Archbishop Comensoli: praying the Glory Be
02 July 2024
Melbourne Catholic
To help us enter more deeply into this Year of Prayer—and following on from his video reflections on the Our Father and the Hail Mary—Archbishop Peter A Comensoli has offered some reflections on the Glory Be, the short but powerful prayer of praise, or ‘doxology’, that punctuates so much of our prayer life in the Catholic tradition.
Explaining the word doxology, the Archbishop notes that ‘much of the words in our faith come from the ancient Greek language, which was part of the early Church. And doxology, or doxa, simply means glory.’ So the Glory Be ‘is simply the glorying, the giving praise, to God in the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three persons, one God.’
Although it is a short prayer, he says, ‘we say it often,’ including when we begin praying and make the sign of the cross—as a way of ‘naming the Trinity’—and at Mass, at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer. When we respond in the Mass to this prayer with our acclamation, he says we ch ‘always give it a big “Amen”, a very good thing to do’.)
He points out that the Glory Be is a prayer that can be said at any time and in any circumstance, along with the Lord’s Prayer and the Hail Mary. These ‘three great devotional prayers’, he says, are ‘part of our lovely tradition’—a ‘wonderful little collection of prayers’ that can be said as we are walking along, doing exercise or just going about our day.
Transcript:
Hello friends.
I want to continue our little journey through different prayers. We’ve covered the Our Father and the Hail Mary. Today I want to cover the doxology, a Greek word. Much of the words in our faith come from the ancient Greek language, which was part of the early Church. And doxology, or doxa, simply means ‘glory’.
That might give you the hint of the prayer. The ‘Glory Be’, we sometimes call in English, which is simply the glorying, the giving praise, to God in the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, three persons, one God. We believe in the one true God, who comes to us in the Blessed Trinity.
And it’s a short prayer, but we say it often. We do it at the beginning when we make the sign of the cross: Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit. We’re naming the Trinity.
Every time that we celebrate Mass, the doxology occurs at the end of the Eucharistic Prayer: through him, with him, in him—being Christ, the second person of the Trinity—through him, with him, in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit—the third person—all glory and honour to you, Almighty Father, for ever and ever. And, of course, your great response in the Mass of ‘Amen’, the acclamation. Just a little hint: always give it a big ‘Amen’, a very good thing to do.
So the doxology is our praise of God, simple as that, and a very simple prayer in its form as a prayer that we just might say by itself:
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now,
and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
That from the beginning, is now, and always shall be—the sense of the infinite nature of God. God always has been. God always will be. And God is with us. And so we give glory to God in the Trinity through the doxology, the prayer of the Trinity.
So we just might say together quietly:
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now,
and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
One last little bit. We’ve now prayed and talked a little bit about the Lord’s Prayer, a little bit about the Hail Mary, and now the Glory Be. Those three together are just a wonderful little collection of prayers that I would encourage, something that you can do wherever you are.
You know, you’re walking along, doing a bit of exercise. You might say the Lord’s Prayer, the Hail Mary and the Glory Be as part of that, or whatever you might be doing, those three great devotional prayers that are part of our lovely tradition.
So once more:
Glory be to the Father,
and to the Son,
and to the Holy Spirit.
As it was in the beginning,
is now, and ever shall be,
world without end.
Amen.
