Earlier this week, I was on the Winds of Change radio program where I spoke with Mary Hallan FioRioto and Loretta Froelich about my book The Words We Pray. As I shared my experiences and what inspired me to write the book, I realized that this was a great topic for this space which I hadn’t even considered: prayer.
I was born in 1966. Mom was an Irish immigrant and handed out rosaries on Sunday nights when we were young. We would kneel in the living room and she would lead the 5 kids and my dad.
I was an altar boy and occasionally pulled a week of 6:00 am winter masses in NY. I would walk, as a 5th or 6th grader, 15 minutes up to church and walk back home after, eat breakfast, watch cartoons, and make the 15 minute walk back up to the parish for grammar school. I knew somehow, that I had experienced something "other" on those mornings but I didn't really understand that Christ was truly present at the elevation, in the scriptures, in the tabernacle. The seriousness and focus of our Capuchin priests impressed me though.......this wafer was important. This was prayer but I was more an observer than a participator.
I had a bully that turned his focus on me in those years. I prayed 15 minutes of rapid Hail Marys on my walks to school, and I asked God to help me. The bully lost interest in me and I lost interest in prayer until I turned about 29 years old. I had to learn the Hail Holy Queen and Memorare....but it was a comfort because it reminded me of Mom's prayers.....Oh My Jesus....was new to me also. Not a part of Mom's repertoire. In the last few years, I've been pretty consistent with the a daily rosary, a daily Morning Offering (with some personal additions of my own), occasional prostrations, thanksgiving, and begging on behalf of my family, before a picture of The Sacred Heart (from my childhood kitchen), adoration usually weekly, and frequent weekday Masses.
I was surprised to learn that my older brother prays the rosary daily too, but my other siblings are not regular church goers.
My parents were raised Catholic, married in the Catholic Church, and then my father was an atheist and my mother largely lapsed. They married in 1967 so their childhood Catholciism seems completely cut off from anything after that wedding, snd it seems they'd abandoned the new mass and everything with it. We owned no Bible. We never prayed at home. We barely attended mass, maybe not at all after I was 8. But I went to parochial school for grades 1-12 because they believed the education was better, they said. Through grade 4 the Irish nuns at the school taught us basic prayers including the Hail Holy Queen and Memorare, made us memorize the Works of Mercy, Holy Days of Obligation, Ten Commandments, etc. but no book catechism. After gr 5, well, it was the 80s. I was not required to be confirmed. High school was Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Vincent by Don McLean.
For all of the meditation I also had never heard of "mental prayer" being focused on a piece of Scripture or any spiritual reading.
I have the vaguest memory of being in first or second grade and having a procession from classrooms to the convent (maybe a May Crowning? In 1978?) while saying something, but i was quite tiny, and I remember how I couldn't hear and didn't know what we were supposed to be doing.
I am positive I was taught no formal prayers after grade 4. It was when I decided to complete my intitation sacraments as a married woman and started attending a parish run by an order that I first learned the prayer of St. Michael and about any devotions. Until then I had known nothing about Fatima (including the original miracle of the Sun--I never heard of it in school), knew no-one who regularly prayed aloud with their family, or even knew anyone who said a prayer before eating.
When my second child was born (2008) the Holy Spirit led me to a group of Catholic moms. From them I learned the Divine Mercy Chaplet (i didn't even know what a Chaplet was), met people who went to adoration, lay women who went in religious retreats, and heard of Bible studies for Catholics.
My parents were raised minimally Catholic and largely learned to pray while we were at a charismatic leaning parish in Mississippi when I was a pre-schooler (early to mid 1990s). I remember rosaries around a campfire, being deeply bored in adoration holy hours (even though they had a comic book Bible in the chapel), and also seeing people "slain in the spirit" and prayed over at healing masses with people holding out their hands over them while they were laid (or held?) down.
Looking back, it was a strange mix. There were a couple homeschooling families in the parish, and also a lot of stories of teenagers in the RE classes facing demonic entities of one type or another. It was a pretty intense experience. (The parish was also pretty racially integrated, which I've sinced found out was a little rare for Mississippi).
Born in 66 but my father did not start taking us to Mass until 76 or so. We attended public school so I went to CCD. I remember learning the basics (Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be). My grandmother would send me rosaries and pamphlets on the saints (along with a little cash!). Although my parish was definitely a guitar Mass parish, I really don't remember a lot of contemporary music being used in CCD. The catechists just followed the books.
The truth is that none of it really "stuck" because it wasnt being reinforced at home. Wasn't until I got older that I realized there were some gaps. I remember seeing The Mission in 1987 and not understanding until a few years later that Jeremy Irons was holding a monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament in that scene at the end. I had never seen one before.
