Pater-Noster (Lat., 'Our Father'), called also THE LORD'S PRAYER, a short form of prayer suggested or prescribed by our Lord to his disciples (Matt. vi. 9-13; Luke, xi. 2-4) as the model according to which, in contrast with the prayers of the Pharisees, their petitions ought to be framed. The Pater-Noster has been accepted as, by excellence, the form of Christian prayer. It formed part of all the ancient liturgies, usually introduced with a preface, and said between the consecration of the elements and the communion, except the so-called Clementine liturgy, in which it does not appear at all, and the Abyssinian, in which it is said, as in the English, after the communion. St Gregory finally settled its place in the Roman Mass, immediately after the Canon and before the fraction. Whereas in the East it was said by both priest and people, in the Roman use it was recited by the priest alone. The Catechism of the Council of Trent contains a detailed exposition and commentary on it, and in all the services, not only of the Roman Missal, Breviary, Ritual, Processional, and Ordinal, but in all the occasional services prescribed from time to time, it is invariably introduced. In the Mass it is said aloud, but in the Breviary secretly, or with at most the first and concluding words said audibly. In the Rosary of the Virgin Mary it is combined with the Hail Mary (whence the larger beads of the 'Rosary' are sometimes called Pater-Nosters), and perhaps the most usual of the shorter devotions among Roman Catholics is the recitation of the 'Pater,' with one or more 'Ave Marias,' concluding with the Doxology. The Pater-Noster as commonly used by Protestants concludes with the clause, 'for Thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory for ever [or, for ever and ever]. Amen,' but this is wanting in the most ancient authorities. This embolism or intercalated prayer occurs in all the liturgies, Roman, Mozarabic, Gallican, Greek, Coptic, and Armenian. Of the two gospels—that of Matthew and that of Luke—in which the prayer is contained, that of Luke has not this clause; and even in the gospel of Matthew it is found only in the later MSS., in which it cannot be doubted that it is a modern interpolation. It was retained, however, in Luther's German translation, in the Prayer-book (original) version, and in the English authorised version. In the revised version it is omitted both in Matthew and Luke; in Luke, 'which art in heaven,' the whole of the third petition, and 'deliver us from evil' are relegated to the margin; and in Matthew, 'deliver us from evil' is properly rendered 'deliver us from the evil one.'
Many polyglot collections of the Pater-Noster have been published from the 16th century downwards, the most remarkable of which are those of John Chamberlayne in 150 languages (1715), of Conrad Gesner in 200 (1748), and that of Padre Hervaz in 307 (1787). There are expositions of the Lord's Prayer by Origen, Chrysostom, Gregory Nyssa, Cyprian, Luther, Leighton, and Tholuck. See Moses Margoliouth, The Lord's Prayer no Adaptation of existing Jewish Petitions (Lond. 1876).