Loving the Stones

I prayed Psalm 102 today during the Liturgy of the Hours, and finally recognized its beautiful application:

You will arise and have mercy on Zion: for this is the time to have mercy,
yes, the time appointed has come
for your servants love her very stones, are moved with pity even for her dust ...
Let this be written for ages to come that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord ... (Ps. 102: 13-14, 18)

Today we Christians pray this Psalm as members of Christ's Body, the New Temple (Jn 2:21).  As St. Peter wrote, "like living stones be yourselves built into a spiritual house [a temple], to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ" (1 Pet 2:5; see also Eph 2:21).

The stones we love are our brothers and sisters in Christ - the Church triumphant in heaven, undergoing purification in purgatory, and still slugging it out on earth!  We are the very stones of the New Jerusalem which will descend from heaven when our Lord returns!  (See 1 Thess 4:15-5:2 and Rev  21:9-11)  This is our love for the Communion of Saints, the cells of Christ's Mystical Body.

Why I Love "Rote" Catholic Prayers

My friend Denise Fath posted this quote from Emeritus Pope Benedict on Facebook this morning, and it captured my sentiments perfectly: 

"Prayer should be 'wholly personal' but we also constantly need to make use of those prayers that express in words the encounter with God experienced both by the Church as a whole and by individual members of the Church. For without these aids to prayer, our own praying and our image of God becomes subjective and end up reflecting ourselves more than the living God."

Amen.  The prayers of the Church and of her saints, rather than stifle my ability to express myself to God, enlarged it.  I slowly came to see how the spontaneous - what seemed to me, the more “authentic” - prayers I offered at the beginning of my faith journey were those of a child.  They were heartfelt and sincere but, in retrospect, they seemed focused upon my life and the small circle of lives touching mine.  They were limited by my lack of knowledge regarding both the deepest needs and movements of the human heart and how prayer could be more than thought and words.   

The prayers of the Church are those of an adult with two thousand years of spiritual depth and know-how.  When I listened to her pray, especially at Mass, I was called out of myself, called to pray for and with the whole Body of Christ – on earth, in purgatory, and in heaven!  I was called to pray, fast, and do penance both for my sins and my brothers’ and sisters’.  Left to myself I don’t know how I ever could have arrived at the realization that all of our daily activities, even suffering, can be transformed into prayer! (My spontaneous prayers now take all of this into account.)

And studying the gospels and the religious life of Jewish people in first century Palestine convinces me that the Church did not arrive at the content or manner of her prayer lightly.  I found the same concerns and practices in the prayer of Jesus himself! The Church’s rich spiritual life is the work of the same Holy Spirit through whom Jesus poured himself out in prayer to the Father.

But How Can I Pray THAT?

A few posts back I shared that I have been trying to pray the Liturgy of the Hours more regularly.  The pattern I have settled into over the past two weeks has been to grab my iPod when I do cardio in the morning and pray the Invitatory Psalm, Office of Readings, and Morning Prayer.  (Those 35 min. of stepping on and off a platform can seem like an eternity; but bringing prayer to my cardio makes the first 20-25 minutes fly by.  I kid you not; give it a try.)

Alright, cutting to the chase:  Earlier this week, Psalm 18 was part of the Liturgy.  I could enter into into the beginning of the prayer, “I love you, Lord, my strength / The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer ….,” but when we got to the middle portion, I didn’t feel like I should be praying these words:

He rescued me because he delighted in me.

The Lord has dealt with me according to my righteousness;

    according to the cleanness of my hands he has rewarded me.

For I have kept the ways of the Lord;

    I am not guilty of turning from my God.

All his laws are before me;

    I have not turned away from his decrees.

I have been blameless before him

    and have kept myself from sin.

The Lord has rewarded me according to my righteousness,

    according to the cleanness of my hands in his sight.

To the faithful you show yourself faithful,

    to the blameless you show yourself blameless …

(Psalm 18:19-25)

See what I mean?  God has most definitely NOT dealt with me according to the cleanness of MY HANDS!  He has treated me infinitely better than I deserve.  I am most certainly NOT “blameless before Him.”

But the truth that came back to me at that moment was how the Psalms are ultimately the prayers of Christ.  Whatever King David meant when he composed the words, they can only honestly, objectively, be prayed by Jesus.  And the Father responded to Jesus’ blameless life and death by raising Him to new life –  “Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place” (Phil.2:9).

So why does the Church pray these words in the Liturgy of the Hours and at Mass?  Because we are the Body of Christ (1 Cor.12:27)!  The Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours “is the very prayer which Christ himself together with his Body addresses to the Father” (CCC 1174).

We can give voice to psalms such as Psalm 18 because it is Jesus praying in and through His Church.  The Body “does not separate itself from its Head.  It is the one Savior of his Body, the Lord Christ Jesus, who prays for us and in us and who is prayed to by us.” [1]

The mystery of Christian prayer -incredible!

---

[1] General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours, No.7, Congregation for Divine Worship, February 2, 1971.

Praying Around the Clock - Liturgy of the Hours

I have been at it for a few days now - the Liturgy of the Hours that is.  This is the first time I have really made an attempt to pray it in its entirety throughout a single day, not to mention a series of days.  I have to be honest; I've fallen short and missed at least one hour a day - but my intentions have been good.  I wanted to share what I have learned thus far.

Image from www.divineoffice.org

First, let me give a snapshot of the Liturgy of the Hours. (You will also hear it referred to as the Divine Office.)  These are the periods of prayer, spaced throughout the day, that priests and members of religious communities are required to keep.  (It is also a reflection of the different times of daily prayer practiced by Jesus and all faithful Jews.)  The Liturgy of the Hours is built around the praying of the Psalms, readings from Scripture and commentary by the saints, and interceding for the needs of all members of the Church.  It is the Church's "public prayer," the common prayer of the Church spread throughout the world, prolonging the Liturgy of the Eucharist throughout the entire day.  It consists of an:

• Invitatory Psalm
• Office of Readings (attached to one of the following Hours)
• Morning Prayer
• Daily Prayer
• Evening Prayer
• Night Prayer

A few things have stood out to me already:

• I cannot imagine a more Scriptural form of prayer.  (The words of the Mass are approximately 85% direct quotations or  paraphrases from Scripture, but I am going to ballpark the Office at over 90%, with more direct quotations.)  We begin the day with a Psalm, and then Morning Prayer alone has three Psalms woven in with readings from Paul's epistles, etc., etc.  We are constantly addressing God in the words He Himself inspired. 

• God is going to be praised, whether we personally feel like praising Him or not - praise is at the heart of the Liturgy of the Hours.

• Joining the Church in its "public prayer" calls us out of ourselves to be concerned with not simply our needs and the small circle of brothers and sisters who surround us, but the whole Church. 

• I have been attending daily Mass at the same time I have been attempting to pray the Office and have been so impressed at the cross-fertilization that occurs between the two.

If you find yourself wanting to learn more about the Liturgy of the Hours, please visit www.divineoffice.org.  Not only can you click on and read any Hour of the day, but you can pray along with audio files for each.  Last spring and summer I waded into the Office a bit by praying Night Prayer.  When I climbed into bed at night I simply opened that page on my iPod and prayed along.  It's beautiful too; it always contains Simeon's Canticle, known as the Nunc Dimittis, from Lk. 2:29-32, and the antiphon, "Protect us, Lord, as we stay awake; watch over us as we sleep, that awake, we may keep watch with Christ, and asleep, rest in his peace."  See what I mean? Absolutely beautiful ... well, that's the prayer of the Body, joined to Christ its Head.