Continuing St. Francis’s extended Lord’s Prayer…

In The Mirror of Perfection, St. Francis teaches his brothers to pray the Our Father and he instructs them to praise the Lord both before and after the words of the prayer. In addition, the following commentary—added by Francis to the traditional words of the prayer from Matthew, chapter six—were a sort of midrash on the Prayer, included in the way that the first Franciscans kept this daily practice.

GIVE US THIS DAY OUR DAILY BREAD,

Your own beloved Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, so to remind us of the love he showed for us and to help us understand and appreciate it and everything that he did or said or suffered.

AND FORGIVE US OUR TRESPASSES,

In your infinite mercy, and by the power of the Passion of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, together with the merits and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary and all your saints.

AS WE FORGIVE THOSE WHO TRESPASS AGAINST US,

And if we do not forgive perfectly, Lord, make us do so, so that we may indeed love our enemies out of our love for you, and pray fervently to you for them, never returning evil for evil, anxious only to serve everybody in you.

–from The St. Clare Prayer Book: Listening for God’s Leading

The primary categories of sacramentals

An ancient Latin (once the universal language of the Western world and the Catholic Church) verse outlines the primary categories of sacramentals: Orans, tinctus, edens, confessus, dans, benedicens.

This roughly translates as: Public prayer, holy water, eating, confession, giving, and blessings.

Making a sacramental out of anything

There is scarcely any proper use of material things which cannot be directed toward the sanctification of men and the praise of God.

—Catechism of the Catholic Church (1670)