In praying, do not babble like the pagans,
who think that they will be heard because of their many words.
The pagans begin with the wrong motivation because they believe that their gods are aloof and need to be convinced to listen to them. They have a paradigm where correct performance and sufficient effort are required to obtain their desired benefits. They are like rhetoricians giving persuasive speeches to an audience that, if not hostile, is at least indifferent.
The most important difference of Christian prayer from other forms of prayer is its starting place.
Do not be like them.
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
“This is how you are to pray:
Our Father who art in heaven,
It might be inferred that the pagan gods did not know what the pagans needed until they were told, and that this was true because those so-called gods didn't care enough to know. But this was a difficult perspective to challenge. For if God knows our need before we ask then why does he want us to ask anyway?
The mental posture of prayer calms and purifies the soul, and makes it of more capacity to receive the divine gifts which are poured into it. For God does not hear us for the prevailing force of our pleadings; He is at all times ready to give us His light, but we are not ready to receive it, but prone to other things. There is then in prayer a turning of the body to God, and a purging of the inward eye, whilst those worldly things which we desired are shut out, that the eye of the mind made single might be able to bear the single light, and in it abide with that joy with which a happy life is perfected.- Saint Augustine
Prayer is the opposite of the way we often think of it. Rather than causing God to desire what we desire it causes us to desire and open ourselves to the things which God desires for us, those things which will make for our flourishing. Chief among these is putting God first in our lives and therefore desiring his will more than our own will.
hallowed be thy name,
thy Kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Jesus showed us how to prefer the Father's will when he suffered in Gethsemane. He asked that the chalice be taken from him if possible but even more that the Father's will be done and not his own (see Luke 22:42). When we are presented with the chalice of suffering it never seems like something which will make for our flourishing. But when we learn to accept it as Jesus does in turns out to be the exact path to resurrection and new life, not only for ourselves, but for the world. It is precisely a path that we can never find on our own, if we insist on being self-directed and living lives determined by self-will. Only God can lead us beyond the boundaries of our egos into the new life he has prepared for us.
We are weak, but prayer has power. The words we are given to pray are not merely our words, but words given to us by the Word himself. We can be certain that our prayer will not be without effect, certain that he who began a good work in us will by this path bring it to completion (see Philippians 1:6).
So shall my word be
that goes forth from my mouth;
It shall not return to me void,
but shall do my will,
achieving the end for which I sent it.
The Lord wants us to desire the daily bread of the Eucharist even more than the food and drink that we need. He told his disciples to seek first the Kingdom and that all else they needed would be given them (see Matthew 6:33). We have a hard time believing it. We tend to want to care more about physical needs than spiritual. But this is another place where the Our Father challenges us. If we really recognized what was offered in the bread from heaven given by Jesus, how would we desire it? In the Our Father we prayer to have that desire.
In the Our Father we pray to be protected from attitudes that can block God's mercy from acting in us, attitudes that constitute habitual resistance on our part to God's own desire to reconcile the world to himself.
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
We ask to be protected from the lies that temptation represents. Temptation promises happiness that only God himself can deliver. May the Lord himself keep us from temptation, that is, to giving our desire over to something less than God himself.
Look to him that you may be radiant with joy,
and your faces may not blush with shame.
Because the Father cares for us we need have no fear of evil. Fear of the Lord casts out all other fear and can give us peace, knowing that God knows us completely, loves us with a Father's love, and has the power to ensure that nothing happens to us outside of his providential plan. All things do indeed work together for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose (see Romans 8:28). In the Our Father we learn to rest in that promise.
When the poor one called out, the LORD heard,
and from all his distress he saved him.
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