Bread-and-butter prayer.

Saying grace reminds Catholics that we are all one family, crowded around a common table.

NOVEMBER BRINGS FAVORITE MEMORIES OF Thanksgivings past, one of my happiest being the way generation after generation of Hendricksons ringed my grandmother's table in the cramped dining-room ritual of saying grace" as an extended family before partaking of the annual feast-before-football.

Doubtless it's a memory many Catholics share, if not connected to Thanksgiving then to Christmas or Easter: a collective flutter of many-sized hands flying in sync to forehead, chest, and shoulders--followed by a group recitation of the "official" Catholic meal prayer, slowed down to the speed and sing-songy syncopation of the youngest toddler in the room.

   Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, Which we are about to receive from
   Thy bounty Through Christ, Our Lord. Amen.

That's the way we said it back then, and that's the way I'm sure to teach it to my small children--if only out of reverence for it being the first bit of verse I ever knew by heart, long before the familiar rhythms of Mother Goose and Dr. Seuss. As words committed to memory go, the old Catholic meal prayer probably represents the deepest groove upon my literate brain.

While the years following Vatican II have seen many Catholic families migrating to fancier fare and more intentional prayer, as the mother of two toddlers I'm struck by an ancient piece of wisdom that's baked right into this old family recipe we Catholics share for saying grace. The fact is, little children simply adore the rhythmic recitation of words and will try repeating just about anything you say more than once with a distinctive cadence--including those unsavory little catch-phrases adults let slip in moments of sheer frustration.

Rote prayer, then, seemingly banished to the Catholic attic of unstylishness, has been redeemed for me. Not only is there the handiness of a built-in memory device--lest you think I say that lightly, let me quickly tell you of a sophisticated friend who found he could do little more than lapse into a mantra of Hail Marys when it looked as though his flight was going to crash into LaGuardia at Christmastime--but there is the palpable, if verbal, feel of a kind of glue that holds all Catholics together. Young and old; anyone who eats.

But the future of this bread-and-butter Catholic prayer is called into question when today's families find that the act of simply eating together is becoming a rare event. Does the Catholic meal blessing pack the same power when said silently and solo? I don't happen to think so.

The threatened loss of this prayer--and of the everyday holiness of simply breaking bread together--make me aware of the many ways we North Americans have come to take food and eating utterly (dare I say sacrilegiously?) for granted. I count myself among the guilty, I who should know better for having said many "Bless us, O Lord"s over gifts of green leaf lettuce and fresh milk, clear God-given fruits from my grandparents' farms. And so I have had to relearn the sacred art of thanking and blessing, the table sharing that feeds both body and spirit. I've reclaimed some of that, in part, from friends of more tenacious traditions who find it repugnant to "do lunch" in the millennial meaning of conducting meetings over meals. Eat first, their religions say, restricting conversation to interaction instead of transaction.

Still, I wonder sometimes about my psyche's stubborn failure to grasp the concept of Catholics being a "eucharistic people." It makes me wonder whether that failed ritualistic sensibility is really, at root, an inability to grasp the innate holiness that's supposed to be at the root of ordinary eating together. And I wonder how to retrieve that.

I think I've come close to it a couple of times, though--like the time a colleague of mine rescued something ancient and treasured from my fading memory when she led a posh ballroom full of Catholic bishops and journalists in prayer before we started in on our elegant meal. The words were so familiar, so homely really, that their use in this fanciful banquet setting seemed at first a terrible shock. But then, as we intoned together in that ancient and unmistakable toddler-friendly cadence--grins creeping across faces in universal recognition--I finally saw an official Catholic gathering for what it truly is: rows and rows of my relatives crowded around a common table. As, together, we exclaimed, "Bless us, O Lord ..."

By MARY LYNN HENDRICKSON, associate editor of U.S. CATHOLIC.