Thursday, March 18, 2004
Although I haven't signed up to perform the service, I did quite a bit of work toward making a web site for my church last night. One thing that's quite different about my current Catholic Parish and my old Methodist Parish is the number of parishoners. I attend Saturday evening mass and the church is nearly always full. The church is also almost nearly full twice on Sunday. There are about 850 or 900 members of my Catholic Church. There are less than 200 members of the Methodist Church where I used to go, and the number is falling. In fact, every year the Methodist Church works hard to go through the membership and get people to cancel themselves because the church has to pay for members even if they don't come to church.
Another thing I learned at my first class was that Catholics allow Saturday mass because in the Jewish faith, the Sabboth is Sundown Friday to Sundown Saturday... we just shifted a day forward, is all.
I've been reading about prayer in my Catechism book. We're to cut out a slice of time for prayer every day. That's similar to exercise, isn't it. The book also says that we can pray when we're doing anything... so it did cross my mind that it would be good for my physical and spiritual self to set aside an hour for exercise and prayer each day.
Currently, I pray at the end of the day, when I lay me down to sleep. I pray like this: "Dear God, send the white light of the Holy Spirit to fill up my soul and give me a clean heart to study and understand your word." And then I ask for the Holy Spirit to fill up each of my family members and for God and Jesus to send angels to protect them and guide them and my grandparents to watch over and guide my children.
I generally had two prayers as a child, one at dinner:
Come, Lord Jesus,
Be our guest,
And let Thy gifts to us
Be blest. Amen.
and one at bedtime:
Now I lay me down to sleep
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should wake within the night,
Guide me safe to morning light.
We have not done a good job of teaching or working with our children on prayer. I think, when that times comes when I have to confess, this will be one of the things I'll have to ask forgiveness on.
Another thing I learned at my first class was that Catholics allow Saturday mass because in the Jewish faith, the Sabboth is Sundown Friday to Sundown Saturday... we just shifted a day forward, is all.
I've been reading about prayer in my Catechism book. We're to cut out a slice of time for prayer every day. That's similar to exercise, isn't it. The book also says that we can pray when we're doing anything... so it did cross my mind that it would be good for my physical and spiritual self to set aside an hour for exercise and prayer each day.
Currently, I pray at the end of the day, when I lay me down to sleep. I pray like this: "Dear God, send the white light of the Holy Spirit to fill up my soul and give me a clean heart to study and understand your word." And then I ask for the Holy Spirit to fill up each of my family members and for God and Jesus to send angels to protect them and guide them and my grandparents to watch over and guide my children.
I generally had two prayers as a child, one at dinner:
Be our guest,
And let Thy gifts to us
Be blest. Amen.
and one at bedtime:
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I should wake within the night,
Guide me safe to morning light.
We have not done a good job of teaching or working with our children on prayer. I think, when that times comes when I have to confess, this will be one of the things I'll have to ask forgiveness on.
