Starting the prayer time
Cross. Hold the cross and pray these words.
"Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God." (John 6.68)
Threshold bead (opening). Jesus ... said to them, "When you pray, say: Father, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come. Give us each day our daily bread. And forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us. And do not bring us to the time of trial." Luke 11.1-4
These first bits are a kind of scene-setting. The words that are associated with the cross remind me that we pray like this because, at the root of it all, Jesus teaches us and Jesus invites us to share his relationship with his heavenly Father. It is also a declaration of faith; we go to Christ because he can connect us to God. We fly to him to lead us.
The threshold bead uses the Lukan version of the Lord's prayer. This is partly because it is the less familiar, less used version and so it has the potential to waken us up to the prayer rather than being a rote recitation. It also reminds us of the structure of what we are about to undertake in this version of the rosary. Because it is an unfamiliar version it is easy to see what it has in common with the well-known, well-used version, which is mainly the structure. The Lukan version is simpler without the 'semantic rhymes' and expansion phrases of the Matthean. So it makes more visible the main outline of what we are about to do. It can be like a map of what we are about to explore.
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