To pray a Catholic prayer is to pray in community with the whole Church: past, present and future. If we mean what we say and say what we mean, we truly are a Catholic — that is universal — Church.

I pray it when I first wake up in the morning. I pray it during morning and evening prayers as I follow them with the Magnificat. I pray it during the Rosary and the Divine Mercy Chaplet. The Our Father is a prayer given to us by Jesus Himself. Yet, as a single person praying all by my lonesome (except for my cat Vera), I continue to start the prayer with Our. I don’t start it as My Father, but Our Father, indicating more than just me. Why is it so important that we call God as Our Father, especially if we want to have a personal relationship with Him? But watch any two-year-old with a toy they claim as “mine” and it makes perfect sense for the Church to continually remind us that we are a family of God. I may be saying the Our Father in the comfort of my home, but someone else could be walking to work and saying it at the same time that I am. Or a Mass on the other side of the world may be reciting the same lines that I am at the same time I do. It’s rather amazing to think we join others across the globe as we all pray the same prayer, even if it’s in a different language.

While the Our Father may be the most obvious of Catholic prayers, it was the Grace before meals that really got me started thinking about the language used in them. “Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.” I say this prayer before each meal, and I started to notice all the plural references. I tried changing it up so that it used singular language, but I would inevitably leave one word as plural, usually the “our”. For this prayer, I thought about using the excuse that I was praying on Vera’s behalf as well, but she usually eats before I do and she only gets morning and evening meals. So who are the “us” we are asking to be blessed and who is it that is receiving the gifts of nourishment? It was then I realized that the most basic of prayers had Our as the first word. Even in the Hail Mary, we ask her to “pray for us sinners now, and at the hour of our death.”  

We could be exclusive and say we are only praying using pluralistic language on behalf of other Catholics, but I think it goes beyond who we know, beyond our denomination as Roman Catholics, and even beyond Christianity itself. While we may be joining other like-minded individuals even if we are unaware they are praying the same way, our pluralistic language is inclusive to all God’s children, regardless of creed, perhaps even beyond the boundaries of time and space. Likewise, any prayers said by those who came before us, along with those that will be said in the future include a plea to God on our behalf. God, who is beyond time and space, gathers all our prayers together. In His Love, He unites us and our prayers. Those who wish for singularity, wish separation from the prayer community and run the risk of imitating Satan, the one who scatters. 

Through prayer, we are never alone before God. Let us mean the words we proclaim to include all of God’s children, drawing strength in numbers from those praying along with us.