A Translation of the Our Father for our Times

The Lord’s Prayer, a beautiful, liberating prayer Jesus himself gave us, is a foundational Christian prayer. All of the patristic theologians considered it to be the foundation of all Christian prayer. It is said in all Christian churches, at the close of the vast majority of twelve step meetings, and in the privacy of all Christian homes. With such standing, it influences both the conscious decision making of all Christians, but also the unconscious attitudes we have toward reality, God’s initiatives and the way we live our faith. The very words of the prayer are internalized by Christian children who then carry them with them throughout their whole life. We develop an understanding that God is a loving father, that his name is holy, that he exists in some kind of heavenly state, that there is a fundamental difference between earth and heaven, that God’s kingdom is breaking into our world, that we need to forgive and that we are forgiven, that God provides for us, that evil is real, and that God acts and that we need to act as well. All of these concepts and symbols act on our conscious awareness and in our unconscious values, attitudes and feelings.

Because this prayer is so very important, it is important to ask if we are translating it correctly. We live in the twenty-first century and are influenced by the insights of science, the wonder of space travel, the tremendous accomplishments of collective action on behalf of peace and justice, and the prophetic work of feminist theology. How then are we to translate this prayer in the twenty-first century? In this essay, I will examine each verse of the prayer and propose a re-translation.

“Our Father, who art in heaven.” We have come to realize that since all people and things flow from God, both femininity and masculinity are present in God. “Mother” could be substituted for “Father” (as Blessed Julian of Norwich did in the fourteenth century). The reality of God includes all that is good in both men and women. Moreover, Jesus did not just experience God as Father, but as Abba—Daddy—tender, loving parent. Why then did Jesus maintain masculine language? He did so for the same reason that he refers to God as living in the heavens. He was fully human. Although his wisdom (sapientia) was infinite, his knowledge (scientia) was limited by space and time (as it is for all human beings). He could not have known about feminist contributions to religious studies in the same way that he could not have known about space travel or Einstein’s theory of relativity.

We know from critical Biblical scholarship that the phrase “the heavens” is a symbol for God. We know from science that there is no heavenly firmament dividing the upper atmosphere from the abode of God and his angels. Jesus was a first century Jewish man so he knew first century Jewish cosmology. Some might argue that because Jesus was divine he knew everything, including twenty-first century astro-physics and modern/post-modern science. This claim is a form of monophysitism which claims that Jesus’ divinity swallowed up his humanity. The Church has correctly taught that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. As a fully human being, his knowledge of science would be limited to the science of his day (once again the difference between sapientia and scientia). Hence, the double decker universe of heaven above earth. We also know from our collective spiritual experience that God is everywhere (an experience heightened by the dynamics of the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius). So, the first line of the prayer could read: “Our Father (Daddy), who is everywhere” or “who is in all situations and people.”

“Hallowed be thy name” stands as it is. In his commentary on the Gospel of Luke in the New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Robert Karris, O.F.M. interprets this verse as “may all the evils which defile your creation be removed, especially those in our hearts, so that the gracious love, witnessed to in your name, may be manifested.” I will also point out that it would be characteristic of a Jewish teacher such as Jesus to reverence the mysterious name of YHWH, the name revealed in the spiritual-political liberation of the Exodus. Since the name was revealed in the context of the Exodus--“I am YHWH, I will free you” (Exodus 6:6)—the name of God in and of itself is liberating and points to the reality of spiritual-political transformation of a sinful, oppressive situation (as Karris notes above).

“Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done” was prophetic in the first century and remains prophetic now. Robert Karris notes that from Luke 4:14 to the Our Father (11:2) Jesus “has been narrating the nature of God’s kingdom, which breaks boundaries separating rich and poor, hale and halt, men and women, clean and unclean, saint and sinner.” God’s kingdom undoes the dynamic of primitive social bonding over against a scapegoat and ushers in the reality of inclusion.

“On earth as it is in heaven” should now be read as “now as it will be fully in the future.” As we noted above, heaven is not above our heads. Heaven is “the abode of God” and God is in all things, in all people, in all situations. Therefore, heaven is in all earthly situations. “Heaven” is a spatial symbol for the reality of God. Why was heaven chosen as a symbol of God’s reality (according to Aquinas it would be a symbol of reality itself since God is the being whose essence is existence)? One only needs to get away from the bright lights of the big city to see the awesomeness of the heavens at night. Using heaven as a symbol for God’s presence appeals to the sense of transcendence one experiences when one witnesses the grandeur of the sky. Rain also falls from the heavens, watering crops, making the land fertile, and God gives rain to sustain us, so it makes sense to think of the heavens having floodgates which God himself opens. The problem is that now, in the age of space travel, we know that there are no floodgates. Rain comes from the clouds, and an astronaut travelling through what was thought to be the heavenly firmament will not find a divine throne surrounded by angels, but will find the incredible expanse of outer space. Heaven is not the abode of God above the earth. Heaven is found in all situations when we allow God’s kingdom to break into our personal, ecological and social worlds. “Thy kingdom come” is an invitation to the person praying to allow the reality of triune God to move us to union with all of creation and history. “Thy will be done” is asking for the grace to let go of control so that, in the time we are living, in time, not above time, or outside of time, but in time, we might live from our deepest reality—the authentic thoughts and feelings that God is infusing into our hearts at every moment.

