Prayer
Growing in the Life of Prayer and Spiritual Practices
Prayer is a way to connect with the Divine. The Catholic Faith is rich in spiritual practices including many different types of individual prayer, community prayer, and practices of caring. There are prayer forms that will be fruitful for anyone from the most traditional Catholic to someone who is spiritual but not religious. We invite you to learn about different prayer forms and spiritual practices. Try the ones that attract you. If you are not drawn to a practice, enjoy the fact that some others in the world-wide Catholic community enter into their faith this way.
Prayers for Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a word that appears before the word Thanksgiving Day and after thanksgiver in the Mirriam-Webster Dictionary online. One of the definitions of the word is “a prayer expressing gratitude”.
Thanksgiving prayers are often written in the form of poems or songs. These ten thanksgiving prayers can be used around the dinner table this November or any time of the year. One of the beautiful things about the Thanksgiving holiday is that it gives us a specific time to reflect on the wonderful blessings we all enjoy. While we may not have as many things as other people have, we can all be thankful for friends and family who love us and the life God has given us. |
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Father in Heaven, Creator of all and source of all goodness and love, please look kindly upon us and receive our heartfelt gratitude in this time of giving thanks.
Thank you for all the graces and blessings. You have betowed upon us, spiritual and temporal: our faith and religious heritage. Our food and shelter, our health, the loves we have for one another, our family and friends. Dear Father, in Your infinite generosity, please grant us continued graces and blessing throughout the coming year. This we ask in the Name of Jesus, Your Son and our Brother. Amen. |
Prayer of Thanksgiving
Vienna Cobb Anderson God of all blessings, source of all life, giver of all grace: We thank you for the gift of life: for the breath that sustains life, for the food of this earth that nurtures life, for the love of family and friends without which there would be no life. We thank you for the mystery of creation: for the beauty that the eye can see, for the joy that the ear may hear, for the unknown that we cannot behold filling the universe with wonder, for the expanse of space that draws us beyond the definitions of our selves. We thank you for setting us in communities: for families who nurture our becoming, for friends who love us by choice, for companions at work, who share our burdens and daily tasks, for strangers who welcome us into their midst, for people from other lands who call us to grow in understanding, for children who lighten our moments with delight, for the unborn, who offer us hope for the future. We thank you for this day: for life and one more day to love, for opportunity and one more day to work for justice and peace, for neighbors and one more person to love and by whom be loved, for your grace and one more experience of your presence, for your promise: to be with us, to be our God, and to give salvation. For these, and all blessings, we give you thanks, eternal, loving God, through Jesus Christ we pray. Amen. |
Give us this day our daily bread, O Father in heaven, and grant that we who are filled with good things from Your open hand, may never close our hearts to the hungry, the homeless, and the poor; in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
- from the abbey of New Clairvaux, Viña, California Psalm 100
Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the lands! Serve the Lord with gladness! Come into God's presence with singing! Know that the Lord is God! It is he that made us, and we are his; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter his gates with thanksgiving, and his courts with praise! Give thanks to him, bless his name! For the Lord is good; his steadfast love endures for ever, and his faithfulness to all generations. Thanksgiving
For each new morning with its light, For rest and shelter of the night, For health and food, For love and friends, For everything Thy goodness sends. - Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) |