Lord's Prayer

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The Lord's Prayer (Le Pater Noster), by James Tissot (between 1886 and 1894, Brooklyn Museum, New York City)

The Lord's Prayer, also known as the Our Father (Latin: Pater Noster), is considered the most important prayer of all Christians and, according to the New Testament, was instituted by Jesus Christ himself in the context of the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:9–13) or in response to the question of his disciples as to how they should pray (Luke 11:2–4).

The Tradition of the Gospels

The version of the Gospel of Matthew is the most common and well-known:

„9 After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread. 12 And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. 13 And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.“

The Gospel of Luke says:

„2 And he said unto them, When ye pray, say, Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so in earth. 3 Give us day by day our daily bread. 4 And forgive us our sins; for we also forgive every one that is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from evil.“

Jesus taught the Lord's Prayer in Aramaic, but in writing it has only been handed down in the original Greek text of the Bible.

Through translation into today's languages, the Lord's Prayer loses its power, but this can be compensated for by a correct understanding of the text of the prayer:

„The prayers of the old languages lose their old power when they are translated into newer languages. There is much more power in the Latin words of the Pater noster than in the Lord's Prayer. The language of the ancient Lord's Prayer is the Aramaic. Whoever spoke it in the Aramaic language felt magic power. Through the correct grasp of things we must again bring the power of the words into the language.“ (Lit.:GA 97, p. 98)

However, the effectiveness of the Lord's Prayer is always given by the pure content of its words, even if the praying person is not yet given a deeper understanding:

The Lord's Prayer "is indeed one of the very deepest prayers in the world. It is only that today we can no longer appreciate the full depth of the Lord's Prayer as the original language in which it was taught would have revealed. But the content of the thought is so powerful that it could not suffer any loss in any language." (Lit.:GA 97, p. 103)

„Those prayers which not only have a brief effect, but which grip souls and lift hearts through millennia, are all drawn from the deepest wisdom. Such prayers have never been given in such a way that beautiful or sublime words have been put together in an arbitrary way, but they have been taken from the deepest wisdom, because only in this way do they have the power to have an effect on the souls of men over the millennia. The objection that the naive soul knows nothing of this wisdom does not apply. It does not need to know anything, for the power which the Lord's Prayer has comes from this wisdom, and it works even if one knows nothing about it.“ (Lit.:GA 97, p. 116)

The esoteric meaning of the Lord's Prayer

The Lord's Prayer in connection with the essential memberss of man (Lit.:GA 96, p. 207)

The seven supplications of the Lord's Prayer according to Matthew refer to the seven members of man's being.[3] In them lies the meaning of the sevenfold development of man's nature. The Lord's Prayer contains the whole theosophical wisdom about man. (Lit.:GA 97, p. 116)

By "guilt" is meant the transgressions of the etheric body. These transgressions bring man into disharmony with his social environment. Temptation" refers to transgressions of the astral body, they are of an individual nature. Contrary to the usual translation of the fourth petition today as "And deliver us from evil", Steiner's translation of πονηροῦ (ponērou) or malo as "evil" refers to the specific transgression of the I: egoism. "Deliver us from evil" means the request for deliverance from egoism. (Lit.:GA 97, p. 122)

A certain tradition knows the addition to Matthew's Lord's Prayer: "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever". This is an addition that does not come from Jesus himself, but from the circle of Dionysius, the Areopagite. However, Steiner sees this addition as fitting to the Lord's Prayer, enriching the prayer. It is the idea of the angelic kingdoms, the three hierarchies that lead up to God the Father.

„If we live as the Lord's Prayer demands, we live our way up through the powers, authorities, dominions to the cherubim, seraphim, up to the Godhead itself in the Lord's Prayer.“ (Lit.:GA 97, p. 124)

From a different perspective, the three ideas of kingdom, power or might and glory are considered in GA 342, p. 193ff: They appear there as the three aspects of a vivid solar trinity:

„And instead of concluding with the words of the evangelical Lord's Prayer: "... for Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory", you can also conclude the Lord's Prayer: "... for Thine is the sun". Every being was regarded in the sense of the Trinity; and he who still knows something of the real Gnostic knowledge knows that simply at the conclusion of the Lord's Prayer it was prayed in such a way that the members of the Trinity of the Sun were brought forward in words, and that one had the consciousness that by closing the Lord's Prayer one was actually saying the seven supplications and pointing to oneself: "Deliver us from evil, for Thou art the Sun". . deliver us from evil": for You who dwell in the Sun, You are the One who is able to do this.“ (Lit.:GA 342, p. 194)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.
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