Common Prayers

"If you run through the petitions of all holy prayers, I believe you will find nothing that is not summed up and contained in the Lord's prayer."

-St. Augustine, letter to a noblewoman, 411

The Christian life is all about our relationship with God in Christ. Like all relationships, our relationship with God rests upon good communication. Prayer in its totality is our conversation with God, and it entails both listening and speaking.

Prayer takes many forms. Sometimes we pray in silence. At other times we use words and formulas that have come to us through the millennia. We pray alone and we pray with the rest of the Church, the Body of Christ. And our actions are part of our prayer because what we do is as much, if not more, of the story we tell to God each day as are our words.

Jesus teaches us how to pray and the Lord's prayer is the model of all Christian prayer. He teaches us to praise God, to thank God, to ask God for what we need, and ultimately to hear and accept God's answer and respond, "thy will be done."