The Prayers of the Faithful

The deacon says, “For our Holy Father and all the leaders of the Church, we pray to the Lord.”  And all of us immediately know to respond by saying: “Lord, hear our prayer.”  This form of prayer was new to Catholics after the Second Vatican Council, but now the response is almost automatic.  The danger with automatic responses, of course, is that we tend to forget the deeper meaning of what we do and say.

The petitions that follow the Creed are called the Prayers of the Faithful or the General Intercessions.  Each name tells us something important about this prayer.

It’s called the Prayer of the Faithful because this prayer is said by those who are baptized.  As Christ prayed for the good of the people, so we are called to offer prayers and intercessions for the needs of all people today.

The General Instruction of the Roman Missal says that this prayer generally includes four main categories of intentions: “for the Church, for public authorities and the salvation of the whole world, for those burdened by any kind of difficulty and for the local community” (#70).  There may be more than one petition in any of those categories, but these general areas remind us that the prayer is to be universal in scope.  It seeks to address the needs of all people, near and far.  Thus the prayer is also called the General Intercessions – because they are general in nature.

While they are general in scope, the petitions are also current and local.  They address the needs of our world in our own time, and they reflect local needs as well as global ones.  The rest of the prayers at Mass are prescribed in the official books – we are not free to rewrite or create them.  In the Prayers of the Faithful, in contrast, we are expected to write our own – otherwise they could not reflect what is happening at this particular time in this particular place.

But what do we mean when we say, “We pray to the Lord?”  This statement requires us to remember that the Church teaches that we are the Body of Christ.  When we ask Christ to care for the ill, or end war and poverty, we are also taking on the commission of doing so ourselves.  We are not passive.  We understand that faith is a verb and we are all called to action when we say, “Lord, hear our prayer.”