“Pray then in this way:
Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And do not bring us to the time of trial, but rescue us from the evil one. For if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” Matthew 6:9-15
Of course, God would teach us how to pray perfectly
He begins by placing us in the presence of God: God the almighty, who has created all things out of nothingness and keeps them in existence lest they return to nothingness, who rules all things and governs all things in the heavens and on earth according to the designs of his own providence.
And yet this same all-powerful God is our Father, who cherishes us and looks after us as his sons, who provides for us in his own loving kindness, who guides us in his wisdom, who watches over us daily to shelter us from harm, to provide us food, and to receive us back with open arms when we, like the prodigal, have wasted our inheritance. Even as a father guards his children, he guards us from evil—because evil does exist in the world. And just as he can find it in his Father’s heart to pardon us, he expects us to imitate him in pardoning his other sons, our brothers, no matter what their offenses.
The Our Father is a prayer of praise and thanksgiving, a prayer of petition and of reparation. It encompasses in its short and simple phrases every relation between man and his Creator, between us and our loving, heavenly Father. It is a prayer for all times, for every occasion. It is at once the most simple of prayers and the most profound.
One could meditate continuously on each word and phrase of that formula and never fully exhaust its riches. If one could only translate each of its phrases into the actions of his daily life, then he would indeed be perfect as his heavenly Father clearly wishes him to be.
Truly, the Lord’s Prayer is the beginning and end of all prayers, the key to every other form of prayer.
If we could constantly live in the realization that we are sons of a heavenly Father, that we are always in his sight and play in his creation, then all our thoughts and our every action would be a prayer. For we would be constantly turning to him, aware of him, questioning him, thanking him, asking for his help, or begging his pardon when we have fallen. And every true prayer begins precisely here: placing oneself in the presence of God. It is a phrase all spiritual writers use, it is a concept each may visualize in his own way, but the realization of it in practice is sometimes most difficult to achieve.
Words do not make a prayer, even the words of the Our Father taught us by our Lord himself, or the words of any other familiar prayer made easy by constant repetition.
These words are meant to draw our souls to be aligned perfectly with God, the Father. It is in this alignment that our prayer becomes perfect.