Why pray communally?

Prayer is a communal activity, even when it is done by someone on their own. We need the Church in order to live Christian lives, and that means praying together – not only at Mass on Sunday mornings but in families and other smaller groups as well as as an entire congregation. We can be praying together by praying in the same place; we can also be praying together by using the same form of prayer as our fellow Christians, irrespctive of whether we happen to be in the same place as them on a particular occasion.

How to pray daily?

There are a number of forms of daily prayer available (such as the Divine Office – a link to an online version of this (www.universalis.com) is given at the top of this page, or Morning and Evening Prayer from the Book of Common Payer), and so there is some room for preference in the form of daily prayer that we use. However, we should be wary of being a consumer of forms of prayer that we find merely congenial. One of the greatest things to be gained from the office goes right against the flow of consumerism – doing what the Church does as a matter of discipline, not choosing your own way or switching forms as the urge strikes. It can sometimes be difficult to pray and to maintain the discipline of prayer. It is often after the event that the benefits of having maintained the discipline through a difficult patch are truly realised.

Traditional elements of daily prayer

Forms of daily prayer will generally contain the following: examination of conscience and confession of sin; one or more hymns; psalms; Scripture; a Gospel canticle (the Benedictus, Magnificat or Nunc Dimitis); intercession (prayer for the Church, the sick and those in need, the dead, and ourselves); the Our Father; a final prayer and a blessing.

One of the great benefits of a formal structure such as this is that it ensures that we read daily from the Psalms, in which we find praise, sadness, joy and prayer and realise that whatever our situation someone else has been there before and has prayed to God about it. We will also read daily from Scripture, and not just the sections we like, but the parts we find more challenging.

As the Church, we are a praying people – prayer is our work. It is not just the business of the clergy. Christians pray as part of our discipleship, we pray because it gives us support, we pray because it helps others, but most of all we pray because we God’s creatures and prayer is how we maintain our end of our relationship with Him.