Why I Pray the Angelus

Sr. Anne Flanagan, FSP is a Catholic sister (nun) of the Daughters of St. Paul, an international community founded in 1915 for evangelization in the world of communication. She is a singer, writer, and speaker for Pauline Books & Media (US). She is currently working on various digital projects for her community and its publishing ministry.

If you had asked me about the Angelus before I entered the convent, I might have known it was a prayer somehow related to the ringing of bells. I also knew of the famous painting of workers in the fields pausing to pray. That was about it.

But in the convent, the Angelus punctuated our day. We prayed it at the start of Morning Prayer, and hours later, when the lunch bell rang and the presses and bindery machines fell silent, we prayed the Angelus at our workstations in the publishing house before heading to the refectory. Night Prayer was late, but still began with the Angelus.

The Angelus taught me that the Incarnation is the central mystery of our Faith: a moment in history that rightfully stops us in our tracks and invites us to “ponder in our heart” what God has done for us. The Angelus teaches me that every circumstance in life, whatever God wills or permits, is a “word” to which the fitting answer is “be it done to me,” knowing that “God makes all things work together for good” (even when that “good” is hidden from me).

That is part of the reason I began The Angelus Project (calltoprayer.blogspot.com), a service that posts an Annunciation scene every week to foster the praying of the Angelus. (During Eastertide, the image is a Coronation.)

The Angelus is a simple practice, but one that can help renew the faith of millions as they remember, three times a day: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son . . . that we might have life” (John 3:16).

And all we have to say is “Be it done to me.”

Katie Bogner is a 5th grade Catholic School teacher by day, parish Director of Religious Education by weekend, crafter in her spare time, and late night reader.  Katie blogs at Look to Him and Be Radiant where she creates lessons, crafts, and printables for sharing the faith with kids of all ages.

A few years ago, I decided to work on adding depth to the prayer structure built into my school day. We routinely pray as a whole school and as a class, but I hoped to broaden my students’ memorized prayer arsenal as well as share with them a prayer that links us with Christians around the world and through the centuries.

So, I decided to teach them the Angelus.

I didn’t want them to merely memorize it. (They actually did very quickly. Kids are sponges and childhood is a great time to expose them to the richness of our faith.) I wanted them to understand the Angelus and see how it is a statement about a core belief of our faith, as well as a request for intercession in our day-to-day lives.

To help teach them both the words and the meaning, I created this mini-book to tuck in their desks. Using the mini-book, the students had the text right in front of them, as well as some pictures, definitions of hard words, Scripture references, and other info.

Now each year, my students and I pray the Angelus together as a class every day just before we leave for lunch. I love being united with countless others joining in the same prayer that honors Mary’s yes to God and calls to mind the amazingness of the Incarnation, God become man for us.

As we are about to move into the Easter Season, my students will soon be learning the Regina Coeli. Everything should look different during the Easter season for the life of a Christian, and noon prayer is no different. From Easter until Pentecost, we won’t pray the Angelus, which remembers the Incarnation, but will instead pray the Regina Coeli, which celebrates the Resurrection.

I made this matching mini-book for teaching the Regina Coeli.  Season to season, the Angelus and Regina Coeli draw us into the rhythm of prayer that compels my students and I to feel and see and live our part in the greater Church.

Christine Johnson has been married to Nathan since 1993 and has two daughters who she homeschools. They live in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia, where she tries to fit in as a transplanted Yank. She blogs at Domestic Vocation about her life as a wife, mother, homeschooler, and Lay Dominican. 

We all start out with the best intentions when we want to add a new devotional practice to our lives. Sometimes those intentions get hit hard by reality and the guilt sets in. It is at those times that we should trade in that guilt for grace and let God invite us back into an encounter with him in prayer. 

Christine has a wonderful journey towards the Angelus that should be comforting to anyone who struggles to add a new prayer to their life. 

Christine Johnson and the Angelus

I had sporadically prayed the Angelus for years, and even had an alarm set on my phone to remind me. However, I was never quite consistent or good at it. I had been thinking about praying it for priests and seminarians at noon, which would give me a mid-day prayer to add to Lauds and Vespers each day. (I’m required to pray Morning and Evening Prayer as a Lay Dominican.)

I was overthinking, as usual, and trying to figure out if I ought to do this or not.

Then one day, I was listening to my playlist on shuffle when I heard bells ringing on a new track. I looked at my radio for song information and saw “ANGELUS” scrolling across the screen — it was the Latin version from a CD I had in my iTunes library!

