In the sacramental liturgy of the Church, the mission of Christ and of the Holy Spirit proclaims, makes present, and communicates the mystery of salvation, which is continued in the heart that prays. The spiritual writers sometimes compare the heart to an altar. Prayer internalises and assimilates the liturgy during and after its celebration. Even when it is lived out “in secret,” prayer is always prayer of the Church; it is a communion with the Holy Trinity.” (CCC2655)
This year (2024) dedicated by Pope Francis to Prayer is a great opportunity for us to explore and deepen the multifaceted and intimate relationship between liturgy and prayer. The topic has been the subject of studies and debates during the time prior to Vatican II and it has continued long afterwards[1]. My perspective will be that of Spiritual Theology.
Personal vs. Private Prayer
Let us address Prayer first. By “prayer” we mean the personal relationship between the faithful and God. Since we are baptised in Christ, we not only relate to Christ the Head, but we also belong to Christ the Body. Therefore, any prayer is a “common prayer”. This is why when the Lord taught us to pray, from the first movement of the prayer He invited us to be aware that we are not isolated individuals. He taught us to say: “Our Father” and not: “My Father”. In this sense we need first to be aware of this dimension in prayer. We are never alone. We belong to Jesus’ mystical Body. We can never dissociate ourselves from our brothers. Even worse, the Lord taught us to ensure this communion with our brothers even before praying: when “you present your offering to God” (see Mt. 5:24), i.e. when you are praying, and you remember that there is something unresolved with your brother, go and fix this first
In this sense wherever any of the faithful is praying in Spirit and in Truth, he or she is praying in Christ, the Truth, and in His Spirit and therefore all of Christ, head and body, is present. In this sense, the hermit in his remote cave in the desert is part of Jesus’ Body and his prayer is always the Church prayer. This is why, traditionally, the vocation for hermitic life has to be first tested in a coenobitic environment to allow true charity to grow.
Fr. Jesus Castellano OCD underlined an important point: the Church is found at the centre of the heart of the person who prays[2]. When we pray in solitude, we are never alone. We could be tempted to transform our prayer into a “private” exercise. It is an illusion to build one’s spiritual life in an isolated individualistic way. It is a temptation, the temptation of the beginner. But when our relationship with Jesus grows, when we are introduced into the mystery of his body, when He allows us to see his presence in each and every one of our brothers and sisters, then charity grows and our prayer embraces all Jesus’ Body, not only the ones who are already in his Body, i.e. baptised, but also all God’s children scattered around the world[3] (see Eucharistic Prayer III).
In this sense, if we want to talk about prayer here, about true prayer, made in Spirit and in Truth, it can never be “private” in the sense that it is about me and my God only.
Ritual Liturgy vs Prayerful Liturgy
When I will talk here about “liturgy” I will be focusing more on the Eucharist. By no means, however, do I exclude all other liturgical forms of prayer.
The temptation, here, is to see and experience liturgy more as a ritual rather than a wholesome divine action. In this sense one would be focusing more on the exterior aspects of liturgy. True worship is “in Spirit and in Truth” (John 4:23-24) says the Lord.
We can face many temptations when we participate in the Mass. These tend to reduce its deep meaning and its fruitfulness. Routine, ritualism, lack of attention, lack of interior recollection, lack of true contemplation[4],… all contribute to our weak spiritual state, and we are all tempted to fall into these lazy attitudes. All these attitudes, coming from the Celebrant as well as from the faithful, diminish the fruitfulness of the Celebration in our life. Vatican II, however, insists on this by saying that the more the Priest is united to the Lord, the more fruitful is his ministry. These are by no stretch of the imagination mere words. In fact, on the day of his ordination the Bishop reminds the priest to pay attention to what he celebrates and also to conform his life to what he celebrates[5].
The priest himself in the Mass has various opportunities to enter into the depths of the worship in Spirit and in Truth. Thus, when he starts the Mass, he first of all “climbs up” to the Altar: “Introibo ad altare Dei” (Psalm 42), when not only does he start the divine action by reminding us about the grace of our Lord, the Love of God the Father and the communion of the Holy Spirit, but then the recollection and examination of conscience, introduce our conscience more clearly into our “inner room” (Mt. 6:6).
Subsequently, for the Gospel we have a procession with the Evangeliarium, which reminds us that the Lord walked among us and is still doing so. Then we greet Him by saying: “Alleluia”. Then this sets the scene for the invocation of the Holy Spirit to listen to Jesus, who during the Proclamation will speak to the heart of each of the faithful present (see Armenian and Byzantine Rites). “He [Christ] is present in His word, since it is He Himself who speaks when the holy scriptures are read in the Church.” (Vatican II, SC7)
Note: There are no transparent windows in a church because the focus is on what is happening inside, on the Lord who comes to meet us. Visible to the eyes of Faith. In ancient times in the second part of the Mass, the Eucharist, the catechumens were sent out and the doors of the church were closed. When Jesus appears to the Apostles in John 20 the doors are closed. It showed that the accounts of his apparition in John 20 were very probably an allusion to the weekly gathering (Sunday).
Note: In the Byzantine liturgy, various times during the Divine Liturgy, the Priest says: “Peace be with you”, which is what the Lord says when he appears to the Apostles in John 20.
Further on in the Mass the major invitation comes to enter into the great mystery of the Liturgy of the Eucharist: “lift up your hearts”. The Priest here, while lifting up his arms should be making an interior movement, and by doing so, attracting and lifting his brothers and sisters to communion with God in the Holy Spirit.
