This month, your child is learning all about prayer—what prayer is, ways we can pray, and some of the important prayers that they should know. We identified prayer as a relationship between humanity and the Living God—in other words, whenever we pray we engage in a dialogue with God: we speak to Him and if we’re listening, He speaks back to us. We discussed one of the most important prayers of our faith—the Lord’s Prayer (more commonly known as the Our Father). We went through the prayer line by line and spoke about what Jesus is teaching us through the Lord’s Prayer—that is, to know God, to love God, and to serve God.
Terms we went over:
Prayer: “a surge of the heart,” the raising of one’s heart and mind up to God or requesting good things from God (CCC §2559). It is much more than speaking out into the ether hoping for a response or an ATM machine, but rather a dialogue between us and God where God reaches out to us in love and we respond. It is, at its core, a relationship with God. Christ comes to meet the heart of every human person and, whether we realize it or not, “prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours. God thirsts that we may thirst for him” (CCC §2560). Like all relationships, our prayer life evolves and changes as we get older and more wiser; in addition, every person’s relationship with God looks different because we are different people.
(See Part Four, Section 1 – Prayer in the Catechism of the Catholic Church for more regarding prayer).
The Our Father: the “summary of the whole Gospel,” the Lord’s Prayer is the foundation of all prayer. This is the prayer that Jesus taught us—the only explicit prayer, in fact!—and is the foundation of all prayer because of what it lays out. The Lord’s Prayer contains three series petitions that encompasses all prayer:
- The first series of petitions carries us toward him, for his own sake: thy name, thy kingdom, thy will! It is characteristic of love to think first of the one whom we love. In none of the three petitions do we mention ourselves; the burning desire, even anguish, of the beloved Son for his Father's glory seizes us: "hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done...." These three supplications were already answered in the saving sacrifice of Christ, but they are henceforth directed in hope toward their final fulfillment, for God is not yet all in all
- The second series of petitions unfolds with the same movement as certain Eucharistic epicleses: as an offering up of our expectations, that draws down upon itself the eyes of the Father of mercies. They go up from us and concern us from this very moment, in our present world: "give us . . . forgive us . . . lead us not ... deliver us...." the fourth and fifth petitions concern our life as such - to be fed and to be healed of sin; the last two concern our battle for the victory of life - that battle of prayer.
- By the three first petitions, we are strengthened in faith, filled with hope, and set aflame by charity. Being creatures and still sinners, we have to petition for us, for that "us" bound by the world and history, which we offer to the boundless love of God. For through the name of his Christ and the reign of his Holy Spirit, our Father accomplishes his plan of salvation, for us and for the whole world.
(CCC §See Part Four, Section 2 – The Lord’s Prayer in the Catechism of the Catholic Church for more regarding prayer)
BRINGING THIS SESSION HOME
This month, we are asking parents to work on memorizing the three essential prayers of our faith: the Our Father, the Hail Mary, and the Glory Be.
Check out the links below to learn and practice these prayers in English, Spanish and Latin!
