By Michael Patrick O’Brien–
One of the most popular songs when I was growing up, surprisingly, was about prayer. Burt Bacharach wrote it, and both Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin performed it in the late 1960s. “I Say a Little Prayer” is one of the most enduring tunes ever recorded.
My friends the Trappist monks who lived at the old monastery in Huntsville, Utah understood little prayers quite well. Their motto was ora et labora, Latin for “prayer and work.”
In 1997, Utah Trappist Father David Kinney told a newspaper reporter, “We’re here to pray. We’re praying for the world and all the conditions in it. We’re asking God to take care of it. Peace, peace, peace. It’s a calling. That’s what a vocation is, a contemplative life devoted completely to God. It kind of helps, doesn’t it, to know we are all up here praying for you?”
Another Utah Trappist, Father Charles Cummings, wrote a well-received book called Monastic Practices that—among other things—describes how monks commonly use little or short prayers in their everyday contemplative life. It’s their way of following St. Paul’s admonition to the Thessalonians to “pray without ceasing.”
Father Charles’s book provides several examples. He mentions the ancient Christian exclamation of Maranatha, an Aramaic phrase meaning “Come, our Lord!” He suggests the Jesus prayer—“Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner.” He also refers to the first phrase chanted by monks each day: “Oh God, come to my assistance, oh Lord make haste to help me.”
Father Charles even gives some good advice on how or when to say short prayers: “Adaptable to many situations, they can be repeated, peacefully and unhurriedly, as we walk down a hallway, drive on a freeway, wait for something to begin, change clothes, or occupy ourselves in a form of manual labor that does not demand our full attention all the time.”
We non-monks say many short prayers too, sometimes without even realizing it. A silver medal dangles from my car rear view mirror saying, “Never drive faster than your guardian angel can fly!” Luckily, my guardian angel is quite swift.
Have you told someone “God Bless you” after they sneezed? According to the Library of Congress, this expression originated in Rome during the bubonic plague: “one of the symptoms of the plague was coughing and sneezing, and it is believed that Pope Gregory the Great suggested saying ‘God bless you’ after a person sneezed in hopes that this prayer would protect them from an otherwise certain death.”
My Irish-Catholic mother often said (and sometimes wrote at the top of letters) the acronym “JMJ,” standing for “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.” It was not just a passing reference to three of the most important persons in Christianity, it was a short prayer, asking the Holy Family to guide her words and actions.
Did you ever hear someone say, “mercy me” when worried or surprised? When I googled the phrase, this description appeared: “an old-fashioned expression meaning ‘God have mercy on me!’” A shortened version of the expression is “Oh my!”
What about the phrase “Oh my God”? It likely originated in an oath used back in the 1300s. The first line in an 1884 Catholic prayer called “The Act of Contrition,” it later became an expression of strong surprise or emotion, and still is in common use today. When you utter a variation of it, or type the acronym version “OMG” in English texting, you are saying a small prayer.
A small prayer need not be spoken. Sometimes people make the sign of the cross on themselves at moments of high stress or while facing difficult challenges. For Christians, the sign of the cross invokes divine blessings and intercession. It’s short prayer.
I’ve watched baseball players at bat, or soccer players just before a penalty kick, make this same gesture. One news article I read explained, “Many mothers and grandmothers have passed on the tradition to their children to make the Sign of the Cross before everything, whether it is taking a test or hitting a home run. In their minds, nothing is off limits to God’s grace.”
It’s not just Catholics who say small prayers. Hindus and Buddhists do too, but call them a mantra or koan. Muslims recite the 99 beautiful names of Allah, using beads or a knotted cord. Some members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wear rings engraved with “CTR” or “Choose the Right,” a tangible reminder to make choices that will help them live righteously.
A few years ago, I realized that even I made up my own original short prayer. I say it before Mass and each time I enter a church. It goes likes this: “Jesus forgive me of my sins, guide me in your peace, and lead me close to you.”
Before they made the song “I Say a Little Prayer” famous, both Dionne Warwick and Aretha Franklin grew up singing in churches. Their fathers or grandfathers were pastors. Perhaps their hit song, besides being a great tune, also includes a wonderful but often overlooked spiritual insight.
A great way to love others is to say a little prayer for them.
*Mike O’Brien (author website here: https://michaelpobrien.com/) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings (https://www.amazon.com/Monastery-Mornings-Unusual-Boyhood-Saints/dp/1640606491), about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press in August 2021.