I grew up in the 90s and early 00s, and my family prayed the Rosary together every so often, but my Mom also took my sister and I to Eucharistic Adoration weekly. It was just silent. There was where I learned to sit with my Bible and contemplate it. Thanks to a dose of Focus on the Family programming via radio or teen magazine, I also had some Evangelical influence that encouraged me to talk with God. It was a mix of things that drew me to a pretty mature prayer life for my age.
Growing up in what is now Zimbabwe in southern Africa, my father was a Scottish expat so we were ostensibly Presbyterian and as a child I went to Sunday school at the weekends. My mother was Catholic and wanted me to attend the same convent school she had attended in the late 1940s because she thought the nuns would teach me to knit so that I would be practical and good with my hands (I have never learned to knit). We would be moving across the country soon, but I was enrolled for the year. Regina Mundi Convent primary school in Gweru, Zimbabwe, was run by German Dominican sisters: we walked over to the church each morning for Mass, were taught how to cross ourselves, when to kneel or stand and say the responses (post-Vatican II but with many of the older hymns in Latin and German). I loved it. We were taken by bus to St Therese cathedral for a bishop’s Requiem Mass and that was terrifying and magnificent, the great thundering chant of the Dies irae, all the candles and peppery incense, the Shona Mwari hymns accompanied by drumming and the hosha rattle. On the bus going back a younger sister played a guitar and sang Dominique, a popular tune not played over the radio because singing nuns weren’t respectable.
The Dominican sisters were strict but fond of small children. After lunch we would sit around in a circle and they told us all about how Jesus as a small boy made clay birds and when he clapped his hands, the birds flew away. We sang a song about this to the tune of Muss I Denn, called Kommt ein Vogel geflogen. One of the older nuns told us that if we talked to Jesus, he would listen and like it, he was very tender towards little ones and wanted to protect us from any harm like a hen keeping her chicks tucked in close under her wings. And we knew all about the Virgin Mary who loved us like a mother. When we lay down to sleep in the afternoons, the nun would sprinkle us with holy water and make the sign of the cross. We knew how to say the Our Father, the Rosary and the Salve regina. I would go home chattering away in my head to Jesus, with glass bead rosaries, brown felt scapulars, holy pictures, small bottles of holy water, prayer cards; the kind of abundance and holy clutter I still associate with being Catholic. I would say intercessory prayers kneeling beside my bed at night and counting off family, friends, dogs and all those who had nobody to pray for them. My parents did their best to ignore all this.
When I had bouts of malaria (very common then) and was sent hot and shivering to the sick bay until my parents could collect me, a sister would bring me bitter quinine in a glass and remind me of St Therese of Lisieux who had to swallow bitter medicines and did so without complaining. “Did she get better right away?” I asked hopefully. “No,” the sister replied, “She died a holy death with a smile on her face.” I disliked St Therese until I read The Story of a Soul in my twenties and realised how truly stoic and courageous she had been.
There was much that was naive and perhaps sentimental about the convent days and yet the sense of being loved and cared for and the immersion in a living faith made prayer easy. Regina Mundi convent school is as popular and successful now and one of the older Dominican sisters celebrates her 95th birthday this year.
I was born in 1948, so I was well into my teens when Vatican II took place. Still, my experience was very similar to yours, Amy - perhaps even more so. We lived in a small village, with no nearby Catholic schools, so we went to public school. In elementary school, we were released for one hour a week for religious instruction (conveniently, our parish church was right across the village street from our school). Junior and senior high featured weekly evening meetings (and this was, admittedly, a hit-or-miss affair).
All our instruction was by our local parish priest, who was a good and holy man, but no catechist. We did have one week of religious education each summer by sisters from a nearby city, but that was it.
My parents were devote and observant, but we did little praying as a family beyond grace for meals. Other than Mass on Sunday and Holy Days, our observance was limited to the Stations of the Cross during Lent; such was the tenor of the times in our community. I learned all the standard prayers, of course, and made them key to my (often intermittent) prayer life.
My siblings and I were old enough to miss the touchy-feely do-it-on-your own style you allude to (thank you, Lord); the liturgical and other stylistic changes following V2 came as something of a shock to our small parish. Indeed, while they remained faithful, I don't believe my parents ever felt truly at home with the Novus Ordo.
My opinion: There is much to praise with spontaneous prayer, but it helps immensely if it has a firm foundation in the formal prayers of our tradition.
I learned to say grace, the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be very young at home. I went to a non-Catholic kindergarten where we said a different prayer before meals. We said the rosary as a family in May and October. Eventually my mother got a good sized statue of the Immaculate Conception and we prayed as a family in front of it. Some of my siblings broke other statues we used for prayer but not that one.
In grade school we started each day with Mass and then the Morning Offertory. We prayed the Angelus at noon right before lunch.
We had parish holy hours with the red Sacred Heart books and Stations of the Cross by St. Alphonso Luguori. We had benediction and 40 hours devotions. In high school we basically didn't pray or have Mass much. And we had Simon & Garfunkel for religion class.
