Commontide

Preparation for Personal Prayer

Holy Spirit, breath of God and fire of love, I cannot pray without your aid: Kindle in me the fire of your love, and illumine me with your light; that with a steadfast will and holy thoughts I may approach the Father in spirit and in truth; through Jesus Christ my Lord, who reigns with you and the Father in eternal union. Amen.

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Prayer
Prayers

The Gloria Patri

Said throughout the Office

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.

Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

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Original-language source · public domain

Provenance

Early Church, 4th–7th c.

Draft — AI-assisted research under editorial review.

One of the oldest prayers in Christian use, the Gloria Patri is a brief acclamation of the Trinity's eternal glory, sung or said after every psalm and canticle in the Daily Office. Its two-clause shape was forged in the fires of the fourth-century Arian controversy, and it has closed Christian psalmody for over fifteen hundred years.