Day 337: Blessing, Adoration, and Petition

On the day of Pentecost, the Spirit of the Promise was poured out on the disciples, gathered "together in one place." While awaiting the Spirit, "all these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer." The Spirit who teaches the Church and recalls for her everything that Jesus said was also to form her in the life of prayer. CCC 2623

In today's reading, the Catechism discusses prayers of blessing, adoration, and petition. All prayer begins with God, who invites our response. The prayer of blessing is "man's response to God's gifts" (CCC 2626). That of adoration is the "attitude of man acknowledging that he is a creature before his Creator" (CCC 2628). This can be done verbally or in song, but also in quiet prayer to the Lord. Finally, prayers of petition are where we "ask, beseech, plead, invoke, entreat, cry out, [or] even 'struggle in prayer'" (CCC 2629). As sinners, we know in such prayers "that we have turned away from our Father" and are "asking for forgiveness" (CCC 2631).

The Catechism Compendium summarizes how the first Christian community in Jerusalem prayed and how the Holy Spirit intervenes in the Church’s prayer:

At the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles it is written that in the first community of Jerusalem, educated in the life of prayer by the Holy Spirit, the faithful “devoted themselves to the teaching of the apostles and to the communal life, to the breaking of the bread, and to the prayers” (Ac 2:42). The Holy Spirit, the interior Master of Christian prayer, forms the Church in the life of prayer and allows her to enter ever more deeply into contemplation of and union with the unfathomable mystery of Christ. The forms of prayer expressed in the apostolic and canonical writings remain normative for Christian prayer. (#548-49)

The Catechism Companion Vol III has some good commentary on this:

A distinctive characteristic of Christian prayer is hope... [W]e pray that the Kingdom of God will come and that we will have the strength and wisdom to help bring it about. We pray for the good of the whole Church. Our prayer honors God because it acknowledges that God is our Father and provider. We can bring anything to prayer.  We should not limit ourselves in prayer. (p. 190)