Prayer Names

[seeker63]

I’m converting from Protestantism and one of the first differences I noticed was that Protestants have names for certain prayers, while Catholics call them by their first lines. “The Lord’s Prayer” is the “Our Father,” the “Doxology” is “Glory Be,” etc. Why is this?

 

[Deacon_Tony560]

This is not true for all prayers. Check the Act of Faith, Act of Hope, Act of Love prayers. But that is a very interesting observation. My guess is that since these prayers are memorized, it gives you the first line.

Welcome home,
Deacon Tony SFO

 

[csr]

Deacon Tony560:

This is not true for all prayers. Check the Act of Faith, Act of Hope, Act of Love prayers.

These and the Act of Contrition all start with the same words: O my God.

 

[davidc2]

Many Latin prayers and hymns (and encyclicals for that matter) are also called by their first few words/line.

 

[raphaela]

There is also the Sinner’s Prayer…my pentacostal (almost) in-laws tried to get me to recite it one night as well as baptise me (themselves) when they foudn out I wasn’t baptised. I guess it is a prayer to show your penance for sinning or something ( i think I said that wrong but you get my point…it’s like pentacostal confession only straight to God). I never did it but it seemed very different.

 

[Fidelis]

This comes from the Jewish tradition of the calling to mind of certain passages of Scripture by recalling the first line. For example, when Our Lord was on the cross, he cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Rather than a cry of despair, his citing of this verse from Psalm 22 would call to the mind of his Jewish (and early Christian) listeners the entire Psalm, which ends on a triumphant note of trust in God.

 

[DJJG]

Many of these prayers were around long before protestantism existed, and the prayers were probably not given any formal names. The prayers were most likely called by the first 2 or 3 words just to identify them, and after a while, the names stuck.

I am not sure, but I believe that when Martin Luther, first started protestantism, he continued to call the prayers by the same names, just as he kept many of the Catholic teachings, that were latter dropped. After many years, when protestants and catholics became more antagonistic toward each other, some names of prayers and words, were charged to express that “we are not catholics,” to portray a separte idenity. Other examples would be the different way that protestants number the psalms form the way catholics do, and the numbering of the ten commandments as well. Both bibles contain the same psalms and commandments, but we number them differently, and neither is wrong.