← The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz)
Day 339: Prayer of Praise (2025)
00:13:20
We examine both prayers of praise and also the “nuggets” for this section on the forms of prayer. Fr. Mike emphasizes that praise is giving God glory for who he is. He also emphasizes that the Eucharist is the ultimate prayer of praise, and that every time we pray we are joining our lives to the saints and prophets who have gone before us. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 2639-2649.
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- [00:06]
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Hi, my name is Fr. Mike Schmitzer and you're listening to the Catechism in the Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us revealed in Scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in a Year is brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity in God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 339. We're reading paragraphs 2639 to 2649. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes a foundations of Faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own Catechism in a Year Reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com ciy and you can click follow or subscribe on your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. As I said, Today is day 339. We are reading at the end. We're coming to the end of this article. Before we move on to chapter two, which is coming tomorrow, we're going to finish up. We talked about prayer of petition, prayer of intercession, prayer of thanksgiving. We talked about blessing and adoration a couple days ago. Today we have this final way of praying. That's not the final way of praying, but it's another way of praying called the prayer of praise. And paragraph 2639 summarizes it very, very quickly. Just so simply it says this praise is the form of prayer which recognizes most immediately that God is God. That's it. It says the lauds God for His own sake and gives him glory quite beyond what he does, but simply because he is. One way you can make a distinction is saying prayers of thanks. Prayer of thanksgiving is giving God thanks for what he's done or what he does. Prayer of praise is giving God glory for who he is. So we're going to talk about that today and then we're going to some nuggets at the end of this little section here before we dive into tomorrow in section Chapter two on the tradition of prayer. But today we're going to continue these different ways in which the modes in which, the manners in which we can give God our prayer. And it's through praise. So let's give God praise right now. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
- [02:00]
Father in Heaven. We do. We give you praise. We give you Glory for who you are. You are eternal God, you are the good God, you are the God who is love, you are the God who is justice. And you are mercy in one and we give you thanks for the ways in which you've given us your justice and revealed to us your mercy, the ways in which you have called us to be your sons and daughters and made us so by the Holy Spirit. Receive our praise right now. Receive our prayer of praise in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is day 339. We're reading paragraphs 2639 to 2649.
- [02:39]
Prayer of Praise Praise is the form of prayer which recognizes most immediately that God is God. It lauds God for his own sake and gives him glory quite beyond what he does. But but simply because he is it shares in the blessed happiness of the pure heart who love God in faith before seeing him in glory. By praise the Spirit is joined to our spirits to bear witness that we are children of God, testifying to the only Son in whom we are adopted and by whom we glorify the Father. Praise embraces the other forms of prayer and carries them toward him who is its source and goal, the one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist. St. Luke in his Gospel often expresses wonder and praise at the marvels of Christ, and in his Acts of the Apostles, stresses them as actions of the Holy Spirit. The community of Jerusalem, the invalid healed by Peter and John, the crowd that gives glory to God for that, and the pagans of Pisidia, who were glad and glorified the Word of God.
- [03:45]
Address one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart. Like the inspired writers of the New Testament, the first Christian communities read the Book of Psalms in a new way, singing in it the mystery of Christ in the newness of the Spirit. They also composed hymns and canticles in the light of the unheard of event that God accomplished in his Son, his incarnation, his death, which conquered death, his resurrection and ascension to the right hand of the Father. Doxology the praise of God arises from this marvelous work of the whole economy of salvation. The revelation of what must soon take place, the Apocalypse, is borne along by the songs of the heavenly liturgy, but also by the intercession of the witnesses, the prophets and the saints, all those who were slain on earth for their witness to Jesus. The vast throng of those who, having Come through the great tribulation have gone before us into the kingdom. All sing the praise and glory of him who sits on the throne, and of the Lamb in communion with them. The Church on earth also sings these songs with faith in the midst of trial, by means of petition and intercession, faith hopes against all hope and gives thanks to the Father of Lights, from whom every perfect gift comes down. Thus faith is pure praise. The Eucharist contains and expresses all forms of prayer. It is the pure offering of the whole body of Christ to the glory of God's name. And according to the traditions of east and west, it is the sacrifice of praise.
- [05:22]
In brief, the Holy Spirit, who teaches the Church and recalls to her all that Jesus said, also instructs her in the life of prayer, inspiring new expressions of the same basic forms of prayer. Blessing, petition, intercession, thanksgiving and praise. Because God blesses the human heart, it can in return bless him who is the source of every blessing. Forgiveness, the quest for the kingdom and every true need are objects of the prayer of petition. Prayer of intercession consists in asking on behalf of another. It knows no boundaries and extends to one's enemies. Every joy and suffering, every event and need can become the matter for thanksgiving, which, sharing in that of Christ, should fill one's whole life. Give thanks in all circumstances. Prayer of praise is entirely disinterested and rises to God, lauds him and gives him glory for his own sake quite beyond what he has done, but simply because he is.
