The Glory Be: the Prayer in Full, Line by Line

The Glory Be has two halves. The first gives one and the same glory to the one God as he has revealed himself to us: three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. The second answers that this glory had no beginning and will have no end. The Catechism calls the Trinity “the central mystery of Christian faith and life” (CCC 234), and the Glory Be says that whole mystery in one breath, as praise.

“Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.” The three names come in the order of Christ’s last command to the apostles: “baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost” (Matthew 28:19, Douay-Rheims). Notice the small word and. The prayer does not rank the three Persons; it gives the same glory to each, because, in the words of the ancient creed the Catechism quotes, they have “their glory equal, their majesty coeternal” (CCC 266).

The line asks for nothing. It is pure praise, the form of prayer the Catechism describes as the one “which recognizes most immediately that God is God” (CCC 2639). “Glory be” is a wish and an act at once: may God be glorified, and here and now we glorify him.

It means “forever.” It does not mean that this world will never end. “World without end” is the old English way of saying the Latin in saecula saeculorum, literally “unto the ages of ages.” The Catholic Encyclopedia explains that the Greek and Latin phrase is a Hebrew way of speaking, “meaning simply ‘for ever.’” Saying “ages of ages” is like saying “King of kings” or “holy of holies”: the doubling makes the words as strong as language allows.

The idea runs all through Scripture’s prayers of praise. St. Paul closes a prayer with it: “To him be glory in the church, and in Christ Jesus unto all generations, world without end. Amen” (Ephesians 3:21, Douay-Rheims). Elsewhere the same idea is rendered “for ever and ever”: “To whom is glory for ever and ever. Amen” (Galatians 1:5).

Bow your head. Many Catholics bow their heads at the first line, “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.” At Mass the Church asks for a bow of the head whenever “the three Divine Persons are named together” (General Instruction of the Roman Missal, 275). Outside Mass it is a custom, not a rule. Reverence at these words is old: the Rule of St. Benedict, from the sixth century, has the monks rise from their seats at the Glory Be of the night office “out of honor and reverence to the Holy Trinity.” Some people make the Sign of the Cross at the same words.

Slowly, once. The Glory Be takes about ten seconds, which is why it is so easy to say without noticing. Say it once, slowly, and pause at each name. It asks for nothing, and that is its gift. The Catechism says the prayer of praise is “entirely disinterested” and gives God glory “simply because HE IS” (CCC 2649).

Through the day. Because it is so short, the Glory Be fits anywhere: on waking, after grace at meals, when something good happens, at the end of a psalm you read on your own, at the end of a hard day. On days when praise feels far away, it is still true, and you can say it as an act of faith rather than a feeling.

With a child. The Glory Be is short enough for a small child to learn whole, and it teaches the Trinity before any explanation can. Say it together, bow together at the three names, and let the child lead it at the end of a decade.

A prayer to the Father, to say before you pray the Glory Be:

This is the Latin as the Holy See prints it in the appendix of common prayers to the Compendium of the Catechism, with accents that mark the stressed syllable. Its first two words, Gloria Patri, are the prayer’s Latin name.

No one person. The Glory Be grew out of the way the first Christians prayed, and its exact words were shaped by the Church’s struggle, in the fourth century, to say clearly who Jesus is.

What “doxology” means. The word comes from the Greek doxa, “glory,” and means a short formula of praise. Two prayers carry the name. The greater doxology is the Gloria in excelsis, the hymn that begins with the angels’ song at Bethlehem, “Glory to God in the highest; and on earth peace to men of good will” (Luke 2:14, Douay-Rheims), the Gloria of Sunday Mass. The lesser doxology is the Gloria Patri, the Glory Be. When Catholics say “the Doxology,” they usually mean this one. In many Protestant churches “the Doxology” is a different hymn, “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow” (Thomas Ken, seventeenth century). Anglicans, Lutherans, Methodists and many other Christians pray the Glory Be too, and the Orthodox pray it in its Eastern form: it is praise that Christians share. The Catechism uses the word for all such praise: “Doxology, the praise of God” (CCC 2641).

Scripture’s doxologies. Jewish prayer ended by blessing God forever, and St. Paul does the same again and again: “For of him, and by him, and in him, are all things: to him be glory for ever. Amen” (Romans 11:36). The earliest Christian forms give glory to the Father through the Son (“through Jesus Christ,” Romans 16:27) and in the Holy Spirit. That is still a true way to pray. The Catechism says our prayer “ascends in the Holy Spirit through Christ to the Father” (CCC 2627).

In the Rosary. The Glory Be closes each decade: one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, then the Glory Be. It is also said once at the start, after the three opening Hail Marys, so a five-decade Rosary has six. The U.S. bishops’ steps for the Rosary list it after every decade. In many parishes the Fatima Prayer, “O my Jesus, forgive us our sins,” follows each Glory Be; it is a widely kept custom rather than a rule. AngelGuard’s guide to how to pray the Rosary walks through every bead, with the same words as this page.

St. John Paul II asked Catholics to give the Glory Be its full weight, not to treat it as a hurried ending to the decade. In his 2002 letter on the Rosary he wrote that “Trinitarian doxology is the goal of all Christian contemplation,” and suggested that, prayed together, it could even be sung (Rosarium Virginis Mariae 34). The ten Hail Marys keep our eyes on Christ; the Glory Be lets him lead us to the Father, in the Spirit.