"For the family that prays together, stays together."
Mother Teresa of Calcutta

PRAYER

GOD OF UNCONDITIONAL LOVE,

You have called us since our mother's wombs.
You have called us to walk this road together.

Help us as we prepare to celebrate our marital commitment
within the Church, the Body of Christ.

Lead us kindly by Your heavenly Light.
Instruct us wisely by your eternal Wisdom.
pardon us of our thoughtless ways.

Fashion us into instruments of Your Peace,
first for each other,
and then for others.

And, grant us the grace
to make a sincere gift of ourselves
through conjugal love
and the gift of fruitful parenting.

Amen

Practical ways to pray together:

Build a "sacred place" in your home: it can be on a shelf, a coffee table or a stool.
Place a candle, an icon or a statue, whatever helps you to create a climate of prayer. Don't forget flowers!

Decide together of a regular daily time to pray together. Usually, the best time is in the evening, just before going to bed.

You can start with the sign of the cross, a song, a recited prayer (Our Father). Then you can build your own prayer with your own words. You wouldn't speak to your spouse just in reciting poems!

You can start with a spontaneous prayer of thanksgiving for the events of the day and you can also ask for forgiveness for the difficulties. Then bring up your specific petitions. You can also pray a decade of the Rosary to end your prayer.

Make sure you read the Bible regularly: prayer is not all about talking but also listening: it’s a dialogue. The best way is to read the readings of the day proposed by the Church. You can get a subscription to a booklet like “Magnificat” that gives each month the readings and prayers for every day.

Magnificat
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Why Jesus Prays

“We should pray in faith, without letting our minds be in doubt or be lacking in a firm trust in our God. This is what our Lord himself teaches us when he says “All that you shall ask in prayer” in my name, “having faith, you shall receive” (Mt 21:22). Potent indeed is prayer that is offered in faith from a pure heart. For this reason we should persevere in prayer, my brethren, and not weary of it.

What, then is prayer? And what is petition? And How should we pray? And what advantage do we get from prayer and petition? All this we must set out before you.

We can define prayer, then, as a means of escape from misfortunes, a delivery from all that can cause hurt, a key to the gates of heaven, converse and encounter with God.

Petition is a request for the things that are lacking from what is requisite. Supplication is therefore a profound form of the same thing. Thanksgiving is the expression of gratitude for what has been given…

From the fact of our praying it so happens that we are with God; and whoever is with God is well away from the enemy: prayer thus preserves chastity, it beats down anger, it drowns pride, it gets rid of resentment, it destroys envy, it causes evil to vanish, it reforms wicked ways. Prayer, then, is the seal of virginity, the firm basis of marriage, the armor of those who are asleep, the source of confidence for those who are awake. In brief, prayer is talking to, and encountering God….”

Anonymous sixth-century Syriac work