"This is how you are to pray: Our Father..." The Lord's Prayer, as the prayer Jesus taught his disciples is commonly known, is a model of what prayer should be. It is, as it were, a formula for prayer. It contains all that a prayer should have, be it a short or long one (some of us can't do away with long prayers!).
The first part of the Lord's Prayer (Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, they will be done) shows us that prayer should actualize and deepen our communion with God. All our prayers should be directed to God-for it is God’s communion that we seek and yearn for. And because it is God-as our creator and sustainer [our “Father”]-who gives meaning and grandeur to our existence, our prayers should be a means of remaining in a relationship with him, a relationship that God himself established when he made us God’s sons and daughters. We pray to God because God has put himself within reach of our invocation. When we raise our voices of praise and petitions to God, we do so in confidence that God can hear us. However, Jesus reminds us that even as we pray, we should always be aware of the primacy of God’s will. In other words, we should let our petitions be in oneness with the will of God and never apart from it.
The second lesson we learn from the Lord’s Prayer is that prayer should arise from our needs, our hopes, our joys, our sufferings, our shame, our gratitude for the good (give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one). Prayer should stride the two aspects of human life: the physical (material) and the spiritual. When we pray to God asking for what we need, we not only credit God for our livelihood but also overcome the temptation of wanting to live apart from God (sin of Adam and Eve). As such, our prayers become an assurance that God is always looking out for us and wanting only the best for us.

• Material condensed from ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ by Pope Benedict XVI