Rating: 
Summary: Powerful aid to prayer with startling & worthwhile insights
Review: "Understanding 'Our Father'" provides some startling and worthwhile insights that can serve as powerful aids to prayers. This is a book to rouse you from the drone of repetition and guide you into the depths of Christ's own prayer. Scott Hahn has helped to acquaint many a Catholic with the finer points of Bible study. A gifted teacher, he has a knack for making the dull vivid and the complex simple. Here he unpacks the theological and biblical meaning of each phrase of the Lord's Prayer -- and reveals what he terms the "inner logic" of this most fundamental of prayers.Throughout, Hahn, professor of Theology and Scripture at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio develops and draws from his trademark brand of covenant theology, according to which the Trinity creates a family bond with us, the members of Christ's Body. Hahn also points to healthy human father-children bonds but doesn't forget those who've had bad experiences with their earthly fathers and now have difficulty accepting the authority of any "father figure" -- including God the Father. Catholic Tradition, he points out, "tells us we must go beyond our earthly experiences and memories of fatherhood. God is more unlike than like any human father, patriarch or paternal figure." The book is written in Hahn's usual energetic, conversational style. The chapters are peppered with playful subheads -- "Send in the Crowns," "From Heir to Eternity" among them. Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't laugh; it only encourages him. Then again the professor's peculiar penchant for puns does serve a useful purpose: it provides a steady stream of mnemonic doctrine-remembrance devices. It's worth noting here than only the first half of the book is written by Hahn. The rest of the pages offer commentaries on the Lord's Prayer by four Church Fathers: Sts. Augustine, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Cyprian.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful aid to prayer with startling & worthwhile insights
Review: "Understanding 'Our Father'" provides some startling and worthwhile insights that can serve as powerful aids to prayers. This is a book to rouse you from the drone of repetition and guide you into the depths of Christ's own prayer. Scott Hahn has helped to acquaint many a Catholic with the finer points of Bible study. A gifted teacher, he has a knack for making the dull vivid and the complex simple. Here he unpacks the theological and biblical meaning of each phrase of the Lord's Prayer -- and reveals what he terms the "inner logic" of this most fundamental of prayers. Throughout, Hahn, professor of Theology and Scripture at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio develops and draws from his trademark brand of covenant theology, according to which the Trinity creates a family bond with us, the members of Christ's Body. Hahn also points to healthy human father-children bonds but doesn't forget those who've had bad experiences with their earthly fathers and now have difficulty accepting the authority of any "father figure" -- including God the Father. Catholic Tradition, he points out, "tells us we must go beyond our earthly experiences and memories of fatherhood. God is more unlike than like any human father, patriarch or paternal figure." The book is written in Hahn's usual energetic, conversational style. The chapters are peppered with playful subheads -- "Send in the Crowns," "From Heir to Eternity" among them. Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't laugh; it only encourages him. Then again the professor's peculiar penchant for puns does serve a useful purpose: it provides a steady stream of mnemonic doctrine-remembrance devices. It's worth noting here than only the first half of the book is written by Hahn. The rest of the pages offer commentaries on the Lord's Prayer by four Church Fathers: Sts. Augustine, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Cyprian.
Rating:
Summary: Powerful aid to prayer with startling & worthwhile insights
Review: "Understanding 'Our Father'" provides some startling and worthwhile insights that can serve as powerful aids to prayers. This is a book to rouse you from the drone of repetition and guide you into the depths of Christ's own prayer. Scott Hahn has helped to acquaint many a Catholic with the finer points of Bible study. A gifted teacher, he has a knack for making the dull vivid and the complex simple. Here he unpacks the theological and biblical meaning of each phrase of the Lord's Prayer -- and reveals what he terms the "inner logic" of this most fundamental of prayers. Throughout, Hahn, professor of Theology and Scripture at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio develops and draws from his trademark brand of covenant theology, according to which the Trinity creates a family bond with us, the members of Christ's Body. Hahn also points to healthy human father-children bonds but doesn't forget those who've had bad experiences with their earthly fathers and now have difficulty accepting the authority of any "father figure" -- including God the Father. Catholic Tradition, he points out, "tells us we must go beyond our earthly experiences and memories of fatherhood. God is more unlike than like any human father, patriarch or paternal figure." The book is written in Hahn's usual energetic, conversational style. The chapters are peppered with playful subheads -- "Send in the Crowns," "From Heir to Eternity" among them. Sometimes I feel like I shouldn't laugh; it only encourages him. Then again the professor's peculiar penchant for puns does serve a useful purpose: it provides a steady stream of mnemonic doctrine-remembrance devices. It's worth noting here than only the first half of the book is written by Hahn. The rest of the pages offer commentaries on the Lord's Prayer by four Church Fathers: Sts. Augustine, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Cyprian.