I was about to skip it when I noticed that it was exactly noon. That was the beginning of a more consistent prayer habit.

So I pray the Angelus most days at noon, dedicating it to priests, seminarians, and other religious. There are days when I miss the notice altogether and other days when I see it late and pray it on the spot. If my children are with me, they’ll pray it with me, as well. I’m in the process of teaching it to my husband in hopes that it can be a devotion our whole family keeps, whether or not we’re together.

Brandon Vogt is a bestselling Catholic author, blogger, and speaker. He is the Content Director for Bishop Robert Barron’s Word on Fire Catholic Ministries. Brandon’s work has been featured by several media outlets including NPR, FoxNews, CBS, EWTN, Vatican Radio, Our Sunday Visitor, National Review, and Christianity Today, and he’s a regular guest on Catholic radio. He has written six books and is the founder of StrangeNotions.com, the central place of dialogue between Catholics and atheists.

“For me, the Angelus offers a five minute break during the day to stop, join with others, and focus on the Lord.

It’s both the shortest and most difficult part of my routine, which I’ll explain in a moment.

At the beginning of 2014, I resolved to pray the Angelus everyday throughout the year. I thought it would be a simple, fun thing to try. I was wrong.

It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever faced.

Inevitably, my Angelus alert would ping in the middle of some pressing task–a focused email I was writing, a delightful lunch conversation, a big project I was knee-deep in. The last thing I wanted to do was break away, lose my momentum, and pray the Angelus, even if it only took a few minutes.

But eventually the Angelus liberated me.

I understand that in monasteries, when the bell rings for prayer, monks are obligated to stop whatever they’re doing and pray, even if that means quitting a letter in mid-sentence or dropping a shovel mid-swing. That act of submission communicates to your whole being–your body, your time, your ambition–that God matters more than whatever you’re doing at that moment. Once you free yourself from the slavish demands around you–which, in the long run, aren’t really important anyways–your life starts moving to a new rhythm, following a new clock.

That’s why I still try to pray the Angelus everyday (albeit to mixed results.)

If anyone reading this wants to tackle a simple but enormously challenging discipline, commit to praying the Angelus everyday, no matter how inconvenient. It’s incredibly freeing.”

Read more about Brandon’s prayer life in “How I Pray: A Peak Into My Prayer Routine” (BrandonVogt.com) and “How I Pray: Brandon Vogt” (Wonderful Things by Thomas McDonald) 

Elizabeth Scalia is a Benedictine Oblate and Editor-at Large at AleteiaEN. She is known to most of the world by her social media handle and blog name, “The Anchoress.” She also writes as a columnist at First Things and The Catholic Answer and is the author of Strange Gods: Unmasking the Idols in Everyday Life.

On the Solemnity of the Annunciation, Elizabeth Scalia wrote a wonderful piece in our column on Aleteia, “The Annunciation is why I can never not be Catholic.” In it she explains how praying the Angelus continually reminds her that “our every yes keeps us on a God-directed path” and “plops us right into a mystery that is imponderable and yet ever-pleasant to dwell upon: And the Word was made flesh, And dwelt among us.”

She goes on:

“How grateful I am that our Church encourages the daily refreshment that is found in recalling the Annunciation, because in that brief pause of prayerful remembrance, there is an invitation to continual immersion in transcendent light and life.

To rise of a morning with the words of the Angelus on our lips, ‘The Angel of the Lord declared unto Mary’ and then to repeat them at noon, and at six, and again upon retiring, or to use those words while announcing the Joyful Mysteries of the Rosary, is to be continually drawn back to what is real, and true, and salvific; our perspective is trained toward Christ, and heaven, and the long view of things.”

And finally she concludes:

“. . . the more we surrender to God’s purposes, give up our own will, the more we assist in the propulsion of his will in our lives, which is really all about cooperating with his purposes for the good whole world.”

Read her entire article here: “The Annunciation is why I can never not be Catholic.”

Fr. Edward Looney is a popular Catholic writer and speaker on the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially about the approved 1859 apparition of Mary in Wisconsin. He is the author of the best-selling rosary devotional A Rosary Litany and his forthcoming release A Heart Like Mary’s.

My first priestly assignment was at a parish right across the street from the motherhouse of the Sisters of the Sorrowful Mother. Each day at 12:00 p.m. and 6:00 p.m. their bells rang signaling to me that it was time to pray the Angelus.

Blessed Paul VI best describes the reasons why I love the Angelus.

