This is such a cool book! I didn’t grow up Catholic, but converted when I was eighteen. I now have two children and am always looking for prayers to incorporate into our lives that are appropriate for them. These are meaningful, educational, and interesting prayers. I especially loved that there were prayers in multiple languages, as we are a bilingual family.

A wonderful collection of prayers before meals. For many families, grace before meals and bedtime are the prime times for family prayer -- but I'd venture to guess that most of us don't venture too far beyond the familiar "Bless us, O Lord ..." that became the title of this book. If you and your family would like to incorporate the liturgical year into your mealtime prayers, this is a wonderful resource.

I found this book appealing because in one place, it gathers prayers to say at meals on pretty much every day of the church year. There are prayers for the days of the week, all the different liturgical seasons, saints' feast days, and even for personal celebrations such as birthdays and anniversaries. It would be so easy to just keep this book near the dining table and pray with it at every meal all year long.

The only real problem I see with the book is that there are people named in the section of prayers asking for the intercession of saints who are not saints, and there is nothing to differentiate those non-canonized figures from the canonized ones. The prayers on the birthdays of Rosa Parks and Anne Frank are prayers directly to God, and not requests for the intercession of these women, but their inclusion in this section elevates them in a way that feels a bit off for a book like this. The prayer on December 10, involving Thomas Merton, is similarly out of place, as it does seem to suggest that he is a saint, which is not something the church has declared at this point. I also noticed an emphasis on including diverse secular holidays in the book, which strikes me as more of an attempt at "wokeness" than a necessary inclusion. There is a subtle implication that the church somehow equates these holidays with religious feast days.

I think it is absolutely possible to pick and choose the prayers a family wants to use and still get a lot out of this book, but given that the church herself has provided numerous prayers for many of the occasions included, and that there are these uncomfortable flaws, we decided not to buy a copy for our own family. I think we're going to hold out and look for The Catholic All Year Prayer Companion: The Liturgical Year in Practice, coming this spring from Kendra Tierney.

This book can be a good resource for folks wanting to use grace before meals as a teaching moment. That's because it creates specific graces for the seasons of the year, saints day and civil holidays and commemorations.

The book, is strongest when it has short introductions, meant to be read aloud about the saints. Unhappily it's weakest in the prayers themselves which strike me as the kind of banal committee-written Prayers of the Faithful one hears at Mass.

The title comes from the traditional Catholic grace before meals and, to be quite honest, I don't see why this is an improvement.