Editor’s note: This week we bring to you a three-part mini-retreat devoted to reflecting on our individual and communal prayer. The retreat was written by Joe Paprocki, D.Min., author of 2027: A Book of Grace-Filled Days.
Family Heirlooms
I was born in 1959, right before the Second Vatican Council, so I remember slightly the Latin Mass and the beginnings of my religious formation with the Baltimore Catechism. Of course, the approach employed with the Baltimore Catechism included a fair amount of rote learning, or memorization. Following the Second Vatican Council, the religious formation I received was very different in nature and involved little rote learning. (While that resulted in a “deficiency” in my formation that I’m going to address, I am not one to bash the catechesis that took place after Vatican II; many wonderful things came out of that period.)
The result was that, like many of my generation, I grew up without the ability to recall things from memory that my older siblings and my parents were capable of recalling. Most of them could rattle off traditional prayers and doctrinal formulas, such as the Mysteries of the Rosary, the Corporal and Spiritual Works of Mercy, the virtues, and the
