Deacon Lawrence Toth
\n(Sixth in Series)<\/p>\n
The subject of the Pope\u2019s next teaching was the ecclesial dimension of liturgical prayer. Most of us, when we think of the liturgy, think of the celebration of the Mass. However, Catholic liturgical prayer includes not only the Mass, but also the rites involved in the celebration of the other sacraments and the funeral liturgies, as well as the formal daily prayer of the Church, the Liturgy of the Hours. When he speaks of the ecclesial dimension of liturgical prayer, Pope Leo is referring to the fact that our prayer together both forms us into, and expresses our life as, the Church. “From the day of Pentecost, the Spirit dwells in the Church, inspiring every one of her activities and, in particular, prayer.”<\/p>\n
The pontiff said that, today, prayer is often misunderstood. Since our lives are often “dominated by an efficiency-driven and consumerist mindset, prayer may seem pointless and trivial. In a world where science and technology claim to provide all the answers, praying may appear to be a form of escapism. Furthermore, even in many Christian families, the tradition of prayer is no longer passed on, whilst many people risk confusing it with just another technique of a psychological nature aimed at personal well-being. Prayer, however, as a fundamental dimension of our humanity, is worth rediscovering in its true form.”<\/p>\n
At the time of Vatican II, Pope St. Paul VI recognized the need to rediscover prayer. He said, “God comes first; prayer is our primary duty; the liturgy is the primary source of the divine life communicated to us, the primary school of our spiritual life.” He was speaking of “prayer” to mean the liturgy as a whole. The Church\u2019s liturgy is, first and foremost, “the place of encounter, of God\u2019s initiative in drawing near to humanity in his Son, the Word made flesh.”<\/p>\n
Pope Leo goes on to speak in more depth about the Liturgy of the Hours, saying that this daily prayer of the Church “needs to be more fully embraced and lived out in the daily lives of the baptized and of the communities. Every week and every day, the Eucharist and the Liturgy of the Hours are the breath of the life of the Church, which makes the Holy Spirit circulate through her Body.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Deacon Lawrence Toth (Sixth in Series) The subject of the Pope\u2019s next teaching was the ecclesial dimension of liturgical prayer. Most of us, when we think of the liturgy, think of the celebration of the Mass. However, Catholic liturgical prayer includes not only the Mass, but also the rites involved in the celebration of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":12724,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","ctfw-has-image"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12805"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12805\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12806,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12805\/revisions\/12806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stgenevieve-stmaurice.org\/parish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}