Do Some Christian Prayers Need Updating?
Perhaps the time has come to speak to the Lord in the language we are used speaking which God will surely understand and appreciate.
In my novel, The Secret of Fatima, Father Kevin Thrall has friendly arguments with his former girlfriend about a variety of religious issues. One of them involves prayers and how we pray today. Praying often involves rote recitation of a text written centuries ago in a form that bears little resemblance to the way we speak today. So the question naturally arises, if we want to communicate with God, his angels, or some saints, why not speak to them the way we are accustomed to speaking in our everyday lives? For one thing, some of the prayers we recite today have language that is at best questionable.
Take the Lord’s Prayer, the one written by Jesus himself. The phrase “lead us not into temptation” has been a growing problem for many Christians. As Katie puts in her conversation with Father Thrall: “Why do I have to beg God not to lead me into temptation? Is he that mean-spirited? He’s got nothing better to do than to try to get me in trouble?” So did Jesus really write that? No less an authority than Pope Francis, acknowledging the problem, recently declared that there might be something wrong with the translation from the original text.
Another example of an outdated prayer is the Hail Mary. Now often conjured up as a last-ditch football play, some of the wording is downright cringe-worthy. Was it really necessary in that prayer to refer to Jesus as the fruit of Mary’s intimate body part? Was there not a more tactful and even artful way of putting it?
Perhaps the time has come to speak to the Lord in the language we are used speaking which God will surely understand and appreciate.
Start with a prayer to Mary. First, let’s skip the “Hail Mary” greeting which sounds like something out of a Victor Mature movie set in Roman times. Here’s an example: “Dear Mary, if you’re not too busy could you help me find an answer to this question? I send my kids to a Catholic school like I promised you I would, but now my 13-year-old son told me what he learned about the Holy Trinity being not only three people but one and the same. The problem is that he came home and asked me when he goes to heaven how is he going to tell them apart? Amen.”
Let’s not be afraid to communicate with God the way we speak to our family. It’ll make praying so much easier and we can safely assume that God will get it.
Editor’s Note: A new edition of The Secret of Fatima is coming soon from God of the Desert Books. Keep an eye out for the new cover reveal and the announcement of the pre-order date on the e-book.
I'm not against updating translations of prayers, but this example seems particularly bad.
Prayer should not be a list of personalizable requests, but instead, an occasion for understanding. While we pray, we reflect, in the most elevated way we can, so that, perhaps, someone might whisper an answer into our ears.
In this case, the answer is not sealed away, but available in the Catechism on the asker's bookshelf. What should really be asked is to grant the wisdom and understanding required to better understand the mystery of the Triumvirate.
But in the end, I still find this prayer wanting. The Hail Mary only asks Mary for one thing: to pray for us, now, and when we die. What she should pray is unspecified. We leave our personal wants behind. In a way, we make ourselves small, so that we may be made large.