The section of the Divine Liturgy that transpires immediately after the completion of the Anaphora, is the Communion Service. When a deacon celebrates the Liturgy with a priest, a litany traditionally serves as an introduction to this section of the Liturgy. If there is no deacon, the priest introduces the Communion Service by calling the community to offer the prayer that Jesus gave us, the Our Father. As an indication of the importance of this prayer, we pray it as we begin the Communion Service. Before we pray the Our Father, the priest proclaims, “And grant, O Lord, that we may with confidence and without condemnation, dare call upon You, Father, the God of heaven and say.” It is indeed most daring to address God as “Our Father”. It recognizes Him above all else as our Creator and most loved Lord Who will provide for us and protect us. To say it requires a deep faith in God – a faith which is filled with “awe” and “love” and not fear.
In the Our Father, we also ask that He, our Father, “give us our daily bread”. When we recite this during the Divine Liturgy, our daily bread becomes none other than the Body and Blood of Christ and so we are asking Almighty God to truly make Jesus Christ a part of our lives so that we might, from His presence within our lives, become God’s children. This prayer is powerful for several reasons.
It should not be prayed, by the way, unless we are willing to live by what we pray. The pray says to God that we are willing to “forgive” those who trespass (i.e., offend) against us and we say to God that we are willing to forgive them just as we know that He forgives us. If we are not willing to forgive others, regardless of how they have offended us, then we should be careful when we say this prayer for we are telling God that we are willing not to be forgiven by Him for our offenses.
It is important, I believe, that we understand what we pray and mean what we pray. The words, especially of the Our Father, are not idle words with no meaning. It is important that we think about what we pray.
The celebrant ends the prayer with the words: “For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, now and ever and forever. The AMEN agrees with this statement. The western world has added the priestly ending to the prayer, which was miscopied to the prayer in an ancient manuscript.