What he says of the hypocrites sounds fine at first: ‘They love … to pray.’ But unfortunately it is not prayer which they love, nor the God they are supposed to be praying to. No, they love themselves and the opportunity which public praying gives them to parade themselves.

It’s one thing to say that God is a Father and quite something else to say that God is our Father. The possessive pronoun our is clearly plural

President Herbert Hoover liked to use the phrase “rugged individualism” to describe the resolute character that helped to build the United States. His successor in office, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, modified the concept when he said, “I believe in individualism … up to the point where the individual starts to operate at the expense of society.” It’s a small step from individualism to selfishness; and when too many people decide to live as they please, the results are likely to be confusion, fragmentation, and possible destruction. We need each other, especially when it comes to the life of prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer doesn’t advocate selfish individualism. It doesn’t begin with the words “My Father”; it begins with “Our Father.” Our relationship to the Lord is our most important relationship in life. Because we’re in fellowship with the Father, we can enjoy fellowship with his children. “If we say we love God yet hate a brother or sister, we are liars. For if we do not love a fellow believer, whom we have seen, we cannot love God, whom we have not seen” (1 John 4:20).

Certainly it’s a high privilege for us to belong to the family of God and know the heavenly Father, the glorified Son, and the indwelling Holy Spirit. But with this privilege comes the unavoidable responsibility of calling other believers our brothers and sisters in Christ. That’s why we say our and we and us when we pray the Lord’s Prayer. To ignore these plural pronouns is to rob ourselves of blessing and to weaken the church.

‘[T]he words, who art in heaven, inspire us with confidence.’1

the tiny phrase ‘who art it heaven’ St Thomas explains, in the Compendium of Theology, that these few words draw attention to the unlimited ‘heavenly’ power of God, and so are able to give confidence and hope to the person who is praying. He writes:

It usually happens that when hope is lost, the reason is to be found in the powerlessness of the one from whom help was expected. The confidence characteristic of hope is not based merely on the willingness to help professed by the one in whom hope is placed: power to help must also be present. We make clear enough the readiness of the divine will to help us when we proclaim that God is our Father. But lest there should be doubt concerning the perfection of his power, we add who art in heaven.2

Thomas notes further that the words Who art in heaven ‘inspire us with confidence in praying in three respects: (a) as regards the power of Him to whom we pray; (b) as bringing us into familiar intercourse with Him; (c) and as being in keeping with the nature of our petitions.’5 Because our final happiness is not here on earth but in heaven, the words Who art in heaven encourage us, Thomas says, to Seek the things that are above where Christ is (Col. 3:1).6 What’s more, the words serve as a helpful preparation for the person who utters the prayer. Thomas writes: ‘This preparation should consist in imitating heavenly things, for a son should imitate his father: hence it is said (1 Cor. 15:49): As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us bear the image of the heavenly—in the contemplation of heavenly things, inasmuch as a man is inclined to turn his thoughts more often towards where his father is, and where those things are that he loves.’7

if God is ‘in heaven’ and, therefore, high above us and transcendent, how is it possible for us to enjoy with God what Thomas calls ‘familiar intercourse’? By way of reply Thomas states that God is not confined within corporeal space. He quotes Jer. 23:24: I fill heaven and earth.8 God, therefore, we can say, is intimately close to us, as immanent as he is transcendent. And, what is more, He is especially close to those who, in living faith, seek to draw near to him. In the Compendium, St Thomas writes:

Although God is said to be close to all human beings because of his special care for them, he is most especially close to the good who strive to draw near to Him in faith and love … Indeed He, not only draws near to them, he also dwells within them by grace, as Jeremiah 14:9 says: You, O Lord, are in our midst. Therefore, to increase the hope of the saints, we are prompted to say: ‘who art in heaven’—that is, [who art] in the saints, as Augustine explains. ‘For,’ as he says, ‘there seems to be, spiritually, as much distance between the just and sinners as there is, materially, between heaven and earth. And to signify this, we turn towards the east when we pray, because it is in that direction that heaven rises. The hope of the saints, and their confidence in prayer, are increased not only by the divine nearness, but also by the dignity they have received from God who, through Christ, has made them, in themselves, to be heavens.9

This means that when we speak of God being ‘in the heavens’, the statement can be taken, in an extended sense, to refer to God’s presence in the saints on earth, those who live a heavenly life, in whom God dwells by faith.10 Thomas repeats this idea in his St Matthew lectures: ‘The heavens can be taken to mean the saints, as in Isaiah 1:2: Hear you heavens, and in Psalm 21:4: You dwell in your holy one. And [God] says this to give us greater confidence in obtaining what we pray for, because he is not far from us. You are in us, Lord (Jer. 14:9).’11

In the Compendium of Theology, when reflecting on the phrase ‘who art in heaven’, Thomas refers to two major obstacles which can ‘stand in the way of our prayer.’12 These obstacles, in fact, are the ‘errors’ of which he had already spoken briefly in the Matthew Lectures: namely, the idea, first of all, that God is simply not concerned about us; and, second, the idea that everything is subject to a fixed fate so there is no point in praying. With regard to the latter, Thomas writes:

Some people act as though human affairs were subjected to a deterministic fatalism imposed by the stars, contrary to what is commanded in Jeremiah 10:2: ‘Be not afraid of the signs of Heaven, which the heathens fear.’ If this error had its way, it would rob us of the fruit of prayer. For, if our lives were subjected to a necessity decreed by the stars, nothing in our course could be changed. In vain we should plead in our prayer for the granting of some good or for deliverance from evil. To prevent this error from undermining confidence in prayer, we say: ‘Who art in heaven,’ thus acknowledging that God moves and regulates the heavens.13

St Thomas raises an interesting question in the Summa theologiae. He notes, first of all, that three of the seven petitions of the Our Father are directed purely and simply to the glory of God: Hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. The remaining four petitions are directed to the human hope of enjoying that glory: Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. St Thomas’s question is this: should the order of the petitions not be reversed, placing the last four petitions in front of the first three, thereby giving attention to ‘the removal of evil’ before thinking about higher matters such as ‘the attainment of the good’?21 The answer which Thomas gives immediately draws attention to the supreme importance of desire in Christian prayer. He writes:

Because prayer is ‘in some way the interpreter of our desire’ before God, we can only rightly pray for what we can rightly desire. Now, in the Lord’s Prayer, not only do we ask for all that we may rightly desire, we also pray for things in the order in which they should be desired. So this prayer not only teaches us to ask, it also gives shape to our whole affective life. Now, obviously, the first thing that focuses our desire is the goal, and then the things that lead to the goal. And our goal is God. And our affection is directed toward him in two ways: first, by our willing the glory of God, and second, by willing to enjoy his glory. The first of these pertains to that love by which we love God in himself, and the second pertains to that love by which we love ourselves in God.22

In the Compendium of Theology, he suggests that the entire structure of the Our Father can also be seen under the rubric of the virtue of hope. What are presented to us, in the first part of the prayer, are ‘the things which lead us to hope in God’ and, in the second part, ‘the things which we ought to hope to receive from him.’26

In the Summa theologiae the Lord’s Prayer is described, and more than once, as ‘the interpreter of desire’. Now, however, in the light of all that St Thomas has said about hope in the Compendium of Theology, it would seem clear that this tiny Gospel prayer can just as happily be described as ‘the interpreter of hope’.32