The Lord's Prayer

On forgiving trespasses

When I was a little boy, growing up in Waban, MA, we would say The Lord’s Prayer every day in school. (As I recall: Every day; every single day.)

This was a public school (Angier, I will have you know), and so it had to have been before the Supreme Court’s ban on official school prayer, in June of 1962. (I was born in 1954, so I must have have really little at the time, though maybe it took a while for the school to come into compliance.)

Here’s Angier School from back then, the school I remember and loved:

Little though I was, I remember the ritual, and I have never forgotten the words. Here’s what we said, with my own undoubtedly idiosyncratic capitalization:

Our Father who art in Heaven,

Hallowed be thy Name,

Thy Kingdom Come,

Thy Will be done,

On Earth as it is in Heaven

Give us this day,

Our daily Bread,

And Forgive us our trespasses,

As we Forgive those who trepass against us,

And lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from Evil,

For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory,

For Ever and ever, Amen.

All of those words stuck in my mind, of course, though some of them seemed to run together, and I didn’t know what they meant. I think I long thought that “HallowedBeTheName” was one word, just as I remember thinking, when I first said the alphabet, that “LMNOP” was one word. (Doesn’t it sound like one? Say it quickly, and see?)

Here’s a part of the Lord’s Prayer that particularly got to me early on, and that has stuck with me over the decades: “And Forgive us our trespasses/As We Forgive those who trespass against us.”

Any young person feels trespassed against, a lot, and it’s natural to be angry, unforgiving, and punitive. (We tend to feel trespassed against more than we actually have been.) Any young person trespasses, and hopes so much for forgiveness. (We tend to acknowledge that we trespass less than we should.) The Lord’s Prayer links one’s own forgiveness of others with the Lord’s forgiveness of oneself.

We don’t have a right to be forgiven, mind you. We ask for forgiveness. (Each of us can decide, right now, to forgive someone who has trespassed against us.)

This has been a year without a lot of forgiving. I am thinking mostly of politics, of course. We don’t have a lot of forgiving leaders. We need more of them. Here’s a vote for a forgiving leader, in 2028.

To be forgiven, when one has trespassed, can be the best of Christmas/holiday presents. To forgive, when one has been trespassed against, is a gift to the trespasser, and also by the one who has forgiven, to oneself. Thus Portia:

The quality of mercy is not strain’d.
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.

Here’s to more forgiveness, and more mercy, in the coming weeks, and in 2026.