The How-To Book of Catholic Devotions, Second Edition. Mike Aquilina

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СКАЧАТЬ Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be are often the first catechism for children. From these prayers, Catholics young and old learn basic elements of our faith and learn how to honor God. Yet there is a depth to these prayers that can continue to teach and encourage us, no matter our age or stage of spiritual development. These are prayers we never outgrow.

       The Our Father

      This is the prayer that our Lord taught His disciples when they asked Him to teach them how to pray (see Mt 6:9-13 and Lk 11:2-4). It is sometimes called the perfect prayer because it contains so much in so few words: adoration, praise, petition, contrition. Tertullian, an early Christian, identified the Lord’s Prayer as “the summary of the whole Gospel.” The Catechism of the Catholic Church presents a long exposition on this prayer (nn. 2761-2865). All of our prayer can be considered an outgrowth of this single prayer:

       Our Father, who art in heaven,

       hallowed be thy name;

       thy kingdom come,

       thy will be done

       on earth as it is in heaven.

       Give us this day our daily bread,

       and forgive us our trespasses,

       as we forgive those who trespass against us;

       and lead us not into temptation,

       but deliver us from evil.

       Amen.

      As we begin to pray the Lord’s Prayer, we should pause to consider that we are children speaking to a perfect Father — a Father who always provides, a Father who never ceases to love, a Father always ready and willing to teach and to help. In our hearts, we consciously look toward the Father as we pray, for we are not just speaking words to the wind but to a Person.

      The prayer begins, then, with the petitions for the glory of God, the coming of His kingdom, and the fulfillment of His will. We can add our own praise and adoration as we speak these words. The next four petitions present our desires to God. We ask Him to provide for our needs. We ask for healing and forgiveness of our sins and for victory in our struggle against evil.

      At the end of the prayer, many early Christians added the phrase “for thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.” The prayer concludes with “Amen,” which means “So be it,” words that emphasize our acceptance of all the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.

       “Our Father, Who Art …”

      “To know how to say the Our Father and to know how to put it into practice — this is the perfection of the Christian life.”

      — Pope St. John XXIII

      “The Lord’s Prayer is the most perfect of prayers…. In it we ask, not only for all the things we can rightly desire, but also in the sequence that they should be desired. This prayer not only teaches us to ask for things, but also in what order we should desire them.”

      — St. Thomas Aquinas

       The Hail Mary

      This is another prayer that is both scriptural and theologically significant:

       Hail Mary, full of grace,

       the Lord is with thee;

       blessed art thou among women,

       and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.

       Holy Mary, Mother of God,

       pray for us sinners,

       now and at the hour of our death.

       Amen.

      The first sentence of the prayer is the greeting of the angel Gabriel to Mary at the Annunciation (Lk 1:28). By joining our voices with that of the angel, we acknowledge God’s saving plan, give glory to Jesus (the God-man), and pay honor to Mary, who is the mother of Jesus and, by extension, is also our mother and the mother of the Church. Remember, after all, that Jesus, while dying on the cross, gave Mary to be a mother to His beloved disciple (Jn 19:26-27). We are all Jesus’ beloved disciples now, and so she is mother to us all.

      As we pray the Hail Mary, we should look to this loving mother. Sometimes it helps if we pray before an image of her. We can silently recall Mary’s response to the message of the Annunciation: “Let it be to me according to your word” (Lk 1:38). This can be our prayer along with her. As she accepted God’s will in her life, we pray with her and to her for the grace to yield willingly to God’s plan for our lives.

      In the second half of the prayer, we place ourselves in the loving hands of our mother and ask for her intercession that we may triumph over sin and remain faithful to God, so that one day we may join her before the throne of the risen Christ.

       “Full of Grace”

      “By asking Mary to pray for us, we acknowledge ourselves to be poor sinners and we address ourselves to the ‘Mother of Mercy,’ the All-Holy One. We give ourselves over to her now, in the Today of our lives. And our trust broadens further, already at the present moment, to surrender ‘the hour of our death’ wholly to her care. May she be there as she was at her son’s death on the cross. May she welcome us as our mother at the hour of our passing (cf. Jn 19:27) to lead us to her son, Jesus, in paradise.”

      — CCC, n. 2677

      “By each Hail Mary we give our Lady the same honor that God gave her when He sent the angel Gabriel to greet her for Him.”

      — From The Secret of the Rosary,

      by St. Louis de Montfort

       The Glory Be

      So many of our prayers contain petitions and requests. The Glory Be is a short prayer in which we seek only to give glory to God as we proclaim the great mystery of the Trinity:

       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.

      This simple prayer proclaims that God is one, and yet God is three Persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. This is the most foundational truth of the Christian faith. The СКАЧАТЬ