Rating:
Summary: Concise meditations & profound insights will inspire souls
Review: Against the background of contemporary misunderstandings of God and Christian revelation, it is gratifying to see how a modern Scripture scholar, Professor Scott Hahn, contributes concise and profound insights into the most familiar prayer in all history, the Lord's Prayer. His meditations, enriched by covenant theology, will inspire souls with greater knowledge and love of God, and will stimulate in them a greater zeal to spread Christ's Kingdom, the Church, on earth. Readers victimized by a spiritually decadent culture to ignore their supernatural destiny are reminded, "If He who was without sin prayed, how much more ought sinners to pray." The value of this volume is enhanced by inclusion of the texts of timeless commentaries on the Lord's Prayer by Sts. Cyprian, Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, and Augustine.
Rating:
Summary: Dr. Hahn helps to breathe life into our prayer
Review: Dr. Hahn has performed yet another great service for the Church (and the whole world, for that matter). The Our Father is Gospel prayer, the prayer that Jesus Himself gave to us. If prayer is oxygen for the soul, then Dr. Hahn has helped to breathe life into our prayer. In the light of four Fathers of the Church, as well as his own excellent insights, Dr. Hahn, a teacher in the Teacher, teaches us how to pray.
Rating:
Summary: Dr. Hahn helps to breathe life into our prayer
Review: Dr. Hahn has performed yet another great service for the Church (and the whole world, for that matter). The Our Father is Gospel prayer, the prayer that Jesus Himself gave to us. If prayer is oxygen for the soul, then Dr. Hahn has helped to breathe life into our prayer. In the light of four Fathers of the Church, as well as his own excellent insights, Dr. Hahn, a teacher in the Teacher, teaches us how to pray.
Rating: 
Summary: Not that great...
Review: I'm sure that when Steve Wood, Benedict Groeschel and the rest of the gang got together on May 10, 2003, to submit reviews of this Scott Hahn book (see the reviews below this one), they meant well. Of course they did. The problem is, this book just ain't that great. The first problem is that only half of it is by Scott Hahn. The book's second half consists of excerpts from an antique translation of four Church Fathers. Although Augustine and Chrysostom have some great things to say, the other two have less value. Moreover, you can find these writings on the web at no charge -- they're in the public domain. That means you're paying $... for 76 pages of new material by Scott Hahn. Another problem is that Hahn's writings in this book don't seem to have anything to do with the patristic writings. Although both the Church Fathers and Scott Hahn have recognizably Catholic points of view, they are very *different* points of view. That means that Scott Hahn has basically done nothing to show what his family-covenant theology has to do with patristic theology, as represented by the excerpts in this book. A third problem is Hahn's puns. They are quite irritating. A fourth problem is with Hahn's commentary on "On Earth as it is in heaven." He writes from the same perspective he used in his book on Revelation and the Mass . . . but he makes no effort to show that that's what this verse of the Lord's Prayer is actually referring to. Hahn seems to be free-associating here. Those are the problems. That still leaves a lot of good stuff. The rest of Hahn's commentary on the Lord's Prayer is easy to read, inspirational and insightful. If you can borrow a copy, I recommend reading it. If you want to read what the Church Fathers say about the Lord's Prayer, however, I recommend tracking down (probably in a good Catholic library) more recent translations. If you want the 19th century public domain translations, you can find them quite easily with a good search engine.
Rating:
Summary: Inspiring reflections deeply enriched my prayer
Review: In "Understanding 'Our Father'" Dr. Scott Hahn removes the veil and reveals to us the deep significance of the prayer Jesus gave us, the Our Father. With elegance, eloquence and erudite scholarship, Dr. Hahn unpacks each phrase of this perfect prayer and shows us our relationship with God the Father, His providential care for us, and our own call to be divinized by following His holy will. This book has increased my own understanding and enriched my appreciation of the Our Father. I am sure this will be the case for everyone who reads this insightful and inspiring book.
Rating:
Summary: Inspiring reflections deeply enriched my prayer
Review: In "Understanding 'Our Father'" Dr. Scott Hahn removes the veil and reveals to us the deep significance of the prayer Jesus gave us, the Our Father. With elegance, eloquence and erudite scholarship, Dr. Hahn unpacks each phrase of this perfect prayer and shows us our relationship with God the Father, His providential care for us, and our own call to be divinized by following His holy will. This book has increased my own understanding and enriched my appreciation of the Our Father. I am sure this will be the case for everyone who reads this insightful and inspiring book.
Rating:
Summary: Grace-filled and consoling exposition of the Our Father
Review: In this wonderful exposition of the most beautiful of prayers, which came from the divine lips of Jesus Himself, Dr. Scott Hahn has, once again, provided the Catholic and the Christian with a splendid work of theological research. "Understanding 'Our Father'" will definitely serve to enrich spiritually all who are privileged to read and meditate on it. By coordinating his own commentary and meditation on the Lord's Prayer with those of four great doctors of the Church, Dr. Hahn provides an ongoing connection with the long continuity of Christian tradition. It is a book that the reader will find as intellectually satisfying as it is grace-filled and consoling.
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