"Lord, teach us to pray just as John taught his disciples."
He said to them, "When you pray, say:
Father, hallowed be your name....
A woman who'd become a Catholic through the Rite of Christian Initiation had drifted away from the Church after a few years. She came to consult with me soon after she decided to return. I asked about her prayer life.
"Oh yes!" she said, "I pray all the time!"
"What prayers do you say?"
"Oh, no particular prayers. I just pray.
I asked what prayers she'd learned in RCIA. Unfortunately, she had not learned any of the usual Catholic prayers that I learned as a child. She knew "The Lord's Prayer," which Catholics call "The Our Father." But she could not remember any mention of the Hail Mary, Glory Be, Act of Contrition, or the Rosary.
So I encouraged her to return to the Church by learning and using our prayers. "This is how we pray! We may do "spontaneous prayer" once in a while, but even those occasional invocations soon become banal and very repetitive. Some original thinkers lace their prayers with just: "Lord, we just come before you, to just ask you, because we just love you...."
Why would I bore myself with that nonsense when I can recite and ponder the words of my parents and grandparents, and all the saints and martyrs?
Besides that, I reminded her, Catholics never pray alone. We always have a communion of saints -- a cloud of witnesses -- who join in our prayers. Some were born a thousand years ago; some will be born a thousand years from now. They speak thousands of different languages; some that are long forgotten; some yet to be created.
Many websites offer deep, thoughtful, powerful prayers by well-known prophets and saints:
- Thomas Merton: "My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going...."
- Theresa of Avila: "Let nothing disturb you...."
- Ignatius of Loyola: "Take, Lord, all my liberty...." and Anima Christi...
- or you might find delight in John Henry Newman's translation of the same prayer
- Saint Francis of Assisi: "Most high Glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart....
- and his Canticle of the Sun;
- Saint Therese of Lisioux: O my God! I offer Thee all my actions of this day....
- Saint Thomas Aquinas: "Almighty and ever-living God, "I approach the sacrament of Your only-begotten Son...."
- Thomas A'Kempis: "Lord, I lay before you all sins and offenses I have committed against you...
- And thousands of saints are associated with the Rosary and prayers before the Blessed Sacrament.
