Wednesday, February 25, 2026: And that last line, lead us not into temptation! Strange and captivating phrase!



A Reflection for the First Week of Lent, By Joe Hoover, S.J.

The Lord’s prayer. The “Our Father.” Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.… 

You can say it while sleeping, mowing the lawn, scuba diving, eating Grape Nuts. You can probably say it while you are saying other things. The “Our Father” is a thing that is. It is out there. In the culture.  With the “Lord’s Prayer” we are back to King James. I imagine because it is comforting, it is what everyone prays.

And that last line, lead us not into temptation! Strange and captivating phrase! Why would God lead us into temptation! Does God actively do that? Take us directly into temptation such that we need to ask God not to lead us into temptation. No! Of course not! 

But yes, yes, he does lead us into temptation. Why? Because it says here he does; in the “Our Father,” which everyone prays all the time and no one has stopped praying. And we haven’t changed that part in the “Our Father.” At least not in the translation the American church uses. Why not? There may be a certain comfort, weirdly enough, in the idea that if we are going into temptation, it is God who is leading us there. At least we know that God is with us in our trials because he brought us to those trials. 



Who knows? Matter for a thousand theological treatises on the topic of why does a good God allow (or cause?) evil in our lives. But most of us don’t operate from a thousand theological treatises, or hear just the right kind of homily that will nimbly denude the tail end of the most famous prayer in the world of all its troubling connotations. We just pray and do our best. The “Our Father” sums up so much of what life is about. 

There is a sense that it is impossible to know precisely what a prayer like this means when we talk about God leading us into temptation, or figuring out exactly what God’s will is, or how to deal with it when we don’t get our daily bread. 

But the point, I guess, is not knowing. The point is showing up and doing. The point is not precisely figuring out God’s will, or the perfect answer to any contentious theological question about evil and suffering. Love!



Joe Hoover, S.J., is America’s poetry editor and producer of a new film, “The Allegory.”


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