Talking to my mom the other day, we began talking about how she wished she had some of my grandmothers old recipes. After getting off the phone with her I remembered that I had an old bread box that belonged to my grandmother. It's been a long time that I looked in the box so I wasn't even quite sure what was in it. When I opened it up I found that it was filled with old recipes of my grandmother. There were many that she had clipped out of magazines and newspapers, but the ones that meant the most to us were the ones that she had hand written, the ones that were her own.

That's how it is with prayer. Throughout our lives we have been taught many prayers which were the prayers of other people. The Psalms of the Old Testament are perfect examples of the prayers of the people. Then there are the prayers of the saints, the famous prayer of Saint Francis, the prayers such as the Rosary and many others that have been placed into books for us to share. All of those prayers are very important for us to pray, but how beautiful it is when we form our own prayers when speaking to our Heavenly Father. How beautiful it would be when after we die our loved ones were going through our things and found our "old recipes" written in our own hand writing, that is, "our own recipes of prayer," our personal dialogue with the Father.