Attitude Adjustment

Traditional Prayers Teach Us the Correct Attitudes to Have Towards God. We can think of them helping give us an attitude adjustment.

What better prayer could we devise than a prayer using the very words Jesus taught us here? Yet the “Our Father” is a traditional prayer, a prayer with set words, prone to be recited merely by rote. But in fact, traditional prayers are an invitation to meditate, set up in a way that appeals to beginners.

In the “Our Father,” as in all traditional prayers, we repeat phrases that express the essence of a correct relationship with God. Whether we already hold these attitudes in our heart or not, the beauty of traditional prayers is not what we say, but how we say it. If we pray these words, trying to make them our own, conforming our heart to the attitudes they express, then little by little we will form a Christian heart, a heart that loves the way it should.

Lord, teach me through the “Our Father” to pray more deeply.