I was born in 1966. Mom was an Irish immigrant and handed out rosaries on Sunday nights when we were young. We would kneel in the living room and she would lead the 5 kids and my dad.
I was an altar boy and occasionally pulled a week of 6:00 am winter masses in NY. I would walk, as a 5th or 6th grader, 15 minutes up to church and walk back home after, eat breakfast, watch cartoons, and make the 15 minute walk back up to the parish for grammar school. I knew somehow, that I had experienced something "other" on those mornings but I didn't really understand that Christ was truly present at the elevation, in the scriptures, in the tabernacle. The seriousness and focus of our Capuchin priests impressed me though.......this wafer was important. This was prayer but I was more an observer than a participator.
I had a bully that turned his focus on me in those years. I prayed 15 minutes of rapid Hail Marys on my walks to school, and I asked God to help me. The bully lost interest in me and I lost interest in prayer until I turned about 29 years old. I had to learn the Hail Holy Queen and Memorare....but it was a comfort because it reminded me of Mom's prayers.....Oh My Jesus....was new to me also. Not a part of Mom's repertoire. In the last few years, I've been pretty consistent with the a daily rosary, a daily Morning Offering (with some personal additions of my own), occasional prostrations, thanksgiving, and begging on behalf of my family, before a picture of The Sacred Heart (from my childhood kitchen), adoration usually weekly, and frequent weekday Masses.
I was surprised to learn that my older brother prays the rosary daily too, but my other siblings are not regular church goers.
My parents were raised Catholic, married in the Catholic Church, and then my father was an atheist and my mother largely lapsed. They married in 1967 so their childhood Catholciism seems completely cut off from anything after that wedding, snd it seems they'd abandoned the new mass and everything with it. We owned no Bible. We never prayed at home. We barely attended mass, maybe not at all after I was 8. But I went to parochial school for grades 1-12 because they believed the education was better, they said. Through grade 4 the Irish nuns at the school taught us basic prayers including the Hail Holy Queen and Memorare, made us memorize the Works of Mercy, Holy Days of Obligation, Ten Commandments, etc. but no book catechism. After gr 5, well, it was the 80s. I was not required to be confirmed. High school was Jonathan Livingston Seagull and Vincent by Don McLean.
For all of the meditation I also had never heard of "mental prayer" being focused on a piece of Scripture or any spiritual reading.
I have the vaguest memory of being in first or second grade and having a procession from classrooms to the convent (maybe a May Crowning? In 1978?) while saying something, but i was quite tiny, and I remember how I couldn't hear and didn't know what we were supposed to be doing.
I am positive I was taught no formal prayers after grade 4. It was when I decided to complete my intitation sacraments as a married woman and started attending a parish run by an order that I first learned the prayer of St. Michael and about any devotions. Until then I had known nothing about Fatima (including the original miracle of the Sun--I never heard of it in school), knew no-one who regularly prayed aloud with their family, or even knew anyone who said a prayer before eating.
When my second child was born (2008) the Holy Spirit led me to a group of Catholic moms. From them I learned the Divine Mercy Chaplet (i didn't even know what a Chaplet was), met people who went to adoration, lay women who went in religious retreats, and heard of Bible studies for Catholics.
My parents were raised minimally Catholic and largely learned to pray while we were at a charismatic leaning parish in Mississippi when I was a pre-schooler (early to mid 1990s). I remember rosaries around a campfire, being deeply bored in adoration holy hours (even though they had a comic book Bible in the chapel), and also seeing people "slain in the spirit" and prayed over at healing masses with people holding out their hands over them while they were laid (or held?) down.
Looking back, it was a strange mix. There were a couple homeschooling families in the parish, and also a lot of stories of teenagers in the RE classes facing demonic entities of one type or another. It was a pretty intense experience. (The parish was also pretty racially integrated, which I've sinced found out was a little rare for Mississippi).
Born in 66 but my father did not start taking us to Mass until 76 or so. We attended public school so I went to CCD. I remember learning the basics (Our Father, Hail Mary, Glory Be). My grandmother would send me rosaries and pamphlets on the saints (along with a little cash!). Although my parish was definitely a guitar Mass parish, I really don't remember a lot of contemporary music being used in CCD. The catechists just followed the books.
The truth is that none of it really "stuck" because it wasnt being reinforced at home. Wasn't until I got older that I realized there were some gaps. I remember seeing The Mission in 1987 and not understanding until a few years later that Jeremy Irons was holding a monstrance with the Blessed Sacrament in that scene at the end. I had never seen one before.
I grew up in the 90s and early 00s, and my family prayed the Rosary together every so often, but my Mom also took my sister and I to Eucharistic Adoration weekly. It was just silent. There was where I learned to sit with my Bible and contemplate it. Thanks to a dose of Focus on the Family programming via radio or teen magazine, I also had some Evangelical influence that encouraged me to talk with God. It was a mix of things that drew me to a pretty mature prayer life for my age.
