Prologue

St. Jerome says that the Lord’s Prayer ought to precede all our works, and the working of the graces ought to follow. Hence he says in a letter of his to Paula: pray the Lord’s Prayer at the beginning of any work of yours and press the sign of the holy Cross upon your forehead. Likewise: just as it does not befit a soldier to go to war without arms, so it does not befit a soldier of Christ to go to war against a demon unless he would be protected by these arms: the Lord’s Cross and the Lord’s Prayer. And I add to this: the angel’s greeting. (The Hail Mary, Ave Maria; the second part of the prayer, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, . . . our death,” was not part of the prayer in the 13th century; it is a later addition. Cf. Thomas’s Collationes on the Hail Mary: Expositio Salutationis angelicae; and on the Our Father: In orationem dominicam and ST II-II.83.9.) And hence we will first say an Our Father and a Hail Mary beforehand, et cetera.