The Glory Be (Gloria Patri)

The Gloria Patri, the "Glory Be," is the Church’s little hymn of praise to the Blessed Trinity, prayed countless times each day across the whole world. It is called the Lesser Doxology (from the Greek doxa, "glory") to distinguish it from the Greater Doxology, the Gloria in excelsis of the Mass. Short as it is, it is a complete act of adoration: it gives glory equally to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, confessing the three Divine Persons in one God.

The first half — "Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit" — is of great antiquity, echoing the baptismal formula Our Lord gave: "baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost" (Matthew 28:19). The second half, "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be" (Sicut erat in principio), was fixed in the Church’s worship especially during the Arian crisis of the fourth century: against those who denied that the Son was eternally God, the Church proclaimed that the glory of the Son was "in the beginning" and forever — there never was when He was not.

So the Gloria Patri became woven into the very fabric of Catholic prayer. It concludes every psalm and canticle in the Divine Office, seals each decade of the Holy Rosary, and closes innumerable prayers and devotions. To pray it is to do what the angels and saints do without ceasing before the throne of God: to give glory to the Holy Trinity, now and unto ages of ages.