Exploring the depth of our prayers
How do I know when I’m doing God’s will?
It’s not a flippant question. Every time I say the Lord’s Prayer, I’m asking for God’s will to be done.
I could just hang out and try not to get in the way while God does His thing, but I don’t think that’s the way it works. WE need to do His will. Including ME.
Last fall, I saw in NCregister where Patti Armstrong described a Gratitude Rosary where you’d say one expression of thanks for each bead.
That’s all the description I needed.
It seems like a wonderful way to change my mindset in my prayer life.
Growing up, I learned the version of the Lord’s Prayer that you see to the right. When I joined the Catholic Church in 1985, I first learned the Hail Mary and many other prayers based on the traditional language.
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
I guess I just assumed that this was my “church language”, kind of like dressing up for Mass.
It seemed respectful and appropriate. Formal.
In our modern Christian language, we throw around the phrase “Jesus is Lord!” with great abandon. It conveys a sense of hope and acknowledgement that Jesus our Great Holy One, worthy of praise and honor.
Which is totally fine, but it’s not the whole story.
The concept of “Lord” existed even before the time of Jesus. But what did it mean?
I have found it odd that our Catholic prayers often don’t include the word “please” or something similar.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
Here we are asking God or Jesus or Mary for something huge, and it seem perhaps a bit impolite. Perhaps English is different than Latin and other languages in this sense?
Give us this day our daily bread.
In the Fatima Prayer, we ask Jesus to “bring all souls to heaven.” How is that different than saying we’d like God to fix all our nasty human tendencies and have us all … get along?
Don’t get me wrong. I would absolutely love to live in a world without sin, without suffering, without anxiety.
But then, I realize that that’s not the point of the world God has created.
I’m comfortable calling God by name, and Jesus. But how often do I actually talk to the Holy Spirit?
I find myself talking about the Holy Spirit in the third person** more than directly.
But because the Holy Spirit IS the triune God as much as the Father and the Son, I need to speak more directly to Him. Or Her, as some might suggest – the English language struggles.