The Lord’s Prayer urges us to forgive as we expect to be forgiven. We understand that only refuge in the Holy Spirit will protect us from giving in to temptation, and we learn to trust God that He will, through Christ, release us from the stronghold of Satan, once and for all, at the end of time.
This petition has a specifically Christian sense. The CCCC (593) says: “Since ‘man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matthew 4:4), this petition equally applies to hunger for the Word of God and for the Body of Christ received in the Eucharist as well as hunger for the Holy Spirit….”
For God’s kingdom to come on earth, we need to listen to His voice, open our hearts to Him and do His holy will. In essence, God’s kingdom here on earth involves intimate human cooperation with the Divine.
For God’s name to be made holy, we must glorify Him in word and action, by rejecting immorality and embracing love. We must live our lives in a way that causes others to believe in and love our Father in heaven.
We have the privilege of calling God our Father, unworthy as we are to be called His children, because of Christ’s supreme and immeasurable sacrifice, which has expiated for our sins and repaired our fractured relationship with our Maker.
The one prayer that encompasses and represents Catholicism in its fullness, is the Our Father. This prayer, which originates from the intimate connection that Jesus has with the Father, is the perfect prayer to envelope us completely in God’s warm embrace and afford us a deeper knowledge of the spiritual.
Fighting against the temptations of the world and the devil, and especially our own weaknesses, to hold fast to prayer, is what we are all called to do. Once we have overcome the enemy in battle through prayer, we will merit the glory that God has in store for us in heaven.
While vocal prayer is important as it involves our whole being participating in praying to God, meditation makes a more interior journey, relying on imagination, emotion and desire to be one with Him. Contemplation is a complete surrender to God under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.
We can communicate with God anywhere we are, although there are appropriate places for some forms of worship. While the Church gives us some instruction on when to pray, our prayer lives must continue ceaselessly, guided by the desire to unite with God and be obedient to His Word.
As followers of Christ, we must bless the Lord, adore Him, offer thanksgiving and praise, as much as we petition Him, if not more. We must also intercede for others, especially those who have wronged us.