![](\"https:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_dmDaLWNETzg\/SwO8852mxiI\/AAAAAAAAAgY\/GdliWrUKi-8\/s200\/LordsPrayer\")
<\/a>One shocking fact about teaching what used to be known as CCD is how little these kids know, how thin is the Catholic culture in which most are brought up in America today. Like, I should talk, right? The convert? Who was raised in a church-going but hardly Bible-studious Protestant family? Fact is, I know much <\/i>more than these kids, having attended Sunday school pretty faithfully for ten years. One example of their appalling ignorance: Asked to place the following events on a timeline, they all but draw a blank \u2014 (a) birth of Christ, (b) Noah\u2019s ark, (c) Adam & Eve, (d) journeys of St. Paul, (e) birth of Pope Benedict XVI. Some <\/i>kids, not all, will successfully place A&E; at the head of the line. After that, it\u2019s a crap shoot.<\/p>\nSo one of my strategies, as a first-year, you\u2019re-teaching-me-more-than-I\u2019m teaching-you teacher is to throw away the lesson plan and just get one thing through their little skulls every week. Today, The Lords\u2019 Prayer . . .<\/p>\n
The book the children use, Christ Our Life <\/i>(Loyola Press), is quite lovely, and the half-page <\/i>on The Lord\u2019s Prayer is enough to provoke a short discussion. Illustrated by a picture of Jesus praying and five men watching Him, it reads:<\/p>\n
The apostles watched Jesus when he was at prayer. They could see that he knew how to speak to God our Father. Afterward they came to him and said, \u201cLord, teach us to pray.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Then Jesus taught them the prayer we call the Lord\u2019s Prayer or the Our Father. We should try to pray it every day. In this prayer we praise God and ask for all our needs. We ask to be forgiven as we forgive others. We also ask to be saved from evil.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
Nice? Yes.
Enough? Not if I have to teach for an hour.<\/p>\n
The teachers\u2019 guide offers half a crutch to lean on, a list of questions to ask the children about the prayer. Examples are:<\/p>\n
Who are the men standing in the background? <\/i>(apostles)
What are they doing? <\/i>(watching Jesus pray)
What did the apostles want to do when they saw Jesus praying? <\/i>(They wanted to pray like Jesus.)
And so on . . .<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t know about you, but this doesn\u2019t instill me with great confidence that I can survive an hour of questions. Like, why do we call God Father and not Mother? Or, why is He \u201cours\u201d? And that just takes care of two out of fifty-five words. <\/p>\n
I have two key sources on my own bookshelf to shed light on The Lord\u2019s Prayer: Catechism of the Catholic Church<\/i> and Jesus of Nazareth<\/i> by Pope Benedict, which has a chapter on the prayer. My grand strategy for this week was to read both (not the whole <\/i>catechism, of course, but the closing section on The Lord\u2019s Prayer, 2759\u20132865). But I\u2019ve run out of time, as I usually do in my overbooked life. It\u2019s 4:45 a.m. and I have to teach at 3:30 p.m., after working a good part of the day. So I reach in desperation for Peter Kreeft\u2019s Catholic Christianity<\/i> (Ignatius Press), given to us in RCIA as a sort of Cliff Notes to the Catechism. Not to belabor this post (I have to prepare a class!) and to give Kreeft his due, here are a few choice excerpts:<\/p>\n
1. The perfect prayer: It is the perfect prayer because it comes from the perfect Pray-er. . . . Christ gives us these words, not like a book, to read, but like a piece of sheet music, to sing. We must pray this prayer not just with our words but with our minds, and not just with our minds but with our hearts.<\/i><\/p>\n
2. \u201cOur\u201d: When St. Teresa of Avila prayed the Our Father, she found it almost impossible to get beyond the first two words, for they were like a beautiful country that she wanted to dwell in forever. Until we feel that way, we have not understood these words.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
3. \u201cFather\u201d: The word is not just \u201cFather\u201d but \u201cAbba\u201d\u2014the intimate word \u201cDaddy.\u201d Jesus restored the intimacy we had lost in Eden.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
4. \u201cWho art in heaven\u201d: Heaven is a real place but not a spatial place: it is not anywhere in this universe. . . . One thing we do know about heaven is that it is our home, our destiny, our happiness; and that even now Jesus is preparing a place there especially for us (Jn 14:2\u20133).<\/i><\/p>\n
5. The structure of the seven petitions of the Our Father: The structure of this prayer is parallel to the structure of the Ten Commandments, because both follow the structure of reality. Both are divided into two parts: God first, man second. . . . [Like the first three Commandments,] the first three petitions of the Lord\u2019s Prayer also tell us how to love God . . . The other four tell us how to love our neighbor, since they tell us to pray for \u201cour\u201d primary needs, not just \u201cmy\u201d needs.<\/i><\/p>\n
6. \u201cHallowed be thy name\u201d: We do not make him holy; but we do make his \u201cname,\u201d his \u201creputation,\u201d his being-known on earth, holy. We do this by being saints. Saints are the unanswerable argument for Christianity.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n
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