer of the Western Church for most of its history and still sung at Latin Masses around the world. Here it is line by line, with an approximate Church Latin pronunciation.

Notice that the Latin keeps Matthew's "debts" (debita). The English "trespasses" is a translation choice, and the meaning is the same.

For Thine Is the Kingdom: The Doxology Question

Catholics usually end the Our Father at "deliver us from evil. Amen." because the closing words "for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory" are a doxology the early Church added in worship, and they are not in the oldest manuscripts of Matthew's Gospel. Catholics do pray those words, at every Mass, in their liturgical place.

• Where it comes from. The Didache already ends the prayer with "for yours is the power and the glory for ever" (Didache 8:2). Later liturgical texts added "the kingdom" (CCC 2760). Copyists then carried the line into some later manuscripts of Matthew 6:13.
• Why Protestant Bibles differ. The King James Version was translated from those later Greek manuscripts, so it prints the doxology in Matthew 6:13, and most Protestants pray it as part of the prayer. Most modern translations, Catholic and Protestant, put it in a footnote.
• What Catholics do at Mass. After the people pray the Our Father, the priest continues without an "Amen": "Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil, graciously grant peace in our days, that, by the help of your mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress, as we await the blessed hope and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ." The people answer with the doxology: "For the kingdom, the power and the glory are yours now and for ever."
• The Orthodox also give the doxology to the priest, with a Trinitarian ending: "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

So the difference between the Catholic and Protestant Our Father is placement. Both praise God with the same words. If you pray with Protestant friends, you can say the doxology with them in good conscience.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation: What It Means

"Lead us not into temptation" asks God to keep us from entering into temptation and from giving in to it. God tempts no one: "God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one" (James 1:13). The Catechism explains that the Greek means both "do not allow us to enter into temptation" and "do not let us yield to temptation" (CCC 2846).

Because the old wording can sound as if God leads people into sin, some bishops' conferences have revised their translations. France introduced "ne nous laisse pas entrer en tentation" ("do not let us enter into temptation") in 2017, and Italy's new Missal, approved by Pope Francis, prays "non abbandonarci alla tentazione" ("do not abandon us to temptation"). The English text used at Mass has not changed. Pray it with the meaning the Church gives it: keep me out of the trap, and hold me when I am in it.

Then do your part. Jesus told the sleeping apostles, "Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation" (Matthew 26:41). Know your weak hour and your near occasions of sin, and pray this petition before you reach them.

How the Our Father Is Prayed at Mass

At Mass the Our Father comes after the Eucharistic Prayer and before the Sign of Peace, as the family's preparation for Holy Communion. The priest introduces it: "At the Saviour's command and formed by divine teaching, we dare to say". The whole assembly prays it together, the priest continues with the prayer "Deliver us, Lord", and the people answer with the doxology.

• There is no "Amen" after "deliver us from evil" at Mass, because the priest's prayer continues it.
• The Missal does not prescribe a gesture for the people. In some places people raise their hands or hold hands by local custom, and many keep their hands joined. Follow your parish and keep your attention on the words.
• The petition for "daily bread" has its fullest sense here, minutes before you receive the Bread of Life (John 6:35).

For the whole order of the Mass, see our guide to the Mass explained.

Praying the Our Father Every Day

The Church prays the Our Father at the heart of each day: at Mass, in Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours, and at the start of every decade of the Rosary. The Didache's rule of three times a day still works. Pray it on waking, at midday and at night.

St. Teresa of Avila built much of her teaching on prayer in The Way of Perfection around a slow, phrase-by-phrase reading of the Our Father, and St. Thomas Aquinas called it the most perfect of prayers (CCC 2763). You do not need an hour. You need one honest Our Father a day, prayed as if you meant every word, and the prayer will start to rearrange your life: God first, then today's needs, then the person you have not forgiven.

Pair it with the Hail Mary, the prayer that follows it in the Rosary, and with an honest Act of Contrition at night.