Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from a previous column by Bishop Doran.

A wise bishop once told me that in the Eastern Church there is a prayer that is second in value only to the Our Father. As we all know, the Our Father is a perfect prayer, and not only because it was taught to us by our Savior, which, of course, is the principal reason.

When the Apostles asked Jesus, “Lord, teach us how to pray,” he said when you pray, pray this way, and then he gave them the Our Father (also known as The Lord’s Prayer). The prayer, as we commonly say it, appears slightly differently in the Gospels (Mt 6:9-13 and Lk 11:2-4) because what we have today represents the Church putting those versions together in one prayer. It is the first prayer we learn and, hopefully, the last prayer we will say. Its seven petitions encompass all the purposes of prayer: adoration, thanksgiving, sorrow for sin, and supplication (or asking for the things we need from God).

Next in value is the simple prayer I referred to at the start of this column: “Lord, Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” This prayer is a very good one to include in our daily prayers because it reminds us of who God is, of who we are, and of what we need most in life. Moreover, in this prayer we acknowledge that Jesus is our Lord.

Jesus Christ is the title for the savior and we call him the son of the living God, by which we express his position in the Godhead, and the fact that God is not an idea (as is the case for atheists, agnostics and some lukewarm Catholics), but is rather a living entity whose purpose in life, so to speak, is to give us, if we will take it, our ultimate good. Then we ask for Christ’s mercy: “Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner.”

If God is to count against us all the bad things we have done, what hope do we have? Recall the psalmist’s great wisdom: “Out of the depths I call to you, Lord; Lord, hear my cry! May your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, Lord, mark our sins, Lord, who can stand? But with you is forgiveness and so you are revered” (Ps 130:1-4). There is no one of us who can make any claim against the justice of God, other than that we have sinned against Him. We do not say that often enough in prayer.

In this somewhat pagan age, the captive press does not speak to us much of sin and redemption. The truly sobering thought is that we, as practicing Catholics, do not speak of it at all. That is bothersome because we seem to proceed with our lives on the basis of self-fulfillment, self-help and self-direction. While these can all be admirable concerns, there is a danger that we come to think that everything in our lives depends on the pagan trinity: me, myself and I. We tend to forget something that we all were taught, should remember, and are smart to pray for: we all require the help of God in all our needs.

So I ask you — for your sake and the sake of the world — to remember and recite often this simple prayer: “Lord, Jesus Christ, son of the living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Knowing who we are and who God is will go a long way toward making us more faithful and our lives more purposeful in God’s eyes.