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The Liturgy and Contemplative Prayer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 August 2024

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It is sometimes felt that the inward tendency and logic of liturgical prayer, and those of contemplative prayer, are conflicting, so that these two types of prayer will always attract different temperaments and define different vocations. And indeed, there is an evident divergence between the tendency of contemplative prayer towards simplicity, as the soul is drawn away from multiplicity of concepts and images towards a dry and wordless absorption in God, and the surface multiplicity of the liturgy with its complexities of ceremonial and chant, its elabore ate and absorbing symbolism, its richness of doctrinal content and conceptual teaching. Yet in such a field, personal attraction cannot be the deciding element; it is primarily from the life and living voice of the Church, and only secondarily from the writings of the saints and the masters of the spiritual life, that we must learn the laws of the interior life.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1956 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Romans xxi, i (Westminster Version).

2 Enarratio in Ps. xlii, n. I.

3 Roman Missal. collect for SS. Simon and Jude, Oct. 28th.

4 English tr. by Canon G. D. Smith, C.T.S., n. 211.

5 ibid., n. 210.

6 Galatians ii, 20(Westminster Version).

7 Romans viii, 14(Westminster Version).

8 Ephesians vi, 18-20 (Westminster Version).

9 Sess. xii, De Sacrificio Missae, cap. 6 (Denzinger 944).

10 1 Timothy ii, 4 (Westminster Version).

11 Ch. 3.

12 See a remarkable article by Mr E. I. Watkin, ‘Praying the Psalms', in Liturgy, July 1952, pp.57-64.

13 Institutes, BK II, ch. 7.

14 For clerics can. 125, 2; for religious, can. 595 1,2; for seminarists, can. 1367, 1. The only indication of duration is ‘per aliquod tempus'.

15 Holy Wisdom, pp. 166-171.

16 Ila-IIae, qu. lxxxiii, art. 9: ‘Oratio … informativa totius nostri affectus.

17 Roman Missal, Postcommunion of Ember Friday in Advent.