I Say a Little Prayer for You

The last part of the Liturgy of the Word is called the Prayer of the Faithful.  Some individual church parishes may refer to it as the “General Intercessions,” but it’s the same thing.  As much as I’d like to paraphrase it and pass it off as my own thinking, I’ll just go ahead and quote the General Instruction of the Roman Missal on this one, because they sum it up pretty well:

In the Prayer of the Faithful, the people respond in a certain way to the word of God which they have welcomed in faith and, exercising the office of their baptismal priesthood, offer prayers to God for the salvation of all. It is fitting that such a prayer be included, as a rule, in Masses celebrated with a congregation, so that petitions will be offered for the holy Church, for civil authorities, for those weighed down by various needs, for all men and women, and for the salvation of the whole world. (GIRM 69)

Pretty cool, right?  This paragraph shows how the Mass is not just a series of random prayerful events, but rather builds upon itself.  Once we hear the Word of God and learn how it applies to us in today’s world, we profess our Faith in God who gives us the guidance of the scriptures we just heard.  Then we offer prayers for others so that we can fulfill our calling of our baptismal priesthood (which we’ll get to in our Sacrament series after we finish with the Mass). 

The celebrant (priest) of the Mass is the one who directs this prayer from his chair; however, he is not the ordinary announcer of the prayers.  After the priest gives a short introduction, inviting the congregation to pray, a deacon, lector, cantor, or some member of the lay congregation goes to the Ambo (or another suitable place—generally meaning a lectern/pulpit or some similar location).  The congregation, already standing since before the Profession of Faith, responds to each intercessory prayer with a short affirmation of the prayer, such as: “Lord, hear our prayer,” or “Hear us, O Lord.”  /Some church parishes go a little further and have the people respond with something created to be relevant to the theme for that day’s Mass such as: “Hear us, Spirit of the Living God,” or “Lord of healing and forgiveness, hear us.”  There is nothing wrong with a parish making up their own response, but this avenue should be taken with care not to have something too long or distracting like, “God, creator of Heaven and of Earth, hear our prayer and answer us according to your will.”  Remember that the congregation is supposed to be praying this together/collectively.  If we make it harder for us to pray together we’ll end up distracting ourselves, making the oh, so creative response more distracting than prayer-encouraging.

Now, let’s talk about the prayers, themselves for a second.  The types of prayers that are to be prayed at this point in the Mass are clearly…CLEARLY…outlined in the GIRM.  They are:

1.      For the needs of the Church

2.      For public authorities and the salvation of the whole world

3.      For those burdened by any kind of difficulty

4.      For the local community

Now, the GIRM also says that for individual occasions such as Confirmation, Marriage, funerals, etc., the intentions can better reflect the significance of that particular occasion.  Please note, however, that we DO NOT pray for the dead here.  I have been to MANY parishes that have prayed for the dead here.  This is NOT the place.  As you’ll see a few posts from now, the Eucharistic Prayer includes a prayer for those who have died, and even includes an option to include specific names of people who have recently died in the community. 

Some take the 4 prayers literally, taking them to mean that there should only be FOUR prayers.  Others take a little more liberty to say that there are four TYPES of prayers that can be made, and make up as many prayers as they want to as long as they feel the prayers fall into one of these four categories.  The GIRM, unfortunately, has not yet clarified this dilemma.  HOWEVER, care should be taken (again, this isn’t from the GIRM, but from extensive negative personal experience) to limit the number of intentions so that people don’t get distracted by a “laundry list” of intercessions.  Think about the last time you went to a Mass where they had TEN or so intercessions.  Can you tell me what ANY of them were?  Probably not.  By about the time intention number 6 rolls around, the average person stops paying attention to what is actually being said (assuming they were paying attention in the first place, of course), and just starts waiting for their cue to respond.  So to all the priests out there who may be reading this, take it from members (or at least one member) of the congregation: Keep them concise to help us and our incredibly short 21^st century attention spans stay focused on the importance of each particular prayer.

While I’ve still got your ear…or eyes, I guess…there’s also this little pet peeve of mine that I’ll bring up because, well, it’s MY blog.  Many parishes try to take the “guess work” out of what the people should say in response by having the person reading the intentions preface them by saying, for example, “Please respond: Lord, Hear our Prayer.”  Let’s be clear: this is not supposed to be a “practice round.”  Saying “Lord, Hear our Prayer” is your response to the PRAYER.  We’ve been going to Mass enough that I think we don’t need to “rev ourselves up” to be ready to say the right response after the reader tells us what it will be. 

So now that I’ve gotten off THAT soapbox, that’s the end of the Prayer of the Faithful, and also the Liturgy of the Word.  In our next post, we’ll start unpacking the second half of the Mass called the Liturgy of the Eucharist.  Until then, keep on praying!