Prayer Order - Does it Matter?

I feel like at one point in time, we've all been guilty of this.

Or maybe you're all just way better people than I am, and I'm the only one who has ever decided to go the route of lazy and cut corners during prayer.

Ever hear the story of the Fatima children who would say their rosaries every day by simply saying the first two words of every prayer down the line?  "Our Father, Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary, Hail Mary..." and so on.

I remember reading that story when I was very young and thinking to myself, What a great idea! only to realize a few pages later that Our Lady didn't look too kindly on such half-hearted lip service.  I remember then simply feeling like a jerk for having applauded their misguided 'brilliance.'

*Blush*

Anyway, I try to pray one rosary and one Divine Mercy chaplet every day.  When I know I'm going to be particularly busy, I've said both Apostle's Creeds (one for the rosary, and one for the chaplet) together, then said 2 Our Fathers and 4 Hail Marys plus another 2 Glory Bes in order to "get them out of the way" so I'm able to focus on the "meat" of the rosary and chaplet later on.

And I wondered... should I be cutting up and reorganizing my prayers like that?  After all, we were given them in a certain format for a reason, right?

Right.

The way we say our prayers and the order we say them in are significant.  As I've always taught my class, EVERYTHING we do as Catholics (from how we position ourselves during prayer to the format and wording of those prayers) has significance.

So lumping stuff together isn't ideal... nor is it proper.

Think about it.  Would you want the priest to lump together the Intercessions with the Penitential Rite just because he thought the Mass might go a little quicker that way?  Or maybe on his way up during the Procession, he just swiped the bread and wine from the credence table instead of waiting around for the Offertory?

Of course not.  We'd be losing some very key expressions of faith should he do any of these things.  The same is true when we pray our rosaries and chaplets out of order. 

I know I've touched on this briefly in Part 3 of my Rosary series, but it fits today's topic.  The ordering of our prayers is another expression - another deepening - of our faith and our understanding of that faith.  The ordering calls us to contemplate and rejoice in a rhythmic fashion.  Each decade serves to draw us deeper into the picture of God's plan for our personal salvation.  Saying the prayers as they're meant to be said is like taking a stethoscope to God's Heart as it beats lovingly for each and every one of us.

Sign of the Cross - As always, be begin our prayers by marking ourselves with the sign of His Victory... His Passion of mercy and love.

Apostle's Creed - We remind ourselves of our faith and renew the promises of our baptism.

Our Father - Using the words of Christ, we call upon God the Father to "give us this day our daily bread."  Being in the 'eternal now,' though we are praying within the confines of a finite sphere of time, God is able to know and see these prayers throughout eternity.  Thus, though we ask Him for our daily bread on a Thursday in September of 2012, God has foreseen this prayer from eternity.  As we pray this before each decade, we unwittingly ask for the gifts each mystery reminds us that He has already bestowed.

Hail Mary - This blessed prayer is Christ-centric. 

Glory Be - Again, remembering that God is in the eternal now, when we say this prayer of praise and thanksgiving, we are supposed to be thanking Him for the decade's particular mystery and whatever intentions we had going into that decade. 

See the cycle?

Placing ourselves before God, the Sign of the Cross is like us putting the stethoscope to our ears in anticipation of listening to His Heart. 

The Apostle's Creed is the tell-tale sign of His Love.

As we motion through the decades, the steady rhythm of petitioning for salvation (Our Father), God's answer to our petition through the various mysteries (Hail Mary) and our subsequent praise and thanksgiving for His active mercy through history (Glory Be) are like the gentle vibrations of Divine Love.  Our God is a living God, and His movements are eternally present.  Thus, our prayers are eternally present as well. 

We'll never know just how far-reaching our prayers are until we get to Heaven and see the 10 or 20 forgotten Purgatory souls we've helped reach the Gates... or the 5 lost souls who would have continued along the path of perdition had you not done a daily offering... or maybe even the terrible accident you helped to mitigate for your great, great, great, great grand-daughter because you piously recited the Divine Mercy chaplet for all sinners past, present and future.

Never underestimate the power of prayer... especially prayers given to us by Heaven in a specific format.  These formats are given to us for the holy purpose of helping us to better understand God's Love and Mercy. 

So I've been making a much more concerted effort to recite my prayers in their proper order, but I figured I'd post this in the event that anyone else was like me and had attempted to "cut corners" every once in a while.

---