The Our Father

The Our Father is the prayer the Lord Jesus Himself taught the disciples when they asked Him "Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples" (Luke 11:1). It is recorded in two slightly different forms in the New Testament: the longer form in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 6:9-13, and the shorter form in Luke 11:2-4. The traditional liturgical form of the Catholic Church follows the Matthean version with a brief doxological close.

Origin and Scriptural foundation

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the Our Father is "the summary of the whole gospel" (CCC 2774, citing Tertullian, De oratione). Tertullian, writing around AD 200, was the first Catholic Father to give the prayer extended theological treatment in his treatise On Prayer. Origen, Saint Cyprian of Carthage, and Saint Augustine all wrote commentaries on the Our Father, and the prayer's place at the heart of Christian life has been continuous from the apostolic age to the present.

Theological structure

Catholic theological tradition has always recognized seven petitions in the Our Father, organized in two groups. The first three petitions (hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done) are directed to the glory of the Father; the last four (give us this day our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil) bring our human needs before Him.

The Catechism treats the Our Father in extensive detail in paragraphs 2759 to 2865. The treatment, drawn from Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and the magisterial tradition, gives the Our Father pride of place as "the most perfect of prayers" (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae II-II, q. 83, a. 9), because in it the Lord Himself has given us the words of our address to the Father.

The seven petitions, meditated one by one

The address: "Our Father, who art in heaven"

The prayer begins not with a petition but with an address. The Catholic tradition has always emphasized that the Christian dares call God "Father" only because Christ has given us the Spirit of adoption (Romans 8:15, Galatians 4:6). The word "our" makes the prayer irreducibly ecclesial: no Catholic prays the Our Father alone in any deep sense, even when praying in a locked room. To say "Our Father" is to pray with the entire Body of Christ, on earth and in heaven, in every time and place.

"Hallowed be thy name"

The first petition is that God's name be sanctified, that is, that His name be recognized as holy in the Catholic and in the world. The Catechism (CCC 2807-2815) understands this as a petition that God's plan of salvation be realized in the hearts of the faithful and through them in the world. It is a missionary petition: that all peoples come to know and worship the true God.

"Thy kingdom come"

The second petition asks for the final coming of the Kingdom of God at the end of history and, within history, for the growth of that Kingdom in the Catholic Church and in every human heart. The Catechism (CCC 2816-2821) links this petition to the Church's expectation of the Second Coming of Christ and to the daily labor of Catholic witness in the present age.

"Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven"

The third petition asks for the alignment of the human will to the divine will, in the pattern of Christ's own prayer in Gethsemane ("not my will, but thine, be done", Luke 22:42). The Catechism (CCC 2822-2827) treats this as the petition that most demands interior conversion of the Catholic praying it, because to pray for God's will to be done requires actively renouncing our own contrary will.

"Give us this day our daily bread"

The fourth petition, the first of the four "we" petitions asking for our own needs, sits at the pivot of the prayer. The Catholic tradition has read "daily bread" (Greek epiousion, a hapax legomenon translated variously across the centuries) as referring at once to material sustenance, to the Word of God, and to the Eucharist. Saint Cyprian, Saint Augustine, and Saint Thomas Aquinas all treat this petition as containing an implicit eucharistic reference.

"And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us"

The fifth petition is unique in that it binds the divine forgiveness of the petitioner to the petitioner's forgiveness of others. The Catechism (CCC 2838-2845) treats this as one of the hardest of the petitions, because it asks the Catholic to forgive in the very moment of asking to be forgiven. The Lord Himself immediately commented on this petition (Matthew 6:14-15): "For if you shall forgive men their offences, your heavenly Father will also forgive you your offences: but if you will not forgive men, neither will your Father forgive you your offences."

"And lead us not into temptation"

The sixth petition has been the subject of extensive Catholic theological reflection, particularly in the twenty-first century. The Greek verb (eisenegkes) is causative in form, and Pope Francis in 2019 approved for the Italian Missal the translation "abandon us not to temptation" as more faithful to the Catholic understanding that God tests but does not tempt (James 1:13). The traditional English rendering "lead us not into temptation" remains standard in the current Roman Missal.

"But deliver us from evil"

The seventh and final petition asks for deliverance from evil, understood in the Catholic tradition as deliverance from the Evil One (ho poneros, a masculine substantive) rather than merely from abstract evil. The Catechism (CCC 2851-2854) treats this as the culminating petition that gathers up the whole prayer: the Catholic ends by placing himself entirely in God's protection.

When the Our Father is prayed

The Our Father is prayed:

• At every Mass, in the eucharistic liturgy after the Eucharistic Prayer and before the Sign of Peace.
• In every liturgical hour of the Liturgy of the Hours.
• In every decade of the Holy Rosary, at the beginning of each set of ten Hail Marys.
• In every novena (see the novenas hub) at the close of the daily prayers.
• In the daily morning and evening prayers of the Catholic faithful.
• At any moment of personal prayer, alone or with others.

The Our Father is the prayer Catholics learn first and pray most often throughout life. The Catechism notes that "the Our Father is the most perfect of prayers... In it we ask, not only for all the things we can rightly desire, but also in the sequence that they should be desired" (CCC 2763).

The traditional doxology

The traditional Catholic close of the Our Father in personal prayer is simply Amen. In the Catholic liturgy of the Mass since the post-Vatican II reform, the Our Father is followed by an embolism ("Deliver us, Lord, from every evil...") and the doxology "For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours, now and forever." This doxology is of ancient liturgical use (it appears in the Didache, the late first or early second century) but was not part of the Our Father itself in the traditional Catholic recitation outside the Mass.

