Learning to Pray

Gaetano has been learning the same mealtime prayer I learned when I was a little girl which is said before every meal where we're all at the dinner table together. It is the youngest person at the table's job to say the prayer. At this past Thanksgiving I whispered the words in his ear as he spoke them out loud. He could barely pronounce most of the words. All of us smiled at how adorable it was...

A few weeks later he wanted to memorize it himself and kept asking to pray and wanting to know the next part of the prayer. By Christmas he had the entire prayer memorized.

If before a meal anyone starts eating, he promptly remembers that we have to pray first and then he proceeds to lead us in prayer. I always let him know he's done a good job, but aside from that I haven't been encouraging -- that is, we're not prayer obsessive in our house. Gaetano has pretty much decided on his own that prayer should be done and not forgotten. It's rather cute and I'm proud of him for it.

Last night before dinner he misspoke one word that nearly caused the rest of us to burst out laughing, but we refrained. It went like this:

"Bless us O Lord, for these thy gifts which we are about to refreeze. Through thy bounty, through Christ our Lord, Amen."

(In case you're unfamiliar with this prayer, "refreeze" should have been "receive".) We decided to eat the meal and not refreeze it.

Posted by ~Angela | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Permalink