This, then, is how you should pray

Matthew 6:9

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus is overturning the lies the world has told us: lies about what is important and what is not, lies about how to be happy and, even, what happiness is. In his teaching on prayer he overthrows both the corruption of prayer perpetrated by the hypocrites who pray only to be seen praying, but also of the pagans whose prayer is nothing but a babbling of words without meaning. In response to that he gives us what we have come to know as The Lord’s Prayer – to teach us what to pray.

• In this prayer our Lord teaches us first, to pray for God – for God to do in us what we cannot, or will not, do ourselves
• Then he teaches us to pray for ourselves – and to pray at a much more basic level than our own self importance usually leads us to