The Catholic version vs the Protestant version

The most common difference between how Catholics and Protestants pray the Our Father in English is the ending. The Protestant tradition, following the King James Version of Matthew 6:9-13, adds "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. Amen" directly at the end of the prayer. The Catholic tradition (following the older manuscript evidence, which does not include this ending in the biblical text itself) does not include this line in the Our Father in personal prayer or the rosary. The doxology is prayed only at Mass, separated from the Our Father by the embolism as described above.

A second difference is the word choice for the fifth petition. The Catholic English tradition, following the medieval and early modern liturgical use, prays "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." Some Protestant traditions (particularly the Presbyterian and Reformed communions) pray "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" (a more literal translation of the Greek). Other Protestant communions use "forgive us our sins." All three renderings are theologically valid; the Catholic English use is fixed by liturgical convention.

Historical variants and translation notes

The Latin Pater Noster has been the fixed liturgical text of the Catholic Church since the fourth century, when Saint Jerome's Vulgate translation became the standard biblical text in the Latin West. The English translation "Our Father who art in heaven" preserves the archaic second-person subjunctive ("art") that has fallen out of ordinary English but is retained in the liturgical text of the Catholic Church out of reverence for the received tradition.

The English form used in the Catholic Church today is essentially the form that appears in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer, which was itself the form used by the Catholic recusant community in Elizabethan England. The 2011 revision of the Roman Missal did not alter the Our Father, preserving the traditional English wording unchanged.

For the Latin form of the Our Father used in the Traditional Latin Mass and by Catholics who pray the rosary in Latin, see the Pater Noster text at the top of this page. Both English and Latin forms are fully equivalent for personal and liturgical prayer in the Catholic Church.

Pairing the Our Father with other prayers

The Our Father is paired in Catholic practice with:

• The Hail Mary and the Glory Be, in the rosary's basic structure.
• The Apostles' Creed, at the opening of the rosary.
• The Memorare and other Marian prayers, in the daily life of the Catholic faithful.

For the Catholic doctrine of prayer, see the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraphs 2558 to 2865. For the Lord's teaching on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, see Matthew 6:5-15.

Common questions about the Our Father

What is the Our Father called in Latin?

The Latin name of the Our Father is Pater Noster, the opening words of the Latin text ("Pater noster, qui es in caelis..."). This name is used interchangeably with "the Our Father" and "the Lord's Prayer" in Catholic devotional literature. The full Latin text is at the top of this page.

Is the Our Father the same as the Lord's Prayer?

Yes. "The Our Father" and "the Lord's Prayer" are two names for the same prayer. Catholics tend to use "the Our Father"; Protestants tend to use "the Lord's Prayer." The full liturgical name is Oratio Dominica in Latin ("the Lord's Prayer"). The prayer is called "the Lord's Prayer" because the Lord Jesus Himself taught it to His disciples.

How many times a day should a Catholic pray the Our Father?

There is no fixed obligation. The Our Father is prayed at every Mass, in every hour of the Liturgy of the Hours, in every decade of the rosary, and traditionally in the morning and evening prayers of the Catholic faithful. A Catholic who prays the rosary daily and attends daily Mass will pray the Our Father approximately 7 times per day. A Catholic with less structured devotional life will typically pray it 1 to 3 times per day.

Why do Catholics not add "For thine is the kingdom" at the end?

Because the older manuscript evidence for Matthew 6:9-13 does not include that ending, and the Catholic Church has preserved the shorter form as the biblical Our Father. At Mass, however, the Catholic Church does include a doxology equivalent to it, separated from the Our Father itself by the embolism ("Deliver us, Lord, from every evil...") and prayed together with the assembly. So the doxology is included in the Catholic liturgy, but as its own liturgical element rather than as part of the biblical prayer.

Is "our daily bread" a reference to the Eucharist?

The Catholic tradition has consistently read the fourth petition as containing a reference to the Eucharist alongside its plain sense of physical sustenance. Saint Cyprian, Saint Augustine, and Saint Thomas Aquinas all treat the "daily bread" as including the eucharistic Bread of Life. The Catechism (CCC 2837) notes that the Greek word epiousion is "supersubstantial" in Saint Jerome's Latin rendering, an interpretation that has always been read eucharistically in the Catholic tradition.

Why did Pope Francis approve a change to "abandon us not to temptation"?

The Greek verb in the sixth petition (me eisenegkes hemas) is causative in form, and a strictly literal translation ("lead us not") has caused misunderstanding among some readers, seeming to imply that God actively leads Catholics into temptation, which the Catholic Church has always denied (James 1:13). Pope Francis approved the alternative rendering "abandon us not to temptation" for the 2020 Italian Missal to clarify the Catholic understanding that God tests but does not tempt. The English Roman Missal retains the traditional "lead us not into temptation" as an equally valid rendering, understood in the Catholic sense that God permits but does not cause temptation.

Can the Our Father be prayed silently, or must it be said aloud?

Either is valid. The Our Father is prayed aloud at Mass and in most communal settings; in personal prayer, silent recitation is a long-established Catholic practice. The Catechism (CCC 2699-2701) treats vocal prayer, meditation, and contemplative prayer as three legitimate forms of Catholic prayer; the Our Father can be prayed in any of the three modes.