In praying, do not babble like the pagans,
who think that they will be heard because of their many words.
The pagans had to resort to many words because their so-called gods did not in fact know what they needed before the asked and did not particularly care. There was therefore an anxious necessity to continually keep their petitions before disinterested deities with better things to do. Christian prayer is meant to issue from an altogether different motivation.
Do not be like them.
Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
We are not told to avoid repetition or perseverance per se. Rather we are told that a lack of confidence in God is not a good reason to resort to repetition. We are told to ask and keep asking, to persist as did the importunate widow against the unjust judge, for our own sakes and not because of any influence it has on God. He himself already desires to give his people more than they can ask or imagine. But he desires that we ourselves become channels through which his grace can flow. And we recognize that we begin as very narrow and very shallow channels indeed. It is only by seeing him supernaturally work through our meager efforts, only as his grace flows through us, that we begin to find ourselves widened and deepened.
so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (see Ephesians 3:17-19).
For God to be able to do this transformative work in our hearts we must be grounded in a confidence in him that surpasses that of the pagans, a confidence that is even more personal and intimate than was typical in ancient Israel.
Our Father who art in heaven
Israel knew that God was Father of their nation. But few would dare address him individually as their Father. But it is precisely this filial trust that is meant to be the basis of all of our prayers. We are not like the pagans, where they believe that they have their own best interests at heart and have to market those interests to their deities. Rather, God knows even better than ourselves what will make us flourish and he wants that for us even more than we want it.
hallowed be thy name
We must recognize how utterly unique is the name, meaning the entire identity, of the God we serve. He is not one facet of the world in competition with others as were the pagan deities conceived to be. We ourselves have nothing that we can offer him in exchange for his love. He has nothing he desires to gain except the freedom to love us beyond our own self-imposed limits. We must stop treating him as though he were a human, supernatural and powerful perhaps, but part of creation rather than its source. We need to hallow his name if the subsequent petitions of his prayer are to transform us. How can we really desire his Kingdom and his will if we don't trust that those things are good?
Give us this day our daily bread
When our relationship with the Father is rooted in the knowledge of his love and his mercy we become able to make petitionary prayers that matter. We don't need to say a prayer that somehow addresses all needs of all peoples for all times. Rather, we can come to him for our daily bread, for the physical and spiritual needs of ourselves and others. Like the Israelites in the desert he tends to provide this one day at a time precisely to draw out and expand our trust in him. Yet in the Eucharist we see the solid promise that this daily bread will always be there for us.
and forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
Our relationships with one another are meant to be places where we express and share the mercy and love we first receive from God. If we do not allow them to take this shape they can instead become obstacles to our own continued reception of mercy, mercy which we nevertheless always continue to need.
and lead us not into temptation,
Finally we acknowledge to the Lord our own limitations. We know that if he allows us to be tempted beyond our strength we will fall the same as anyone. Just as we began this prayer acknowledging the Lord's great love for us, then asked that the channel of that love be protected and deepened in his people in the middle, so do we conclude by seeing ourselves in a proper relationship of dependence on him.
but deliver us from evil.
We ask protection from temptation and deliverance from evil with confidence. This confidence is not rooted in ourselves, and it is unshaken by the fact that we are required to ask if we want to receive it. For we see the Father himself prompting and reminding us to ask for it. Our confidence is that he will not leave us hanging, never allow anything to befall us that can't ultimately be made to serve our good. Even more than we would ask if our motivation was one of fear our confidence in him allows us to maintain a healthy dependence on him, knowing that no one who trusts in him will be put to shame.
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 himself has given us his own words which we are in turn free to offer back to him. This means that we can have an absolute certainty that he will in fact answer them. Perhaps it won't be in the way we would choose or in accord with our preferred timing. But as long as we remember that he is a good Father we can remain confident, with the Psalmist, that we will be among them ones whom the Lord hears and rescues from all of our distress.
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