AIM:

To understand and memorize the Lord’s Prayer and Hail Mary.

MATERIALS:

Laminated strips with lines of Our Father and Hail Mary

Text of both prayers

Lay out the strips of each prayer before the children. Have the children arrange the strips with lines of the prayer in order. After the lines of prayer have been arranged in order, ask your child to select one line from the prayer. Think together about this line and then select and discuss another line.

Suggest to the children that they might take their chosen line and draw a picture.

Our Father:

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

FOR PARENTS:

* Some people associate these words with the fact that God tempts man. Meanwhile, it is not true, because God wants to save us. Therefore, He gives us the Holy Spirit to light our conscience so we can distinguish between good and evil. In this prayer, we ask for grace in moments of temptation.  If we are united with God, good comes from the depth of our heart.  We must remember that the fight against evil within us and around us is only possible through prayer. We therefore continually ask God that we do not step on the path of sin.

Fr Barron comments on the Lord’s Prayer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_mmPI-SYBE

Catechism of the Catholic Church:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/ archive/catechism/p4s2.htm

http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/ archive/catechism/p4s2a1.htm

Hail Mary...

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 sinner

now and at the hour of our death.

Amen

FOR PARENTS:

Catechism of the Catholic Church 2676, 2677:
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/ catechism/p4s1c2a2.htm

Hail Mary [or Rejoice, Mary]: the greeting of the angel Gabriel opens this prayer. It is God himself who, through his angel as intermediary, greets Mary. Our prayer dares to take up this greeting to Mary with the regard God had for the lowliness of his humble servant and to exult in the joy he finds in her.30

Full of grace, the Lord is with thee: These two phrases of the angel's greeting shed light on one another. Mary is full of grace because the Lord is with her. The grace with which she is filled is the presence of him who is the source of all grace. "Rejoice . . . O Daughter of Jerusalem . . . the Lord your God is in your midst."31 Mary, in whom the Lord himself has just made his dwelling, is the daughter of Zion in person, the ark of the covenant, the place where the glory of the Lord dwells. She is "the dwelling of God . . . with men."32 Full of grace, Mary is wholly given over to him who has come to dwell in her and whom she is about to give to the world.

Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. After the angel's greeting, we make Elizabeth's greeting our own. "Filled with the Holy Spirit," Elizabeth is the first in the long succession of generations who have called Mary "blessed."33 "Blessed is she who believed. . . . "34 Mary is "blessed among women" because she believed in the fulfillment of the Lord's word. Abraham. because of his faith, became a blessing for all the nations of the earth.35 Mary, because of her faith, became the mother of believers, through whom all nations of the earth receive him who is God's own blessing: Jesus, the "fruit of thy womb."

Holy Mary, Mother of God: With Elizabeth we marvel, "And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?"36 Because she gives us Jesus, her son, Mary is Mother of God and our mother; we can entrust all our cares and petitions to her: she prays for us as she prayed for herself: "Let it be to me according to your word."37 By entrusting ourselves to her prayer, we abandon ourselves to the will of God together with her: "Thy will be done."

Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death: By asking Mary to pray for us, we acknowledge ourselves to be poor sinners and we address ourselves to the "Mother of Mercy," the All-Holy One. We give ourselves over to her now, in the Today of our lives. And our trust broadens further, already at the present moment, to surrender "the hour of our death" wholly to her care. May she be there as she was at her son's death on the cross. May she welcome us as our mother at the hour of our passing38 to lead us to her son, Jesus, in paradise.