The Lord’s Prayer in the Heidelberg Catechism: A School of Gratitude

The final Lord’s Days of the Heidelberg are devoted to the Lord’s Prayer. Q. 116 asks why prayer is necessary for Christians and answers that ‘it is the chief part of thankfulness which God requires of us.’ Prayer is not merely a mechanism for getting things from God; it is an expression of dependence and gratitude toward the God who has already given everything.

Our Father

Q. 120 asks why Christ commanded us to call God ‘our Father.’ The answer: that at the beginning of our prayer He may awaken ‘childlike reverence and trust,’ because God has become our Father in Christ, ‘and will much less deny us what we ask in faith than our parents refuse temporal things to their children.’ The address ‘Father’ is a covenant reality established by adoption through Christ.

Six Petitions, One Direction

The catechism works through each petition, noting that the first three (hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done) orient all prayer toward God’s glory, while the final three bring human need before God’s provision. We pray not to inform God of what He doesn’t know, but to express our dependence on His grace for everything.

The catechism closes with the doxology. Q. 128: ‘all this we ask of Thee because Thou, as our King having power over all things, art both willing and able to give us all that is good, and that thereby, not we, but Thy holy name may be glorified forever.’ The last word of the Heidelberg is the glory of God — the same note on which the whole project of salvation began.