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teach us to pray

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Teach us to pray: Glory be…

Photo Credit: Matthias Kabel (Wikimedia Commons)
Photo Credit: Matthias Kabel (Wikimedia Commons)

It’s not a very long prayer – but chances are, if you’ve ever been at a Catholic event like sacramental preparation, youth ministry gathering, or any other parish meeting – you’ve prayed the Glory be:

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.  Amen.

You may also have come across another translation of this prayer – most commonly found in the Liturgy of the Hours:

Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.  Amen.

Amy Welborn says that this prayer is the summary “of everything our prayer has been (or should have been) about,“ a prayer which “points us in the right direction and attaches us to the divine and the eternal.“  This is high praise for one of the shortest prayers in our tradition – a prayer we don’t say at Mass – but do use at the conclusion of each decade of the Rosary and many times during the Liturgy of the Hours.  It also tends to show up at the conclusion of many gatherings – particularly if someone forgot to prepare something or if we might be running short on time.

Although the Glory be is brief, it’s a rich prayer both because of what it is – and what it reminds us. [Read more…] about Teach us to pray: Glory be…

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Teach us to Pray: The Lord’s Prayer

Rembrandt's "Return of the Prodigal Son" (Public Domain)
Rembrandt’s “Return of the Prodigal Son” (Public Domain)

When I worked with a traveling retreat team, we used to present a skit that began with one of our team members walking onto the stage, kneeling down, making the sign of the cross, and beginning to pray the Lord’s prayer.  The only thing is she wouldn’t get very far, as after saying the words Our Father, who art in Heaven, a voice offstage would reply “Yes?”  (This was particularly effective if we could use a microphone and a boomy sound system…)  The rest of the skit would be a dialogue between the person praying and God about what all the parts of the Our Father actually mean.  The most telling line of the whole skit came early on, after she had again said Our Father who art in Heaven and God had answered Here I am… what’s on your mind?  She would reply:

I didn’t mean anything by it. I was, you know, just saying my prayers for the day. I always say the Lord’s Prayer. It makes me feel good, kind of like getting a duty done.

The Our Father is one of those prayers – usually one of the first prayers any of us ever learned to pray.  It’s one many people Catholic, Christian, and otherwise can recite from memory – and we are often just like the girl in the skit: praying it without giving it a second thought.  But there’s much more here.  Of all the wrote prayers you might use to begin your conversation with God, the most important is the Our Father.  It isn’t important just because it comes from Scripture (most of the Hail Mary is also from the Gospels), nor because it explains something that we believe (the Sign of the Cross does this as well), it is important because it is the answer Jesus gave when His apostles asked Him how they should pray (Matthew 9:6-13, Luke 11:2-4).   [Read more…] about Teach us to Pray: The Lord’s Prayer

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Teach us to Pray: The Sign of the Cross

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At the beginning of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie (the Curse of the Black Pearl), Captain Jack Sparrow sails into Port Royal on a small, barely seaworthy boat.  Just outside the port, he tips his hat to three dead pirates, hanging near with sign that says ‘PIRATES, YE BE WARNED!‘

The purpose for this sign and the dead pirates is to warn any other pirate who dares to enter Port Royal that they will suffer the same fate – hoping to deter them from entering and plundering the port.

When Romans crucified criminals at the gates of a city, they had the same intention.  The charge for each criminal was nailed at the top of the cross in hopes that anyone entering town with the intent of committing a crime might be discouraged from even coming in.  In the case of Jesus, Pontius Pilate had his charge written on a sign (Matthew 27:37), often represented today in the letters INRI seen at the top of a crucifix, the Latin initials for Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.

While today we regard the cross with much more reverence, early Christians regarded the Cross with great trepidation:

…we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block (to Jews) and foolishness (to Gentiles,) but to those who are the called… Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 1 Corinthians 1:23-24

Consider those words for a moment: STUMBLING BLOCK and FOOLISHNESS.  What do these really mean?   [Read more…] about Teach us to Pray: The Sign of the Cross