A Beginner's Book of Prayer: An Introduction to Traditional Catholic Prayers

Storey, William G.

ISBN 10: 0829427929 ISBN 13: 9780829427929

Verlag: LOYOLA PR, 2009

Inhaltsangabe

Learning to pray the Catholic way can be difficult for those who are new to the faith. What are the prayers? When do we pray them? Why do we pray them?
 
In A Beginner's Book of Prayer, esteemed prayer-book author and editor William G. Storey provides nearly 200 prayers of the Catholic Church for anyone needing an introduction to traditional Catholic prayers. The prayers are frequently placed in their historical and liturgical contexts, and the prayers are grouped by theme to make them easy to find. Anyone learning to pray, or simply wanting a better understanding of the prayers we pray, is sure to benefit from this book.

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William G. Storey is professor emeritus of Liturgy and Church History at the University of Notre Dame. He has compiled, translated, and edited many books of prayer, including A Prayer Book of Catholic Devotions, Novenas and The Complete Rosary (Loyola Press), and Lord, Hear Our Prayer and Hail Mary (Ave Maria Press). He currently resides in South Bend, Indiana.

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Introduction

“Be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Ephesians 5:18–20

This book is a collection of Christian prayers intended for new Catholics and for all others seeking a renewed experience of Catholic prayer. It is meant to give a firm grounding in the Church’s ancient traditions of prayer. It includes prayers drawn from scripture, from the liturgy of the church, from the saints, and from ancient devotional traditions. They are all traditional prayers of the Church. Most of them have been prayed in some form for centuries. Taken together they unfold the paschal mystery—Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection, and his continuing presence among us.
This book includes prayers that can be prayed both individually and communally. In a sense these are all communal prayers because they emerge from and draw us into the community of faith that is the Catholic Church. Many of them are explicitly communal. These include the morning and evening prayer in part 3 and several litanies, which are designed to be prayed by couples, families, and other groups of Christians. But these prayers can all be prayed privately as well. They can help an individual develop and sustain a habit of regular daily prayer that draws on the Church’s great traditions and unites the individual with the Communion of Saints. At every instant, our lives reside within the great cloud of witnesses (Hebrews 12:1), with the Virgin Mary, with all the angels and saints, and in union with every person who prays in Christ and through Christ.

How the Book Is Organized
The first two parts of the book present prayers that are foundational for a life of prayer. They are drawn from scripture and from the Church’s tradition. Many of them can be memorized. One of the best ways to develop a life of prayer is to say prayers over and over again until they become firmly fixed in our minds and hearts.
Part 3 presents morning and evening prayer, and prayers the Church prays during the special seasons of Advent, Christmastide, Lent, and the Easter season. These are derived from the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church’s formal cycle of prayers said five times a day. These prayers can be said by individuals and groups. They can be prayed out loud or silently.
The prayers in parts 4 and 5 center on Jesus. As Christians we are followers of Jesus. We strive to be like him, to understand him, to act as he acts. Jesus is the center of our faith, our Savior and Lord. The prayers in part 5 unfold the paschal mystery—Jesus’ passion, death, and resurrection.
Parts 6 and 7 invite us to pray with Mary, the Mother of God and our mother in faith. Devotion to Mary is one of the richest and most spiritually rewarding aspects of Catholic prayer.
Parts 8, 9, and 10 focus on three central aspects of Catholic prayer: praise, repentance, and prayers for the dead.
Part 11 contains short prayers that help us pray constantly throughout the day. The book concludes with some suggested resources for a deepening prayer life.

A School of Prayer
The Catholic Church is a school of prayer. Those who enter it by faith and baptism are immersed in the high priestly prayer of Jesus and filled with the Spirit of prayer who constantly calls out to Abba, our heavenly Father (Galatians 4:6–7). The Holy Trinity is the goal of our existence and the heartland of our prayer.
Jesus was a person of prayer, raised in a nation of prayer, and in a family of prayer. He prayed in the Temple on the three great pilgrimage feasts each year, in the synagogue of Nazareth each Sabbath, and in the midst of his family each day. He learned and prayed the psalms in each of these locales and discovered his mission in life from them.
In the Gospels we also find Jesus at prayer at his baptism, in the company of his disciples, as he performed his exorcisms and miracles of healing, when he chose his twelve apostles, on Mount Tabor at the Transfiguration, during the long nights of his public ministry, in the Garden of Gethsemane, and on the Cross.
St. Paul the Apostle extended this vision of prayer: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and the Church has learned how to apply this teaching in rich and varied ways. The community of faith feels a deep responsibility to teach newcomers to the faith how to pray on the model of Jesus and in the tradition of the Catholic liturgy and piety.
Pope John Paul II said this about the centrality of prayer in the life of the Church:

The Church encounters Christ in prayer in the depths of her being. In this way she discovers the truth of his teachings and assumes his mentality. Seeking to live a personal relationship with Christ, the Church fully realizes the personal dignity of her members. In prayer the Church focuses on Christ; she takes Christ; she takes possession of him, she tastes his friendship, and thus is able to communicate it. Without prayer, all this would be lacking and the Church would have nothing to offer the world. But through the exercise of faith, hope, and charity in prayer, her capacity to communicate Christ is strengthened.1

Prayers for New Catholics
This book is especially useful for introducing new Catholics to the riches of Christian prayer. It can be used to immerse them in a wide variety of prayers and forms of prayer that derive from and lead back to the Church’s cycle of prayer, Sunday Mass in particular. This annual cycle of communal worship unfolds for us the full paschal mystery of Christ.
For candidates and catechumens in the Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults, these forms of prayer should be introduced no later than the first days after the Rite of Acceptance into the Order of Catechumens. Initiation ministers may decide that this prayer book might be useful even before candidates begin their ­formal catechumenate. By exposing them to this tradition of Catholic praying early on, the community of prayer will have enough time to help catechumens make it their own.
Most of us live in Christian families, and know that we are called to common prayer each day. Unfortunately, many of us do not belong to a Christian family or community that cherishes common prayer. In such a case the individual Christian will have to pray in private, so to speak, but in constant awareness of the Communion of Saints.

External and Internal Prayer
Prayers are Spirit-filled gifts that demand to be prayed from the heart. Saying prayers well is a good beginning. But as Spirit-filled gifts they demand to be prayed from the heart. We must allow the indwelling Holy Spirit to inspire us as we recite them, that is, breathe in or through the psalms, readings, and set prayers and so enlighten and inflame our minds and hearts until we gain the mind of Christ.
What we are saying has to be taken into our minds, understood, assented to, appropriated. No matter how holy the words might be in themselves, the words are only empty signs unless they become our very own. Words that are full of meaning created by saints are mere empty formulas when we only say them.
Our personal life of prayer begins with holy words said reverently, then we assent to what we say, and, finally, we embrace the God who is beyond all words. Our prayer is of time but it is also of eternity, external but also internal. It is a matter of words, gestures, and postures but, above all, it is a call from God to enter more and more deeply into the very heart of the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: LOYOLA PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2009
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0829427929
• ISBN 13: 9780829427929
• Einband: Kunstledereinband
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 174
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Loyola Press; https://s3staging.loyolapress.com; ; Suite 1125 8770 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.; CHICAGO; IL; 60631; USA
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