With little fanfare, Pope Francis officially opened the Year of Prayer after Mass for the church's celebration of Sunday of the Word of God.

"Today we begin the Year of Prayer; that is, a year dedicated to rediscovering the great value and absolute need for prayer in personal life, in the life of the church and in the world," he said, after praying the Angelus with visitors in St. Peter's Square Jan. 21.

The pope called for the special year last February to help prepare Catholics worldwide for the Holy Year, which begins with the opening of the Holy Door in St. Peter's Basilica Dec. 2024.  

The year 2024 also should be about rebuilding and renewing spiritual pathways and practices so that the spiritual significance of the jubilee can "emerge more clearly, something which goes far beyond the necessary and urgent forms of structural organization," said Archbishop Rino Fisichella, pro-prefect of the Dicastery for Evangelization's section for new evangelization, which is coordinating the Holy Year.

The jubilee must be "prepared for and lived in individual communities with that spirit of expectation which is typical of Christian hope," he said, unveiling several resources the dicastery is providing to help bishops, dioceses, parishes, families and religious communities rediscover the value of and need for daily prayer.

Unlike other years designated by the pope, "this is not a year marked with particular initiatives," Archbishop Fisichella said. Rather it is a time to get back to basics: to discover how to pray and how to educate people in prayer "so that prayer can be effective and fruitful."

"It will not be a year which hinders initiatives of the local churches; rather it should be seen as a period in which every planned initiative is supported effectively, precisely because it has prayer as its foundation," he said. 

Pope Francis will set up a "school of prayer" for 2024, he said. It will be similar to the pope's "Fridays of Mercy" initiative during the extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy in 2016, when he visited people on the "peripheries," including babies in a neonatal unit, a center for the blind and a housing project.

"This will be a series of moments of encounter with specific groups of people to pray together and better understand the various forms of prayer: from thanksgiving to intercession; from contemplative prayer to the prayer of consolation; from adoration to supplication," the archbishop said.

There is "a profound need for spirituality," he said. And the Year of Prayer is meant to be "a way of fostering the relationship with the Lord, offering moments of genuine spiritual rest."

"It is like an oasis sheltered from daily stress where prayer becomes nourishment for the Christian life of faith, hope and charity," the archbishop said. (Courtesy: Catholic News Service).

In view of this initiative and call by the holy father, let us make every family at St. Mary’s Parish a praying family, deeply in love with God, sincerely seeking His will, truly trying to live what we pray and become a beacon of hope to all “….living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.” (Mt 4:16).