In preparation for the 2025 Jubilee Year ‘Pilgrims of Hope’, 2024 has been designated a Year of Prayer.
The Holy Father has asked that 2024 be year of prayer, as a preparatory year for the Jubilee. This will start in Advent 2023. In preparation for the Jubilee, dioceses are invited to promote initiatives to remind people of the centrality of both individual prayer and community prayer.
The Lord’s Prayer offers us a great opportunity to go back to the basics of prayer.
Our Father,
Who art in Heaven,
hallowed be Thy name;
Thy Kingdom come,
Thy will be done
on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us;
and lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.
Amen.
Bishops’ Conference have re-produced the Lord’s Prayer using a diverse cross-section of the world’s languages: https://www.cbcew.org.uk/home/the-lords-prayer-in-the-worlds-languages/.
The Vicariate for Faith & Mission will be producing and sharing resources for the preparatory year of prayer, focusing on the ‘Our Father‘, as well as resources about Jubilee in the Catholic Church.
Pray As You Go is a daily prayer session, designed to go with you wherever you go, to help you pray whenever you find time, but particularly whilst travelling to and from work, study, etc.
Ignatius of Loyola wrote what he called the ‘Spiritual Exercises’, a variety of ways of praying to develop our spiritual health and wellbeing, our relationship with God and the world. Just like physical exercise, if we talk about it but don’t actually engage in any exercise, this will not be very fruitful! So, this booklet, put together by the Jesuit Institute, introduces exercises that you may find useful to practise.
Preparing for the Jubilee Year; The Lord's Prayer and the Prayer of St Anselm.
In the Cycle of Prayer, the Church’s year has been divided into six periods; three of the periods are the liturgical seasons of Advent/Christmas, Lent and Easter, and Ordinary Time is divided into Winter, Summer and Autumn.
Each of the six periods within the Cycle of Prayer is allocated a series of intentions, given to help direct our prayer, both individual and within our parishes and prayer groups. The Cycle of Prayer also helps to remind us of being united with the local, Diocesan and universal Church in praying for important intentions. Further information is available here: https://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk/Calendar/Cycle/IntroCP.shtml.
The Liturgy Office (Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales) has produced a short introductory flyer on the Cycle of Prayer for parishes, and it can be found here: https://www.liturgyoffice.org.uk/Calendar/Cycle/CPIntroduction.pdf.
Throughout Advent and Christmas, we are asked to pray for the following intentions:
David Frank offers a Weekly Prayer during the Year of Prayer 2024.
David’s Weekly Reflection on the Mass Readings can be found in our Weekend Liturgy Resources section.
On Tuesday 23 January 2024, a press conference was held to present the Year of Prayer in preparation for the 2025 Jubilee and the series’Notes on Prayer’.
In 2020 and 2021 the Holy Father gave 38 catechetical talks on prayer during papal audiences.
Fr Taylerson from Birmingham Diocese has arranged the 38 talks of Pope Francis’ Catechisis on Prayer to match the Sunday readings for the liturgical year ahead, with some talks been used twice. “The readings can be used to help particular ways of prayer with the Sunday readings or can be used as stand-alone teachings and reflections on prayer without reference to the Sunday readings” said Fr Taylerson.
Archdiocese of Southwark: Ways into Prayer (download here)
Archdiocese of Southwark: Give Prayer a Go: Click here to visit their page.
CAFOD Prayer for Peace: Click here to visit their page.
CAFOD Prayer for the Year of Prayer: Click here to visit their page.
Sycamore Formation Pathway: Click here to visit their page.
Teach us to Pray, read the guide here.
To mark the Year of Prayer, the Dicastery for Evangelization has prepared a series of useful materials and aids which can be used by Christian communities and individuals in their preparations for the 2025 Jubilee.
A new guide “Teach us to Pray” is now available online and a digital version can be downloaded free from the website. The title is taken from the 11th chapter of the Gospel of Luke (Lk 11.1).
The booklet, inspired by the teachings of Pope Francis, is written as an invitation to intensify prayer, understood as a personal dialogue with God, and to lead readers to reflect on their faith, and their commitment in today’s world, in the various contexts in which they are called to live.
The aim is to offer reflections, ideas, and advice to help people to live their dialogue with the Lord more fully in their relationships with others. The guide is made up of sections dedicated to prayer in the parish community, and in the family, with other sections dedicated to young people, cloistered communities, catechesis, and spiritual retreats.
We Dare To Say is a resource for small group faith-sharing and for individual meditation, featuring five sessions each based on a line from the Lord’s Prayer. Each session includes scripture, prayers and a reflection with questions. The connection of the Our Father with the sacraments and the devotional life is explored, and wisdom from the saints is offered for the spiritual growth of group participants and individuals alike.
The full resource guide, which includes a Foreword from Bishop Stephen Wright, is available for download.
The five session guides are:
We Dare to Say: A resource for faith-sharing groups on The Lord’s Prayer (download here)
We Dare to Say: Poster (download here)
How to contact the Vicariate for Faith & Mission:
Email: adminfaith.mission@diocesehn.org.uk
Tel: 0191 243 3316 (office*) or 07375 934713 (mobile)
*Your call may be automatically diverted to the mobile number.
Admin office hours:
Monday to Friday 8.30am to 4.30pm, excluding Bank Holidays.
To see a full list of Vicariate contacts and leads, please visit our Faith & Mission page.
