The Our in Our Father

Who is the “our” in the Our Father?

In church, or perhaps as we gather around a table before a meal, we pray the Lord’s Prayer, beginning with “Our Father, who art in heaven….” This gives us a deep sense of community as we pray together to The Heavenly Father whom we all share. This communal aspect of the Our Father is emphasized by many in the Catholic Church, and I thought it was the reason that Jesus taught His disciples to pray in this way.

And it certainly is. On one level. But as with everything spiritual, there’s always more than one level.

Jesus referred to God as “the Father” and also as “my Father” in the Bible, but in the prayer that He offered His disciples as the model for how they should pray, He taught them to address their prayers not to “The Father” or to “Jesus’s Father” but to “Our Father.” He didn’t just tell them to do this, He showed them. He showed them by praying. By praying with them. The communal aspect of the word “our” doesn’t only join the disciples to each other in prayer, but also joins the disciples and Jesus in prayer.

Baptized in Christ, the Holy Spirit makes us children of God. Fact. And so now, we don’t simply have a personal relationship with The Father, Creator of heaven and earth, but truly with our Father, who is our Father because He is Jesus’s Father, and Jesus is our Brother in the Spirit of Adoption.

It’s like this. Imagine that you have received the sacrament of baptism but have never learned any formal prayers. So you go to Jesus in personal prayer and ask Him how you should pray. He looks directly at you in your heart and instructs you to pray to His Father but tells you that you should say, “Our Father” because His Father is your Father too. You and Jesus share the same Father, because you and Jesus are both children of the Father.

This is a radical change in our relationship with God, which only Jesus can bring about in the power of the Spirit.

The Lord’s Prayer is a prayer of praise to God, Our Father, desiring His holy name to be glorified and His holy will to be accomplished — the mission of Christ Himself. We pray for earthly and divine sustenance, healing, and divine assistance against temptation and evil — as Jesus Himself needed in His own earthly life to be sustained and assisted by His own divine nature. Though He did not have any sins to be forgiven, He did need to forgive others, which is a divine act. What Jesus needed on Earth and what He desires to transpire on Earth He prayed — and prays — with us in the Our Father.

When we pray The Lord’s Prayer, we are truly praying with, in, and through Jesus.

© 2026 Christina Chase

(Reflections on “… Who art in Heaven” in next week’s blog post.)

---

Feature Photo by Gabriel Rissi on Unsplash