Traditional prayer
The Glory Be (Gloria Patri)
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Latin
Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto.
Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper: et in sæcula sæculorum. Amen.
Latin Lasance, My Prayer-Book (1908), p. 305
About this prayer
The Glory Be is the lesser doxology: a short verse of praise to the Most Holy Trinity. It asks for nothing. It simply gives glory. The Catechism describes praise as the form of prayer that most directly acknowledges that God is God, glorifying Him for His own sake and not only for what He does (CCC 2639). “Holy Ghost” is the older English name for the Holy Spirit; both name the same divine Person.
Its pattern comes from Christ’s command to baptize “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19, Douay-Rheims). The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1909 explains that in the fourth century, against the Arian heresy, which denied that the Son is equal to the Father, this form naming the three Persons side by side became universal among Catholics. It records that in 529 a synod at Vaison, in Gaul, ordered the words “Sicut erat in principio” (“as it was in the beginning”) to be said there as they were in Rome, and suggests that the words may first have referred to the Son, who was in the beginning, as the opening of St. John’s Gospel says.
In the Latin Church the Glory Be has long closed the psalms of the Divine Office; in the Mass of Father Lasance’s day it was said at the foot of the altar in the psalm Judica me, as printed here, and in the Office for the Dead its place was taken by “Eternal rest” (Catholic Encyclopedia, “Doxology”). Lasance describes each decade of the Rosary as one Our Father, ten Hail Marys and a Glory be to the Father (p. 335).
The Raccolta of 1910 even attached an indulgence to praying the Gloria Patri seven times, “To obtain the Seven Gifts, for the Propagation of the Faith, and for the intention of the Pope” (no. 38). Its instructions note that where it names the Pater, Ave and Gloria by their Latin names, they can of course be said in English.
When to pray it
- At the end of each decade of the Rosary.
- After a psalm, if you pray the psalms.
- As the shortest prayer there is: at good news and at hard news, at a child’s first steps, at a quiet kitchen at the end of the day.
- Seven times, for the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, as the Raccolta suggests.
Any indulgences named on this page are those recorded in the older prayer books it cites. Pope Paul VI reformed the Church's indulgences in 1967 (Indulgentiarum Doctrina); the current rules are in the Church's Enchiridion of Indulgences.