This is the title of a recent post by Ian Paul.  What follows is based on that article.

We might well think that prayer, if it is to be regarded as distinctively Christian prayer, should be Trinitarian.

But what, then, are we to make of the Christian’s model prayer, which does not mention the Holy Spirit at all.

Ian Paul suggests that the Holy Spirit is indeed ‘present’ in the Lord’s Prayer, even though not mentioned.

In Luke 11, Jesus follows the Lord’s Prayer with teaching about asking for the gift of the Holy Spirit.  We may assume that this is a prayer which cannot be offered with the Spirit’s help.

‘Our Father in heaven’ – Paul teaches that it is by the Spirit that we call God ‘our Father’ (Gal 4:6; Rom 8:15).

‘May your name be known as holy’ – The Spirit is known as ‘holy’ throughout the New Testament.  And a large part of his work is making us holy – so much so that we become known as ‘saints’, or ‘holy ones’ (1 Cor 1.2, 6.11, 1 Thess 5.23, Heb 10.10).

‘May your kingdom come’ – Again, throughout the New Testament the coming of God’s kingdom and the work of the Holy Spirit are intimately connected (Mt 12:28; Acts 1:8).

‘May your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’ – We look for this petition to be fully answered in the age to come (cf. Rev 21).  But, in the present age, the Holy Spirit is the ‘down payment’ of what is yet to come, 2 Cor 1:22, giving us a foretaste of the future as we ‘walk in step with the Spirit’, Gal 5:25.  Where the Spirit is Lord, there is a heavenly oasis, 2 Cor 3:17.

‘Give us today our daily bread’ – This is bread of the age to come, given to us today in order that we might do the works of God in the power of the Holy Spirit (Lk 4:14; Acts 1:2).

‘Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us’ – The life of the Spirit is one of being forgiven (Acts 2:38) and of forgiving others (Gal 5).

‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil’ – For Jesus, the Spirit was integral to his facing and resisting temptation (Mk 1:12; Lk 4:1,14).

In conclusion:

‘Though the Spirit might not be named explicitly within the Prayer, the work of the Spirit is the essential corollary to every aspect of praying the Prayer…It is only as we encounter God as Spirit that we really understand all that this prayer of Jesus, prayed to the Father, actually involves.’