Morning Prayer

Oh, My God!
I offer you all of my
thoughts, works, and acts
of today.

Please bless the people
of the whole world,
especially my family and friends.

And, please, dear God
help me to be good today.

We started saying this prayer years ago when my dear friend shared it with me. There is nothing sweeter than a toddler lisping this prayer! My boys are older now, but I just can't bring myself to move on to a more sophisticated morning offering. Really, this is so basic, yet it says it all. Over the years we have discussed what it means to "offer" something to God and what types of things would we want to offer God. It is good to be concrete when kids are young so that they practice this in real terms.

Each morning when I pray with my children "help me to be good today" , I realize how much it applies to me- help me to be good today God!! So often I am the one who needs that more than the kids.
_______________________

Angel of God,
my guardian dear,
To whom God's love
commits me here,
Ever this day,
be at my side,
To light and guard,
Rule and guide.
Amen.

I heard someone say that our Guardian Angels are the most bored beings!! We need to implore their help! Even though this is also a simple child's prayer, I encourage my boys to pray this each morning with me.

________________________

Hail Mary,
Full of Grace,
The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women,
and blessed is the fruit
of thy womb, Jesus.

Holy Mary,
Mother of God,
pray for us sinners now,
and at the hour of death.
Amen.

We say a general Hail Mary for all of our prayer intentions. We also do pray for specific intentions, but, often, someone will say "pray for me" and I worry that we will forget- so our first intention is always "for all those who have asked us to pray for them". After that, we go around the table and each child offers a prayer for someone, or offers an intention and we will pray another Hail Mary or Our Father for that. It is good for the kids to consider who might be in need of prayer- Marky (9yo) recently asked for prayer for baseball teammate- that this boy "wouldn't feel like going in the corner and crying when he made a mistake". It had obviously been on Mark's heart that this boy was having a hard time!