The prayer given us by Jesus - the Our Father - is the perfect and complete prayer, and more.
It is the standard; it is the norm for all our prayers and our life of prayer. And still more.
The prayer, the Our Father, prayed and lived in the Holy Spirit, guides us step by step in the spiritual, interior journey to Eternal Life.
The Our Father leads us from our very beginning, first awakened as Christians, to the summit of the maturity of Christian discipleship - to blessed communion in God the Holy Trinity. We need such a prayer, because we need to truly encounter, and meet, with God.
This prayer is simple enough for a child and yet deep, intense and profound enough for a saint. It is easily kept in memory! Yet it cannot be exhausted of its meaning and significance to us in a million lifetimes. The Our Father deserves a lifetime of meditation and it bears fruit for those willing to be open to its wisdom.
The Our Father reveals, in its brief form, correspondence with the holy wisdom of traditional Catholic spirituality. This traditional spirituality has been followed for centuries in the Church by her saints, and is known as the "Three Ways" - the Purgative, the Illuminative and the Unitive stages of the interior life. The spiritual insights of Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Bernard of Clairvaux, and many other saints are found enclosed in this simple prayer.
The structure of the Our Father, further, is seen to correspond with the structure of our Holy Mass - the very "source and summit of the Christian life." Thus the Our Father is a guide into perfect worship of the Holy Trinity. The Our Father reveals the will and the work of God in us - and as His divine work, inviting us to a saving participation and cooperation with Him, it is rightly called "a liturgy" - an Interior Liturgy at work in the praying human soul.
