Called to Pray, Daily Prayers for Catholic Schools

Written and Compiled by Justin McClain

Catholic school teachers often ask for prayer resources they can use in the classroom. Award-winning theology teacher Justin McClain offers more than two hundred original prayers to meet those requests. This collection of short prayers is arranged by school-year-related themes and can be read by a teacher or student. It is filled with fresh, timely, and meaningful prayers that fit well into any classroom schedule.

Called to Pray: Daily Prayers for Catholic Schools is perfect for use with Catholic school students in grades five through twelve. The prayers are organized into six different themes:

• special school occasions such as the first day of school
• prayers for the school community, including administrators, teachers, coaches, support staff, and students
• prayers for friends and family
• holidays and observances such as Earth Day
• liturgical seasons and holy days
• general prayers for the school year

Four types of prayer are included throughout the book—adoration, contrition, petition, and thanksgiving. Some include class responses. Twenty one of the prayers were written by McClain’s students at Bishop McNamara High School in Bowie, Maryland. Traditional Catholic prayers also are included.

Author Justin McClain teaches theology at Bishop McNamara High School in Forestville, Maryland. He also has served as an adjunct lecturer in Spanish for the pre-college programs at the University of Maryland, College Park, and taught English as a second language at Prince George’s Community College. He received a Golden Apple Award for excellence in teaching and commitment to Catholic education from the Archdiocese of Washington in 2017.

McClain is the author of several books, including Called to Teach. He is a regular contributor to the National Catholic Register, Catholic Exchange, and the National Catholic Educational Association. McClain is a high school theology textbook author for Ave Maria Press. He was a consultant to the US Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Secretariat of Cultural Diversity in the Church, Subcommittee on African-American Affairs in 2015. He is a lay Dominican.

He lives with his wife, Bernadette, and their children in Bowie, Maryland.

Paperback, 2018

Eucharist and Prayer