Sunday 22 March 2026
We were halfway through the Nicene Creed when it occurred to me I still didn’t know the Creed by heart.
A few weeks ago, I tried to say it without holding the Mass book in front of me, but tripped up a few times, and my voice jarred incorrectly against the unison of everyone else. I put this effort down to pride and went back to the book.
To be fair, the Nicene Creed is long at 32 lines. But this is Mass number 69 since I became Catholic. I said it each of those times, and studied it since.
It seems to be that the act of memorising is a big part of being a new catholic.
Beyond prayers, there are the various steps of the Mass, the standing, kneeling, and standing again. There are various actions associated with prayers. Crossing yourself, or beating your chest. There is genuflecting and bowing, and how to receive the Eucharist.
There are those extracurricular acts, like crossing yourself when passing by a church, bowing your head at the mention of Christ, and those lovely things, as Cardinal Timothy Dolan points out on YouTube, of blessing people and saying “My Lord and My God” as the bread and the wine are raised in the Mass. And don’t forget the commandments, the precepts, the beatitudes.
But thinking of prayers again, what is the best way to learn them?
One way is to sit with a copy of the text in front of you and put in the hours. I suppose if you hammer away long enough, the words will begin to stick. Maybe. You might find others with various techniques to share. Actors must know something of this to memorise texts in a short space of time.
What I’ve found, though, is that prayers become a kind of song. You don’t so much say the words in church every weekend, you sing them. You repeat the sounds. It’s no coincidence that prayers are chanted by monks.
I’ve found myself saying prayers as if singing along. The words become noises, almost, and you make the noises. After a while, the words come to mind again, embedded, and increasing in meaning every time.
But so far, the Nicene Creed has not embedded itself in my head yet.
Which got me reflecting on what I have learned in the last year.
The Apostle’s Creed I now have down, thanks mainly to it starting the Rosary. The same goes for Psalm 66, which I recite as part of the Liturgy every morning.
There’s the Gloria, the Hail Mary, the Fatima prayer, the Glory Be, the Salve Regina, the Confitur, those little sections of the Mass we repeat, the prayer for the recently deceased, and I’m very nearly there with the Angelus. The Lord’s Prayer comes free with a Primary School education.
All of which pales into insignificance as a new catholic, when compared to remembering the names of new friends, parishioners, and people.