I'm my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a Year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith.

The Catechism in a year is brought to you by Ascension.

In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home.

It is day 344.

We're reading paragraphs 2683 to 2690.

As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach.

But you can follow along with any recent version of the catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own catechism in a year reading plan by visiting ascensionpress.com

slash CIY and you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily

notifications because today is day 344. As I said, we're reading paragraphs 2683 to 2690.

We're looking today at guides for prayer. And so we recognize that we have a cloud of witnesses,

meaning we are surrounded. Remember the letter to the Hebrews chapter 12 talks about the fact that

we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, those who have gone before us and have lived

out their life following after Jesus. Of course, when the literature to the Hebrews was written,

the cloud of witnesses with the Old Testament folks, but still living in covenant with the Lord God. They contemplated God. They praise God. They constantly care for those for whom they've left on earth. These are the saints in heaven. We're surrounded by them, this communion of saints. If I talk a little quickly, I apologize. These communion of saints, they were very different. And what paragraph 2684

reminds us of is that in the communion of saints, there are many and varied spiritualities that

have been developed throughout the history of the churches. And so we recognize that there's

different ways of praying. That's so important for us because there's no one way for Christian prayer. There's one way to the

father. That's Jesus. There's no one way of Christian prayer. There's different spiritualities,

different kinds of ways of living, different kinds of ways of praying. And so we're looking at

after this section, servants of prayer, meaning there are different places we learn how to pray

in different ways in which people have consecrated

their lives in prayer. So for example, the Christian family. That's one of the ways people learn

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