The Lord's Prayer is so familiar to us that few have stopped to understand it. The general tragedy of misunderstanding which has followed Jesus throughout the centuries has frustrated the purpose of his model prayer also. He gave it to st0p vain repetitions, and it has been turned into a contrivance for incessant repetition. The churches have employed it for their ecclesiastical ritual. Yet it is not ecclesias tical. There is no hint in it of the Church, the ministry, the doctrines of theology, or the sacraments though the Latin Vulgate has turned the petition for the daily bread into a prayer for the super-substantial bread of the sacrament.