The Our Father - a rose by any other name

Basilica of St. Francis Xavier

Dyersville, Iowa (Home of Beckman High School)

As Protestants, we called it The Lord's Prayer. It was just one more way we were different from Catholics. It seemed I was always noticing the differences - and always assuming we (Protestants) had it right. Even saying the words "The Our Father" seemed odd as they fell from my lips.

I had plenty of opportunity to try on the new title when I was hired as the new Spanish teacher at a Catholic high school in rural Iowa. After all, we had to open every class with prayer, and the teacher usually did the leading.

In short order, I implemented a new assignment. "We are going to learn the Our Father and the Hail Mary in Spanish. And we will be opening every class with one of these prayers."

I was there two years (180 days each year). I had five or six classes of students each day. That means I said those prayers around two thousand times!

I don't really think it matters what we call the prayer . . . a rose by any other name and so forth. . . but I do see the value in the simple act of saying the prayer.

I used to think it was a rote prayer and too many Catholics said it without feeling a thing. But I have come to love these prayers, along with the Rosary.

There are times when I do not know what to pray or how to pray. There are times my own mind runs out of ways to say what I am feeling in my heart, but I find that I still long to be with the Lord and talk with Him. When I am just not ready to get off my knees, when I want the conversation between us to go on even though I have run out of words, I simply slip into the prayer Our Lord loved most.

If I try, I can even still do it in Spanish. It's silly, I know, but I think my patron saint, St. Teresa of Avila (herself from Spain), must be smiling about then. I can almost imagine what she's saying. . .

That preacher's kid with the minor in Spanish. . . she's finally Catholic! It only took about two thousand Spanish Our Fathers!