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Pater Noster
The Vulgate text, with ecclesiastical pronunciation line by line and what each verse says in English.
Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.
The pronunciation below is ecclesiastical Latin, the one used in the Roman liturgy and in Gregorian chant: c before e or i sounds like "ch", and ae sounds like a plain "e".
The Latin text we pray comes from the Vulgate, the translation Jerome finished around 405 at the request of Pope Damasus. For more than fifteen hundred years it was how the entire West prayed this prayer: a farmer in Castile, a monk at Cluny and a missionary in the Philippines said exactly the same syllables.
One word in it did not exist before this prayer. Quotidianum renders the Greek epiousios, a term found in no other known Greek text of the period. Nobody is certain what the evangelist meant. It has been read as "daily", "needed for subsistence" and "of the coming day". Jerome himself hesitated: in Luke he wrote quotidianum, and in Matthew supersubstantialem, "beyond all substance".
Liturgical Latin is not carried by strong stresses but by vowel length. That is why the Pater Noster prayed slowly moves like a swell rather than a march. Said quickly it is lost entirely: it was built to last.
Pater noster, qui es in caelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum. Fiat voluntas tua, sicut in caelo et in terra. Panem nostrum quotidianum da nobis hodie, et dimitte nobis debita nostra, sicut et nos dimittimus debitoribus nostris. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem, sed libera nos a malo. Amen.
In ecclesiastical Latin it sounds like "kwi es in CHE-lis". A c before e or i is said like "ch", and the diphthong ae is pronounced as a plain "e".
"Our daily bread". It renders the Greek epiousios, a word found in no other known Greek text of the time. Jerome translated it quotidianum in Luke and supersubstantialem, "beyond all substance", in Matthew.
From the Vulgate, Jerome's translation of the Bible, finished around the year 405. It was the text in which the West prayed this prayer for more than fifteen hundred years.
Paternoster reads the Pater Noster in a low, slow voice, lighting each word so you can pray along.
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