- [06:25]
All right. There we have it, paragraph 2639-2649. This is so, so key. I mean, we would say that back in the day, this is clutch when it comes to the prayer of praise. It is such, you know, I'm going to say it's such a gift, but it is this recognition. Let's go back to 2639. Once again, we talked about this. Great praise is the form of prayer which recognizes most immediately that God is God. It lauds God for His own sake and gives him glory quite beyond what he does, but simply because he is, is. And this is one of those things. Again, we can exercise this, you know, remember, praise goes up. Let praise go up first. Judah, what is that, though? Again, we are praising God for who he is. So who is God that this is? This is so beautiful. You can actually exercise this at any given moment. We know we could say, jesus, you are Lord God, you are Father God, you are one God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit. Basically we're telling God who he is. God, you are the Lord of Lords, you're the King of Kings, you are the Prince of Peace, you are the Great. I am.
- [07:30]
Lord Jesus, you are the Son of Man and Son of God. Like all of these, you're the Savior, Holy Spirit, you are the sanctifier. You know, Father, you are the Creator of all. You know, all of those things. Basically, we're giving God, we're naming him in so many ways. I'm maybe not naming him as much as it is describing his attributes in so many ways. Right? We're praising God simply because he is. I love the next sentence says this. It shares in the blessed happiness of the pure heart who love God in faith before seeing him in glory. Just so remarkable. And then the next line again, I don't want to go through line by line, but I could because it's so good. It highlights the Trinity. Is it the Spirit, the Son and the Father? It says this. It says, by praise, the Spirit is joined to our spirits to bear witness that we are children of God, testifying to the only Son in whom we are adopted and by whom we glorify the Father. And this is just so incredible that we recognize that praise, praise encompasses all other forms of prayer. Praise embraces all other forms of prayer. That when we turn to the Lord in intercession, in petition, we turn to the Lord with blessing him and giving him that glory. The prayer of praise embraces all of that. It is remarkable. And then the. There is a kind of praise. There is a kind of prayer that you and I do on a regular basis, maybe even every day. That is, that encompasses and expresses, that contains and expresses every other form of prayer. And he says, In 2643, the Eucharist, remember that the Eucharistia means thanksgiving, but the prayer of the Eucharist, the offering of the Son to the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit. This, what we do in the Mass, says this. The Eucharist contains and expresses all forms of prayer. It is the pure offering of the whole body of Christ to the glory of God's name. And according to the tradition of both east and west, it is the sacrifice of praise. Now, I would also go on to say that it is the sacrifice of thanks, you know, AKA Eucharistia. But also, if we go back to the Old Covenant, there's a number of different sacrifices, all the different sacrifices, sacrifices of praise, thanksgiving sacrifices of intercession and petition, thanksgiving, sacrifices of all sorts. But there is one sacrifice that the rabbis would say, not in the Bible, but outside the Bible. The rabbis interpreted this Whole thing. And they said there's one sacrifice, one kind of sacrifice that will exist in the age to come, in the kingdom to come, when the Messiah has returned or Messiah has arrived and made all things new. What would happen is every other sacrifice would cease, except for the Todah offering or the thanksgiving sacrifice. And here we are in the new covenant. And every sacrifice, there is no more sacrifice of the old covenant. They're all done. There's no place in the world you go where there is Jewish sacrifice. There's only one sacrifice that remains, and it is the sacrifice of the Eucharist, the Todah offering, sacrifice of thanksgiving and of praise. And that's remarkable. You and I get to participate that in that every day if we want to. And we can do this no matter what. And again, paragraph 2642 highlights us. We can do this no matter what, no matter what kind of circumstances or seasons are in our lives. The saints reveal to us something powerful. The saints revealed to us that they gave God praise no matter what their circumstances, no matter what seasons they were going through, even in the midst of great tribulation. In fact, it says in paragraph 2642, it says, the prophets and the saints, all those who were slain on earth for the witness to Jesus, the vast throng of those who, having come through the great tribulation, have gone before us into the kingdom, all sing the praise and glory of him who sits on the throne and of the Lamb. Now, key note here, next line. In communion with them, the church on earth, that's us, also sings these songs with faith in the midst of trial. We are also singing the song, these songs with faith in the midst of trial, to recognize every time you pray, no matter the season you're going through, no matter the difficulty you're experiencing, every time you pray, you're joining your heart, your faith, your life, to the lives of the prophets and the saints who have gone before us.
- [11:39]
We do sing these songs with faith in the midst of trial. The next line, by means of petition and intercession. Remember those other kinds of prayer, petition and intercession. Faith hopes against all hope and gives thanks to the Father of Lights, from whom every perfect gift comes down. Thus, faith is pure praise. Isn't that remarkable? That's remarkable. Faith is pure praise. And so if you ever want to strengthen your faith, there's many ways to do it, many ways to strengthen your faith. But one way to strengthen your faith is to simply give God praise for who he is, to give God thanks for what he does. And so we do that today. I invite you, please, all of us on this day, take a time after you hit pause or after you hit stop here to be able to even give yourself a pause of some silence. Give yourself a pause of even, maybe even 30 seconds or 60 seconds, and just pray in your prayer of praise. Remember, this is not about information transfer. This is about transformation. And in these prayers, in this time, in this section, this last pillar of the catechism, it is. Everything is about not just knowing more about prayer, but it actually is about exercising prayer. It's deepening that relationship with God. So after you press stop or whatever you're going to do, I invite you to enter into some silence and to offer God. Even if you want to do it out loud, it would be awesome if you could do it. If you're in a place where you could do this out loud, to be able to give God praise, to praise God and glorify him for who he is. I'm praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike. I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.