Pope General Audience: English Summary

Dear brothers and sisters: In our continuing catechesis on the “Our Father”, we now consider the attitude required by Christ of his disciples as they pray.  Jesus invites us to invoke God as “Father” thus encouraging us to beseech him in a way that breaks down barriers of subjection and fear.  The prayer’s seven questions are also rooted in our daily experience of life and its basic needs.  We are taught, for instance, to ask for our daily bread – a simple yet vital request.  Our first prayer, in a sense, was the cry that accompanied our original breath as a new-born child, for it announced our life’s destiny: our continual hunger and thirst and search for happiness.  With this prayer, then, Jesus desires that every suffering and anxiety should rise up to heaven and become a dialogue.  Indeed, to have faith is to be able to cry out in this way.  God is truly a Father who has an immense compassion for us and wants his children to address him without fear.  For this reason, we can speak to him about anything, even those aspects of our lives that are flawed or confused.  And he has promised, moreover, to remain with us until the end of time.