How to Pray Together: Outside of Church

How many of us would classify our prayer lives as involving serious attention on Sundays, quick recitation before dinners, and frantic pleading during crises? Maybe you pray with your young children before bedtime or by yourself before they wake up. Have you ever considered the benefits of instituting a time every day when the whole family gathers and prays together? It would be a valuable addition to your family's busy schedule and you don't have to be ordained to do it.

Family Prayer Time is an easy way to teach your children, strengthen your marriage and-most importantly-get your family more in touch with God. It puts God where He belongs: in the middle of your lives. God is the love that binds your family together. How fitting it is that you take a few minutes everyday to acknowledge that love and ask for more of the same.

What can Family Prayer Time do? Family Prayer Time teaches your children that God is an important part of your family and belongs in every day, not just Sunday; that they should share every nook and cranny of their lives with Him. Children learn first by seeing what their parents do. If you pray to God on Sunday but ignore Him the rest of the week, your children will learn something from that contradiction. Is it something you want them to learn? .

Family Prayer Time gives you a set time every day to sit down with your children and share something important. Listen to what they thank God for and what they ask of Him. Prayer Time is not the time to discuss their day, but it can provide insight for later. For example, when our son was six, he once prayed that a particular girl at school would stop picking on him. After we finished praying, we excused his sisters and talked to him about it. Obviously, not all prayers will reveal your children's hidden inner selves. (A prayer for a Barbie for Christmas would not be cause for deeper discussion.) As your children get older, Prayer Time could become a way to open the floor to a difficult topic.

What does Family Prayer Time look like? Jesus gave us the format of prayer when he taught His disciples the "Our Father" in Matthew 6:9-13. There are four parts to a complete prayer: Praise, Repentance, Petition (or Asking), and Thanks. You can use the acronym PART or TARP or RAPT or APTR or any combination of those letters that help you remember. The order is less important than including them all. We have four children ranging in age from three to eight. We aim for Family Prayer Time after dinner but before dessert. That way, we have a certain amount of incentive for everyone to focus on the task at hand. We begin by singing a "church song" or two that the children choose. "This Little Light of Mine" was a favorite when they were younger. Now, they request "Great and Mighty is He" or Christmas carols. We use the songs as "warm-ups". It helps separate "Prayer Time" from the rest of the day and gets everyone's head on the same thing. A song is also fun and lets the kids dance around the room.. We sing without accompaniment and we don't have great voices. That's not the point.

Praise. We follow the song with spontaneous praising of God. We belong to a charismatic Catholic community, so this is something we experience at Mass and weekly Praise and Worship meetings. If shouting out praises with arms raised is not your style, there are other ways to praise.

Get a list of the many names we call God. "Wonderful Counselor"; "Mighty Redeemer"; Lamb of God"; "Alpha and Omega" are just a few. There are plenty. Have each person in the family speak a name. The whole family responds, "Praise the Lord." This can initiate a later discussion about why we call God, "Morningstar" or "Rock of Ages". Look for pamphlets and books with titles like "The Names of God". You can also find plenty of names in the Bible. Names can also be personal like, "Omnipotent Buddy" or "Best Friend".

Another way to praise the Lord is to have your family recite some praise psalms, like Psalms 100, 111, 136, and 147 through 150. You can read them together, have one person proclaim them, or alternate verses.

Repentance. If your children are old enough, you should include repentance in your Prayer Time. This is not communal confession, when you and your family announce every sinful thing you did that day. Have each person think about their day and how they let God down. Then recite an "I'm sorry" prayer. Psalm 51 is my favorite. The Act of Contrition and the Confiteor are made for this.

Thanks. After you have determined the universal pecking order (God deserves praise, we need forgiveness) you can thank God for all of the great blessings He has given you that day. After each person thanks the Lord, the whole family says, "Thank you, Lord." We have our kids offer a minimum of three thank-you's. This encourages them to be aware of the many ways God blesses them every day. When they were younger, we gave them something to repeat. "Thank you, Lord, for our family" and "Thank you, Lord, for my friends" worked well. It was not long before they understood how things worked and came up with their own.

Petitions. Asking God for help is next. Each person asks God for one or more prayers to be answered and finishes with "We pray to the Lord." The rest of the family replies, "Lord hear our prayer." One limitation we put on our children is that at least one prayer must be for someone else's benefit. This is a wonderful way to teach them that we all need each other's prayers.

Concluding. We finish with an "Our Father". When they were young, our kids didn't know all the words, but joined in with a joyful "Amen!" at the end. Mom or Dad could finish it off with a final thought or extemporaneous prayer. One evening, it had been a long day and we accidentally lead them in grace ("Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts..."). The kids figured it out first and we didn't know why they were giggling until we finished.

There are lots of ways to vary Family Prayer Time to fit your family. You could read the readings for that day or Sunday's liturgy. There are many family devotionals with daily reflections to share. In our family, we have plans to use a flannel board to include short Bible stories. Sometimes, if there is an urgent need for a specific prayer, we focus on that instead of our usual format.

Family Prayer Time should be an important part of your family's life. It will strengthen your family by bringing each of you closer together in a very worthwhile way. The time it takes is minimal and the blessings that will come from it are endless. Besides, God is there in your home every day anyway. Isn't it just polite to say hi?