The Our Father

(My First Communion, back row, left to right, Jimmy, me and Boi, front row, left to right, Mo-Mo and Missy.)

________________________________________

Momma taught us to pray the “Our Father”. Every night before we went to sleep we prayed the Our Father. To wind down the day whatever it involved, playing with our neighbors, daddy hitting momma, going to the store…..that is the way we prayed. Then we prayed for everyone in our family, momma and daddy, Boi and Jimmy, Mo-Mo, and Missy, grandma and grandpa, Tio Frank in Japan, he was stationed there during the Vietnam War. Sometimes we would pray the Hail Mary, sometimes not. I have stopped praying the Hail Mary. Mary is not our redeemer Christ is. I know a lot of Catholics don’t believe that anymore, it has become more tradition, but our relationship is to focus on Jesus Christ. But as a child, my faith was a child’s blind faith I prayed how momma taught us.

We were never allowed to see horror movies like my cousins the Sosa’s so I wasn’t afraid of monsters. The worst monster I had seen to date was the “veiny” heads of the underground people in “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” that we saw at the Sunnyside Drive -In. Momma tried to protect and guard our hearts, later Jesus did.

“Our Father who are in heaven,

Hallowed be Thy Name,

Thy Kingdom Come

Thy will be done

On earth as it is in heaven

Give us this day, our daily bread

And forgive us our trespasses,

As we forgive those who trespass against us

And lead us not into temptation

But deliver us from evil.

Amen.”

For Thine is the Kingdom, the power and the glory

Now and forever.”

(Matthew 6:9-13)

________________________________________________________