In his 1974 exhortation Marialis Cultus, Paul VI referenced two forms of Marian piety: the Angelus and the rosary. He described the Angelus as a prayer with a biblical character, with historical origins linking it to prayers for peace and safety, and its “quasi-liturgical rhythm which sanctifies different moments during the day” (paragraph 41). He adequately states why I appreciate the Angelus.

Many people find the Rosary challenging, especially as a beginning point for Marian devotion. The Angelus, in its simplicity, is an excellent way to cultivate and foster a devotion to Mary. When I was a student at Mundelein Seminary, a few of us were the force behind instituting the daily Angelus in the refectory at noon, instilling within the hearts of future priests a devotion to Mary.

I most especially love the fact the Angelus allows us to recall Mary’s role in the incarnation. As I pray those words, “The angel of the Lord declared unto Mary” and “Behold the handmaid of the Lord,” I am praying with Mary and I hope that her response might be my response too.

Notre Dame Vision engages high school and college students, as well as professional youth, campus and music ministers, in a robust exploration of God’s call and our response. Vision conducts summer conferences, initiatives for pastoral leadership formation, and academic endeavors for theological enrichment.

Teens at ND Vision Praying the Angelus

Read this entire article, by ND Vision Director Leonard DeLorenzo, at the ChurchLife Journal website. 

Making faith appealing to young people seems to require efforts to excite the senses and incite emotion.

While such strategies of evangelization may have their place, praying the Angelus once daily with hundreds of high school students and another 70 college students during the summer at Notre Dame Vision witnessed to the possibilities for renewing the Church through simple practices of the ancient faith.

The prayer was a part of their daily routine and, because of that, they opened the teenagers to the possibilities for how everything else they did during their time together was connected to the remembrance of the Incarnation in the middle of our day. They trusted in the practice first of all, while also trusting that the practice would lead to understanding.

The practice of praying the Angelus invites us to discover the ways in which the activities, encounters, and general busyness of our daily existence harmonize with God’s action for us and with us.

At the same time, this simple daily practice will, over time, prompt the one who prays to recognize where there is disharmony between her daily life and the love of God that Jesus Christ poured into the world.

This is the great hope for all those who gather at Notre Dame Vision each summer, just as it is the great hope of the Church for the world: to receive the incarnate gift of God’s love and to allow one’s own bodily existence to move in harmony with this gift.

With the Angelus—as with all Catholic devotions—the practice initiates one into a way of life that, over time, allows for transformation and understanding.

As juxtaposed with approaches to evangelization that prioritize affective conversions, emotional attachments, or the hook of entertainment, small commitments to particular practices like praying the Angelus build up a communion-of-beginners and trust in the slow formative effects of specific bodily actions.

ND Vision and the McGrath Institute for Church Life at the University of Notre Dame is has a wonderful at called “3D Catholic,” which can be downloaded here. “3D” stands for three devotions: prayer (Angelus), fasting (no meat on Fridays), and almsgiving (corporal works of mercy).

This brief testimony was adapted from Leonard DeLorenzo’s article, “Daily Prayer, the Incarnation, and the Discipline of Harmony” DeLorenzo is the director of ND Vision and the author of the book, Witness.

Servant of God Dorothy Day (1897–1980) was a pacifist, social commentator, journalist, convert to Catholicism, and cofounder of the Catholic Worker movement. Day cofounded the Catholic Worker movement in 1933 with Peter Maurin to live and spread the vision of Catholic social teaching.

The following excerpt was taken from Reflections during Advent by Dorothy Day, which originally appeared in the Ave Maria, November 26, 1966. In the reflection for the First Week of Advent, she describes the importance of Marian devotion in her life. 

Every day at the Catholic Worker Farm when we gather for meals we say the Angelus before asking God’s blessing on us and the food we eat. And it rejoices me to hear all the men, who are in the majority, saying, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done unto me according to Thy Word,” and repeating together that marvelous and yet terrible prayer:

“Pour forth we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts, that we to whom the incarnation of Christ was made known by the message of an angel, may by His passion and cross be brought to the glory of His resurrection.”

This incarnation came about by Mary’s consent, she “through whom we have received the author of life.”

So Advent must begin with Mary, who presents us with the infant Christ. “The flesh of Jesus is the flesh of Mary,” St. Augustine wrote. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”

When I go to the crib this year I will think, as I always do, that we are not dependent on the governments of this world for our safety, but “the government will be upon His shoulder.” This baby cradled in a manger, this boy talking to the doctors in the temple, this youth working with St. Joseph as carpenter, this teacher walking the roads of Palestine, “Do whatever He tells you,” Mary told us.