The Year of Prayer

In preparation for the Jubilee Year ‘Pilgrims of Hope,’ which starts on Advent Sunday, 1 December 2024, the year beginning on Advent Sunday, 3 December 2023 has been designated by Pope Francis the ‘Year of Prayer’ in the Roman Catholic Community. The particular emphasis of the Year of Prayer is the ‘Our Father’ (known as ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ to Protestants):

‘Our Father, who art in heaven,

hallowed be thy name;

thy Kingdom come,

thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Give us this day our daily bread;

and forgive us our trespasses

as we forgive those who trespass against us;

and lead us not into temptation,

but deliver us from evil.

Amen.’

Focusing on the ‘Our Father’ through the Year of Prayer provides a great opportunity to return to the basics of prayer and to become to a greater degree a person of prayer. The Catholic faithful are also being asked to teach at least one other person to pray, in the way that the Lord taught his disciples, during the Year of Prayer.

Resources to enable prayer provided by the Archdiocese of Birmingham’s Office for Mission include:

• Meditation. This can involve placing oneself in an event from scripture by assuming the person of one of the characters. You experience the event in your imagination as if you were there, reacting to it as it happens. You then see how that experience might help you to understand what Jesus was teaching, or maybe God has spoken to you in a new way about a biblical story or parable.
• Lectio Divina. Choose a piece of scripture and read it slowly three times. Pick out the word, words or phrase that speaks to you the most and prayerfully repeat it, listening to what God might be saying to you through it. Allow the word or phrase to guide you in your prayer and think about how you might apply it to your own life in the day or week ahead.
• Praying the Psalms. Choose one or two psalms and, instead of making a study of them, pray the psalm by entering into the thoughts, experiences and trials that the Psalmist is addressing to God through their words and prayers.

Find these and other prayer resources via THIS LINK. Read about the Year of Prayer and the forthcoming Jubilee Year HERE. Visit the official Year of Jubilee website HERE. Contact Paul Northam, Birmingham Archdiocesan Co-ordinator for the 2024 Year of Prayer and the 2025 Year of Jubilee at THIS ADDRESS.