At this point, it is important to ask the following question: if we are to let go of the language of heaven and earth, will we lose our sense of the transcendence of God? Is God merely to be a material reality since there is no heaven above our physical earth? The Scriptures and our Tradition have always maintained both God’s immanence and God’s transcendence. It is very important to maintain God’s transcendence or we will fall into the errors of the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. No one reality, no physical reality, can exhaust the mystery of God. To maintain God’s transcendence we need to move from a spatial symbol (earth and heaven) to a temporal understanding of God’s will and kingdom. Thus we use the expression “now as it will be fully in the future.” The future is transcendent. It is beyond us. But, some will maintain, “now” is easily controlled by human beings. Let us examine this. Try to live in the now and you will find your mind wandering in a variety of directions. When you finally have the mindfulness of living fully (or almost fully) in the now, you will experience a transcending peace. To live in the now is a grace and thus is also transcendent.

We have now changed the translation of this important verse of the Our Father to “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, now as it will be fully in the future.” Now is an important reality. As a matter of fact, it is the only reality. We are now praying to live in the present moment, experiencing the great “I AM.” “Thy will be done now” leads to the question—how is your will operating now, YHWH? It brings me into my present reality, into mindfulness which Buddhists and others have demonstrated is the precondition of peace. One also is reminded of DeCaussade’s The Sacrament of the Present Moment. To know God’s will now, I must empty my mind of regret about past mistakes, resentment about past injuries, and anxiety about the future. I allow myself to just be, to live in existence (once again, we are nurtured by Aquinas’ understanding of God as existence and by Rahner’s understanding of God as the mystery of existence).

At this point, we need to think about history. God acts in history, not outside of history. We know this from the Exodus. God acted in history to liberate an oppressed people. We can also think of the Filipino People Power Revolution in which the Filipino community, in prayer, acted in tremendous solidarity to remove an oppressive ruler from power using non-violent methods. There are many other examples—the Solidarity Movement in Poland, many of the actions of the United States to liberate oppressed peoples (although some, and I mean some, have not always been completely Godly. Here I think of Abu Ghraib and the anxiety that led us into the Iraq War).

What can we then say about how God acts in history? It would seem that, in prayer and in reflection, there are thoughts that “bubble up” from the mysterious, transcendent reality of God that tend toward justice and charity (and at times that includes charity for oneself, which is what motivated the Filipinos to oust Marcos). We are drawn toward the actions these thoughts propose to us. We are not compulsively, or reactively driven to these actions. We feel drawn to them in a powerful, gentle way. Margaret Silf gives an excellent analysis of this experience in her book Inner Compass. When we share these thoughts with others, it consoles them as we were consoled. We are then led into collective action by something consoling. Consolation comes from God. It is God’s will acting on us, moving us to labor for his kingdom. In his commentary on the Gospel of Matthew in The New Jerome Biblical Commentary, Benedict Viviano, O.P. notes that “God’s will is for justice and peace (Rom 14:17). The [Our Father] presupposes that the kingdom is not yet here in its fullness and thus represents a future eschatology.” In commenting on the verse “on earth as it is in heaven” he notes that “the prayer expects an earthly, this-worldly realization of God’s will.” The translation of “now as it will be fully in the future” integrates these insights.

The remaining verses of the prayer do not present any difficulty for modern or post-modern worlds. “Give us this day our daily bread” reflects the need of people of all eras to rely on God. It also refers to the importance of Eucharist. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” remains as the motivation for individual and collective action for justice and peace. We love others out of our experience of being totally accepted by God. “Lead us not into temptation” refers to the trials that many Christians, first century and twenty-first century expect to undergo in this final phase of human history. “Deliver us from evil” refers to evil in all of its forms, but especially to the activity of the enemy of human nature.

After having examined each verse, our proposed translation of the Our Father reads as follows:

Our Father (or Mother depending on the context), who is in all things,
Hallowed be thy name,
Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done,
Now as it will be fully in the future,
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.

Now that we have analyzed the Our Father and updated its language so that it better reflects our post-modern understanding, we need to ask if the temporal translation should replace the traditional spatially symbolic translation? I would answer no. The traditional prayer is a classic. Tertullian thought that it summarized the entire Gospel. I think we should use both translations. Liturgically, to contemplate the mysteries of the heavens as they point to the mysteries of God is beautiful and uplifting, but when it comes to action, the temporal understanding is very helpful. God communicates with us through our imaginations which are the “psychic places” where our minds meet the future, the great temporal beyond (I use the phrase “psychic places” as a metaphor or analogy for the “places” in our minds are the dynamics of neural pathways). Our imaginations communicate with the whole of our beings, especially with reason and emotion, stirring us to particular actions. Frequently, our understanding of a situation is multi-faceted and God calls us through the polyvalent, multifaceted universe that communicates with our minds and within in our minds. In short, it is good for our minds to then have more than one version of this prayer. Praying different versions of the Our Father will help us understand that we are rooted in a liberating, active tradition which nurtures us through self-reflective liturgy and prayerful action on behalf of peace and justice.