I need help with praying

[reader16]

Hi,

I am Amy and I am turning 17 next month. And I was born premature like five months I think I was suppose to be born in Febuary, but instead I was born in Octoeber 27. And I want to thank God for watching over me and protecting me. How do I do thank God properly? I thank God everyday for watching over my family and protecting us and hearing our prayers. And also I need help with praying for the souls in Purgatory. Well I prayed once for them, but I am not should I said a good enough prayer. How do I pray for the souls in Purgatory? And I want to pray to my guardian angels but I don’t know how to pray to them. How do I pray to them, and how would I know I am praying to my guardian angels and not someone elses? Do guardian angels have names? I have been posting threads in the apologetics section but I haven’t gotten any replies. So I look forward to your replies, and I thank you so much for taking the time to read this post.

Thank you and God Bless. From, Amy.

 

[krissy343]

Hi,

I am Amy and I am turning 17 next month. And I was born premature like five months I think I was suppose to be born in Febuary, but instead I was born in Octoeber 27. And I want to thank God for watching over me and protecting me. How do I do thank God properly?.

Just thank God in your own words. There is no specific prayer that you have to say. Just talk to Him

also I need help with praying for the souls in Purgatory. Well I prayed once for them, but I am not should I said a good enough prayer. How do I pray for the souls in Purgatory?

Eternal Father, I offer You the Most Precious Blood of Your Divine Son, Jesus, in union with the Masses said throughout the world today, for all the Holy Souls in Purgatory. Amen.

And I want to pray to my guardian angels but I don’t know how to pray to them. How do I pray to them, and how would I know I am praying to my guardian angels and not someone elses? Do guardian angels have names?

Here is a list of prayers to guardian angels catholic.org/prayers/prayer.php?s=54 Your guardian angel knows that you are praying to him/her so you don’t have to worry that you are praying to someone elses As for if they have names, I’m sure they do My mom told me once about meditating to find out your guardian angels name (though I’ve heard it’s discouraged by the Church) I came up with the name Helen, though it’s not definite that it is his/her name, that’s just what came to me.

 

[Lux_et_veritas]

Hi,

I am Amy and I am turning 17 next month. And I was born premature like five months I think I was suppose to be born in Febuary, but instead I was born in Octoeber 27. And I want to thank God for watching over me and protecting me. How do I do thank God properly? I thank God everyday for watching over my family and protecting us and hearing our prayers.

Amy - I too am a preemie. In fact, it was a good thing I was born early because I had a tumor that was removed just three weeks after I was born. It was growing above my eye. My family was told that 9 out of 10 such tumors are cancerous, but mine proved to be benign and surgery was a success. I too thank God.

There are many forms of prayer. Talking to God, the Blessed Mother, the Angels, or the Saints, is prayer too. And, you are on to something in wanting to use prayer to thank Him. All too often, people make prayer more about them, than about God. They want this, or that and often these are good things that they want, but what about giving God time in prayer when we want nothing at all? This is the purest form of prayer and it is called adoration - to simply love Him while looking for nothing in return.

And also I need help with praying for the souls in Purgatory. Well I prayed once for them, but I am not should I said a good enough prayer. How do I pray for the souls in Purgatory?

We all need to pray for the poor souls in purgatory. These days at funerals we hear the departed talked about as if they have already been canonized (If we assume “Aunt Susie” is in heaven, then we have no need to pray for her and what if she is not in heaven?). We should always pray for the poor souls as an act of charity, and the departed that we know about. If they are not in need of our prayers, then they can be applied to another. I always ask Our Lady to use them where they are needed most if the people I pray for are already in heaven.

I like to pray the Rosary for them, or to spend time in adoration.

How do we pray? There are several ways:

The CCC has a wonderful chapter on prayer (scroll down to Part Four - Christian Prayer and work your way through the links). The basic things we all need to know about prayer are the kinds of prayer, which the CCC dives into detail.

• Adoration
• Petition
• Intercession
• Thanksgiving
• Praise
  There are several expressions of prayer that you will want to learn about:
  1. Vocal Prayer
  2. Meditation
  3. Contemplative Prayer
     When thinking about these, consider that vocal prayer could be something like the Our Father, a Hail Mary, or a favorite prayer written by one of the great saints. One of my favorite places to sift through some old chestnuts is a site that has them in Latin and English, side by side. The Angelus is a prayer well worth praying like many traditional religious orders do three times daily. But once daily is also good if that is all you can do. Memorize it. These are the words of Mary when the Angel appeared to her. The lessons are of humility and obedience. God did not force Mary to receive Jesus through the Holy Spirit, she consented. More such prayers can be found at this page:
  preces-latinae.org/preces.html
  
  This leads us into meditation. You can ponder that humility and obedience, or read a little Scripture, which we should do daily, and meditate upon those. This time is well cherished by Our Lord, and it is how he often teaches us. The Rosary is both a vocal prayer and meditative prayer. I recommend using books which have passed the tests of time, such as The Way of Perfection by Teresa of Avila. This book will teach you much about prayer, and you can meditate on each of the short chapters. For someone just beginning, even 10 minutes of silence in a quiet place is good. The best place is in an adoration chapel where the Blessed Sacrament is in exposition.
  
