Comparison of Eucharistic Prayers I, II, III, and IV

Here is an interesting side-by-side comparison of the four Eucharistic Prayers. The wording has been updated to that of the new translation of the Roman Missal coming out in 2011.

It's best to print this one out on legal-size paper.

Prayer For Coworkers

The well-known Parent's Prayer works quite well when you modify the words to say "coworkers":


Heavenly Father, make me a better coworker.

Teach me to understand my coworkers, listen patiently to what they have to say, and to answer all their questions kindly.

Keep me from interrupting them or contradicting them.

Make me as courteous to them as I would have them be to me.

Forbid that I should ever laugh at their mistakes or resort to shame or ridicule when they displease me.

May I never punish them for my own selfish satisfaction or to show my power.

Let me not tempt my coworkers to lie or steal and guide me hour by hour that I may demonstrate by all I say and do that honesty produces happiness.

Reduce, I pray, the meanness in me.

And when I am out of sorts, help me, O Lord, to hold my tongue.

Let me not rob them of the opportunity to make their own decisions.

Bless me with the bigness to grant them all their reasonable requests and the courage to deny them privileges I know will do them harm.

Make me fair and just and kind, worthy to be loved and respected and imitated by my coworkers. Amen.

Differences between the Eucharistic Prayers

Ever wondered what are the differences between Eucharistic Prayers I, II, III, and IV? I found three brief articles that describe the differences: 1, 2, 3.

Wide-Margin Catholic Bibles

If you're looking for a wide-margin Bible in which to jot down notes and thoughts, in a Catholic translation, a couple of options are:

Cambridge NRSV Wide-Margin Edition. $100, 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches, 2.2 pounds. No deuterocanonical books unfortunately.

Oxford NRSV Notetaker's Bible. $30 ($40 for deluxe cloth), 8.4 x 6.7 x 2 inches, 3.3 pounds. Nice single-column, but the font is smaller.

Below are the Cambridge and the Oxford, scaled up to approximate life size, from images at Amazon and This Lamp.

Cambridge:


Oxford:

Good flashcard program for memorizing scripture (or anything)

Mnemosyne is a good program to aid memorization. You input questions and answers; it shows you a question; you press a button and it reveals the answer. You then click buttons indicating whether you got it wrong, right with much effort, or right with little effort. The cool thing is that it shows you the cards that you are worse at more frequently. This aids memorization.

It's available for Windows, Linux, and Mac.

Ideas for Lent

Here are 40 good ideas for what to do this Lent.

Need an Ordo for your country?

If you're looking for an Ordo for the US, Canada, or another country - in other words, if you're reciting the Liturgy of the Hours and want to know if today is a special feast or uses the normal four-week cycle, check Universalis.com. It tells you what today is on the liturgical calendar specific to your country. For example, here is Evening Prayer for today for Canada.