I. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name
We believe in you, our Lord, because everything reveals your power and your will. The harmony of the universe is the testimony of your wisdom, a prudence and providence that go beyond all human aptitudes; the name of a sovereignly great and wise being is inscribed in all works of creation, from the shoot of the weed and the minor insect to the orbs that move in space; we see the proof of a paternal solicitude everywhere and that is why the one that does not recognize you in your work is blind, the one that does not glorify you is proud and ungrateful is the one that does not praise you.
II.Your kingdom come
Lord, you gave mankind laws full of wisdom and that would bring happiness if they were observed. With those laws there would be the kingdom of peace and justice among them; they would help one another instead of harming as they do; the strong would support the weak instead of smashing them; they would avoid the wrongs that give rise to abuses and excesses of all kinds. All miseries down here come from the violation of your laws because there isn’t a single infringement that would not meet its fatal consequences.
You gave the animals the instinct that give them the limit of the necessary and they mechanically conform to that but to mankind, in addition to that instinct, you gave intelligence and reason; you also gave them the freedom of observing or infringing the laws that apply to them personally, that is, the freedom of choice between good and bad so that they may have the merit and responsibility of their own actions. Nobody can pretend ignorance of your laws because your paternal providence wanted them to be recorded in the conscience of each one, without distinction of cult or nationality. Those that violate them neglect you.
One day will come when everyone will practice them, as you promised. Disbelief will then have disappeared and everyone will acknowledge you as the Sovereign Lord of all things and the kingdom of your laws will be the kingdom on Earth. Please, Lord, speed up your arrival given mankind the necessary light beam to lead them in the path of truth.
III. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven
If submission is a duty of the son to the father, from the inferior to his superior, how much more must not be the submission of the creature to the Creator! Do as you wish, Lord, is to observe your laws and abide by them without moaning against your divine designs; mankind will submit to them when understand that you are the source of every wisdom and that without you nothing is possible; your will shall then be done on Earth as with the elected ones in heaven.
IV.Give us this day our daily bread
Give us the food to keep up with the strength of our body; give us also the spiritual food for the development of the Spirit.
The animal finds its pasture but mankind owns that to their own work and to the resources of intelligence because you created them free. You said: “
By the sweat of your face
you shall eat bread”.[1] By doing so you turned work into an obligation to lead them to provide the means of survival and well-being by exercising their intelligence, some by the physical others by the intellectual work. Without work they shall remain stationary and will not aspire the happiness of the superior Spirits. You help the person of good will that trusts you for what is needed but not the one that is complacent with idleness and that wanted to obtain everything effortlessly, and nor the one that seeks the superfluous.
How many fail due to their own negligence, improvidence or ambition and for not having been satisfied with what you have given them! These are the architects of their own misery and have no right to complain for they are punished by their own sins. But even those are not abandoned by you because you are infinitely merciful. You reach out to them with your helping hand allowing them to come back to you sincerely, like the prodigal son.
Before we complain about our fate let us question if that is not our own work. In every misfortune that comes to us let us ask if we were not able to avoid it; but let us also say that God gave us the intelligence to take us from the swamp and that it is up to us to make that work for us.
Considering that the law of work is the condition for mankind on Earth give us the courage to accomplish that; give us also the wisdom, providence and moderation so that we may not lose its fruit. Give us, Lord, the daily bread, that is, the means of acquiring the life needed things through work for nobody has the right to claim the superfluous. If work is impossible to us we trust our lives to your divine Providence.
If it is in your design to try us in the hardest trials, despite our efforts, we accept it as a fair atonement of faults that we may have incurred in this life or in the preceding ones because you are just; we know that there aren’t undeserved penalties and that you never punish without a reason.
Keep us, oh God, from feeding any envy towards those that have what we don’t, not even towards those that have the superfluous, even if we lack the necessary. Forgive them if they forgive the law of charity and love towards their neighbors that you taught them.
Keep also from our Spirits any thoughts of denying your justice when we see the prosperity of evil and the misfortune that sometimes upsets good people. We now know, thanks to the new lights that you wanted to give us that your justice is always accomplished and fails nobody; that the material prosperity of a bad person is transient as their physical existence and that it will entail terrible returns whereas the happiness reserved to the one that suffers with resignation will be eternal.
V. Forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors
Each one of our breaches of your laws, Lord, is an offense to you and a new debt that sooner or later we will have to repair. We ask your infinite mercy for its remission with the promise that we will make efforts not to contract new ones.
You turn charity into an express law but charity is not only assistance to our neighbor in need; it consists also in forgiving and forgetting the offenses. How can we claim your indulgence if we fail her with those that brought us sorrow?
Give us, oh my God, the strength to muffle in our soul every resentment, hate and grudge; don’t allow that a sudden death may surprise us with a desire of vengeance in our heart. If it is in your plans to take us from here today allow us to present ourselves to you free from any animosity, like Jesus Christ, whose last words were in favor of his executioners.
The persecutions imposed on us by the bad ones are part of our earthly trials; we must accept them without complaint like every other trial and do not slander those that through their evilness open to us the path of eternal happiness for you told us through the mouth of Jesus: “Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled.”
[2] We must then bless the hand that humiliates us because the injuries of the body strengthen our soul and we shall be exalted as a consequence of our humility.
Blessed your name, Lord, for you have taught us that our fate is not inexorably determined after death; that in other existences we shall find the means for the repair and atonement of our past faults and accomplish in a new life what we could not have achieved in this one for our own betterment. That is finally the explanation to every apparent anomaly of life; it is the light cast upon our past and future, the amazing sign of your sovereign justice and your infinite benevolence.
VI. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil
Give us, Lord, the strength to resist the suggestions of the bad Spirits that may try to veer us off from the good path, inspiring in us good thoughts.
But we, ourselves, are imperfect Spirits incarnate on Earth to atone and become better. The primary cause of the evil is in us and the bad Spirits just take advantage of our bad and vicious inclinations through which they tempt us.
Each imperfection is an open door to their influence while they become impotent and renounce to any attempt against perfect creatures. Everything that we can do to keep them away shall be useless if we don’t oppose them with an unshakable determination on the good path and an absolute renunciation to evil. Hence it is against ourselves that we must direct all of our efforts and the bad Spirits will then naturally stay away because it is evil that attracts them while good repeals them.
Lord, sustain us in our weakness; give us the inspiration, through the voice of the guardian angels and the good Spirits, so that we can fix our imperfections so that we can shut to the impure Spirits any access to our soul.
Evil is not the result of your work, Lord, because the source of every good cannot engineer evil. We created it by trespassing your laws and by the bad use that we made of the freedom that you gave us. When mankind observe your laws evil will disappear from Earth as it has already disappeared from more advanced worlds.
Evil is not a deterministic need to anyone and it is only irresistible to those that embrace it with satisfaction. If we have the will to do it we can also do good. For that, oh my God, we ask your assistance and that of the good Spirits so that we can resist temptation.
VII. Amen
May our wishes come true, Lord! But we kneel before your infinite wisdom. Above all things that are we are not given to understand may your sacred will be done and not ours because we know that the only thing you want is our good and you know what is useful to us better than we do.
We address this prayer to you, oh my God, by ourselves, for every suffering soul, incarnate and discarnate, for all of our friends and enemies, for all of those that request our assistance. For all of them we ask for you mercy and blessings.
Note: Here we can mention something that we are thankful to God for and something that we would like to us for ourselves or someone else.
[1] Genesis 3:19 (TN)
[2] Mathews 5:6 (TN)