Growing up in what is now Zimbabwe in southern Africa, my father was a Scottish expat so we were ostensibly Presbyterian and as a child I went to Sunday school at the weekends. My mother was Catholic and wanted me to attend the same convent school she had attended in the late 1940s because she thought the nuns would teach me to knit so that I would be practical and good with my hands (I have never learned to knit). We would be moving across the country soon, but I was enrolled for the year. Regina Mundi Convent primary school in Gweru, Zimbabwe, was run by German Dominican sisters: we walked over to the church each morning for Mass, were taught how to cross ourselves, when to kneel or stand and say the responses (post-Vatican II but with many of the older hymns in Latin and German). I loved it. We were taken by bus to St Therese cathedral for a bishop’s Requiem Mass and that was terrifying and magnificent, the great thundering chant of the Dies irae, all the candles and peppery incense, the Shona Mwari hymns accompanied by drumming and the hosha rattle. On the bus going back a younger sister played a guitar and sang Dominique, a popular tune not played over the radio because singing nuns weren’t respectable.
The Dominican sisters were strict but fond of small children. After lunch we would sit around in a circle and they told us all about how Jesus as a small boy made clay birds and when he clapped his hands, the birds flew away. We sang a song about this to the tune of Muss I Denn, called Kommt ein Vogel geflogen. One of the older nuns told us that if we talked to Jesus, he would listen and like it, he was very tender towards little ones and wanted to protect us from any harm like a hen keeping her chicks tucked in close under her wings. And we knew all about the Virgin Mary who loved us like a mother. When we lay down to sleep in the afternoons, the nun would sprinkle us with holy water and make the sign of the cross. We knew how to say the Our Father, the Rosary and the Salve regina. I would go home chattering away in my head to Jesus, with glass bead rosaries, brown felt scapulars, holy pictures, small bottles of holy water, prayer cards; the kind of abundance and holy clutter I still associate with being Catholic. I would say intercessory prayers kneeling beside my bed at night and counting off family, friends, dogs and all those who had nobody to pray for them. My parents did their best to ignore all this.
When I had bouts of malaria (very common then) and was sent hot and shivering to the sick bay until my parents could collect me, a sister would bring me bitter quinine in a glass and remind me of St Therese of Lisieux who had to swallow bitter medicines and did so without complaining. “Did she get better right away?” I asked hopefully. “No,” the sister replied, “She died a holy death with a smile on her face.” I disliked St Therese until I read The Story of a Soul in my twenties and realised how truly stoic and courageous she had been.
There was much that was naive and perhaps sentimental about the convent days and yet the sense of being loved and cared for and the immersion in a living faith made prayer easy. Regina Mundi convent school is as popular and successful now and one of the older Dominican sisters celebrates her 95th birthday this year.
I was born in 1948, so I was well into my teens when Vatican II took place. Still, my experience was very similar to yours, Amy - perhaps even more so. We lived in a small village, with no nearby Catholic schools, so we went to public school. In elementary school, we were released for one hour a week for religious instruction (conveniently, our parish church was right across the village street from our school). Junior and senior high featured weekly evening meetings (and this was, admittedly, a hit-or-miss affair).
All our instruction was by our local parish priest, who was a good and holy man, but no catechist. We did have one week of religious education each summer by sisters from a nearby city, but that was it.
My parents were devote and observant, but we did little praying as a family beyond grace for meals. Other than Mass on Sunday and Holy Days, our observance was limited to the Stations of the Cross during Lent; such was the tenor of the times in our community. I learned all the standard prayers, of course, and made them key to my (often intermittent) prayer life.
My siblings and I were old enough to miss the touchy-feely do-it-on-your own style you allude to (thank you, Lord); the liturgical and other stylistic changes following V2 came as something of a shock to our small parish. Indeed, while they remained faithful, I don't believe my parents ever felt truly at home with the Novus Ordo.
My opinion: There is much to praise with spontaneous prayer, but it helps immensely if it has a firm foundation in the formal prayers of our tradition.
I learned to say grace, the Our Father, Hail Mary and Glory Be very young at home. I went to a non-Catholic kindergarten where we said a different prayer before meals. We said the rosary as a family in May and October. Eventually my mother got a good sized statue of the Immaculate Conception and we prayed as a family in front of it. Some of my siblings broke other statues we used for prayer but not that one.
In grade school we started each day with Mass and then the Morning Offertory. We prayed the Angelus at noon right before lunch.
We had parish holy hours with the red Sacred Heart books and Stations of the Cross by St. Alphonso Luguori. We had benediction and 40 hours devotions. In high school we basically didn't pray or have Mass much. And we had Simon & Garfunkel for religion class.