  While we can enter vocal prayer and meditation of our own free will, contemplation in the true sense is something to which God calls us, if he so wills. We can not enter contemplative prayer unless God prompts it. In essence, this is a switch He turns on and off in some souls Whom he chooses. St. Teresa speaks of this quite deeply in her works, as does St. John of the Cross and other great mystics of the Church.
  
  Continued in my next post…

 

[Lux_et_veritas]

And I want to pray to my guardian angels but I don’t know how to pray to them. How do I pray to them, and how would I know I am praying to my guardian angels and not someone elses? Do guardian angels have names?

This is a good set of questions. The bible teaches us that angels do in fact, exist. Read the book of Tobias (Tobit) in the old Testament. It is an interesting story that involves one of the three Angels whose names we do know - Raphael. Here it is in the Douay-Rheims Catholic Bible online with more classical language, or at the USCCB site in the New American Bible. It’s not that long.

You ask if angels have names. All angels - good and bad (devils) have names, but we only know the names of three angels - St. Michael, St. Gabriel, and St. Raphael. We know these names because they appear in Scripture. We should not try to discover the names of any angels.

Each person has a guardian angel and he is assigned only to you. Spontaneous thoughts that come into your head to not do something that is wrong, could be your guardian angel doing his job (and they have no gender, btw). It was only in recent years that Holy Mother Church clarified that we should not try to name our angels, nor to guess their names. It is sufficient to address them as “guardian angel”.

You might ask, “why not name them?”

Remember, that there are good and bad angels. Bad angels do not necessarily show up looking all ugly so that you run the other way. Rather, their influences are subtle. They are masters of deceit and will use many things to trick us. Should you ask to see your guardian angel, an angel may appear claiming to be the one you named, when it is an angel of darkness. There is more to this than I can get into in this post, but know that you should not name your angel.

Here are some prayers to angels that you can do vocally, and meditate upon at the same time. Talking to them, just as talking to God or the Blessed Mother is prayer too.

There are many new age practices pertaining to angels too. We need to be careful of this kind of thing. If you want to learn about angels, first learn from the CCC, and the saints.

Talk to your guardian angel in your mind and tell him about your struggles. Ask him to help you through them and to remind you about things when you need reminding, such as to get up 15 minutes earlier to do some kind of morning prayer.

There are many, many references here on angels - pages worth. Catholic Culture is a very good site with trustworthy and orthodox material and links.

And, may God bless you Amy. You might want to try posting these kinds of questions in the Spirituality section.

I hope this helps and look forward to more dialogue. Stop in to my blog sometime too.

:angel1:

 

[Lux_et_veritas]

Ahhh - here is reference to that document on not naming angels. It is indeed discouraged by the Church. Fr. Peter Joseph, an excellent resource writes:

Naming guardian angels

Another New Age practice which has made its way into the Catholic Church is naming your guardian angel. I have heard some people speak of it as if it were a necessary thing to name your angel, and as if it were an age-old practice. It is in fact a New Age fad, never practised or taught by a single Pope or Saint or any notable writer in the whole history of the Church.

The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy issued in 2002 by the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship says, “The practice of assigning names to the holy angels should be discouraged except in the cases of Gabriel, Raphael and Michael whose names are contained in Holy Scripture” (n. 217).

Behind it is a desire to tame and control the spirit world. It is disordered to name your angel: the higher names the lower, not the other way around. Parents name their children, not vice versa. We are entrusted to our guardian angels; they are not entrusted to us. I fear that some people, in their mind, have turned their angel into some human friend or pet.

In all these matters, there is no better advice than that of St Paul in 2 Thess 2:15: “Stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us”. Neither subtract from nor add to the teaching of the Church. Many novelties are really the re-appearance of ancient gnostic errors parading as piety, for as St Paul also warns (2 Cor 11:14), “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light”.

 

[krissy343]

Ahhh - here is reference to that document on not naming angels. It is indeed discouraged by the Church. Fr. Peter Joseph, an excellent resource writes:

Naming guardian angels

Another New Age practice which has made its way into the Catholic Church is naming your guardian angel. I have heard some people speak of it as if it were a necessary thing to name your angel, and as if it were an age-old practice. It is in fact a New Age fad, never practised or taught by a single Pope or Saint or any notable writer in the whole history of the Church.

The Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy issued in 2002 by the Vatican’s Congregation for Divine Worship says, “The practice of assigning names to the holy angels should be discouraged except in the cases of Gabriel, Raphael and Michael whose names are contained in Holy Scripture” (n. 217).

Behind it is a desire to tame and control the spirit world. It is disordered to name your angel: the higher names the lower, not the other way around. Parents name their children, not vice versa. We are entrusted to our guardian angels; they are not entrusted to us. I fear that some people, in their mind, have turned their angel into some human friend or pet.

In all these matters, there is no better advice than that of St Paul in 2 Thess 2:15: “Stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us”. Neither subtract from nor add to the teaching of the Church. Many novelties are really the re-appearance of ancient gnostic errors parading as piety, for as St Paul also warns (2 Cor 11:14), “even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light”.

Thanks for posting this!! Now I know for sure

 

[Lux_et_veritas]

Your welcome Krissy.

Amy, I hope you don’t mind me asking that your thread be moved to the Spirituality section, under the big title Catholic Living. This is where people go to talk about their prayer life and to dialogue on prayer. I think you will get more responses there.

You will likely get an email showing you were to go.