One can continue of course. Hence, after the Consecration, the Priest mystically introduces the three “churches” (church militant triumphant and suffering) into Christ now consecrated and prays for all humanity: he mentions the saints, asking for their intercession; introduces all the faithful and all God’s children; he also mentions all those who have died and are waiting to see God. Then comes the great moment of lifting not only Jesus’ Body and Blood to the Father in the Spirit to worship Him, but also of elevating all the people, all the persons he has just mentioned, who are in Jesus’ Body. He represents Christ the High Priest who alone can lift, through his powerful prayer, all the people of God to God the Father in the Holy Spirit, accomplishing here true worship.
Of course, our weakness makes us perform these acts in a rapid, routine way. But isn’t this Jesus’ Prayer? Aren’t we invited to enter in Jesus and pray with Him and in Him? Isn’t this prayer universal, embracing all humanity, past, present and future? Isn’t this the essence of our prayer? Can any prayer depart from this final movement of elevation and worship that the priest performs “in persona Christi”?
Of course, the Mass continues, and we move on to the Communion rites.
The Our Father here, collectively prayed aloud, acquires its perfect density. It is said together, in the spirit of peace and reconciliation with all our brothers, in preparation for receiving the Bread of Jesus’ Body and Blood.
How do we live this moment of communion? The minutes after it? The recollection within ourselves? The silent contemplation and immersion in Jesus’ love? Do we allow the Lord to act in us in his marvellous silent deep action? Do we give time for his Blood to run in our veins to reinvigorate us? Do we take time, allowing the One who Prays in us, Jesus, to irrigate our body, soul, spirit with his divine redemption, blood, soul, spirit and divinity?
Eating is one thing. Digesting another. Assimilating is yet another thing. And finally acting in Him, becomes quite another thing. This way the Mass is alive, it penetrates us, elevates us, introduces us into Christ. This is the heart of Prayer. This is the core of our day, of our week. This is why the Eucharist is the summit of our day or week, and this is why the Eucharist is the source of our day and week: Jesus is the Source and, in the Mass, we have the opportunity of receiving the entire mystery of Jesus: his Word and his Body.
Digesting Jesus: The Liturgy of the Word
We have just witnessed the core of what prayer is. In fact the Mass with all its divine structure and parts, with all its mystery, with all its capacity of wholesomeness, sets the true tone for any prayer. It is the cerebral spine of any prayer. In it we find, day after day, an infinity of aspects, never boring, never exhausted. Every day it is new, every day one aspect of the multifaceted mystery of Christ shines forth for us. The richness of one Mass, of one Mass only, could be enough to feed an entire lifetime. In it we have everything. We have all of Jesus. It is an open book we are invited to explore, day after day. Nobody can exhaust the width, length, height, and depth of the Mass, because all Christ is there, given to us. The Mass teaches us to pray. The Mass helps us discern what true prayer is. It pushes urges us to come out of ourselves and be placed in Christ. It pushes us out of our comfort zone, it shows us the right “orthodoxy” of prayer.
By contrast, the danger we face is following the Mass as a routine. This first danger is to really not enter into the grace of being recollected during Mass. Yes, there is a grace of recollection given to all of us, priests and faithful, to help our weakness of entering into the great and immense mystery of the Mass. Do we know how to receive this grace? Are we taught how to?
The second danger we face is to eat (manducatio) the divine food offered to us in the Mass but not to digest it. The Mass is so substantial that the great risk and temptation is not to take time to digest it, assimilate it. How sad! How sad!
If we recognise that the Mass is the source of our personal prayer, then we have to question whether there is a real connection between our personal prayer and the Mass. Isn’t prayer first and foremost about receiving? What do we have that we haven’t first received from God? Isn’t it God who starts by giving to us, before asking us to give anything to Him? Isn’t it in the Mass that we find all the richness and food that God wants to give us? How could we start our personal prayer if not by living the Mass first? Living it is first during the Mass, but then follows living it during our own prayer. Our own prayer is a prolongation or extension of the Mass. Being the source of our prayer, the Mass nourishes and directs our personal prayer.
Vatican II, Dei Verbum and Sacrosantum Concilium and Verbum Domini remind us that the Word of God has to be at the centre of all liturgical prayers, but also of our personal prayer. Jesus, indeed, comes at each Mass, in an invisible but nonetheless real way, to speak to each one of us during the Proclamation of the Word. Today, thank God, we talk about the Sacramentality of the Proclamation of the Word (see Verbum Domini, 56). This sacramentality should be lived. The sacrament doesn’t end with the end of the rite. It nourishes the rest of the day. So what Jesus came to tell me, (the Divine Word He came during the Mass to give me personally, in my heart), I need to take time to receive, hear, understand, and listen to Him and put it into practice. Otherwise, how can we talk about a “sacramentality” of the Proclamation? In fact during the Proclamation there is a unique grace for each of the faithful present (and I dare to say: absent). A sacrament is a visible sign of an invisible grace. The Proclamation has the voice of the reader (the visible sign) and has Jesus talking in the heart of each faithful (the invisible grace). Sadly however, the Liturgy of the Word, the sacramentality of the Proclamation, because of human weaknesses, goes by too quickly and we often miss the grace. But isn’t this grace still given to us? Does God take back his graces? Never! We need not miss this grace. Therefore, one can see to which extent liturgy (here the Proclamation) is the source of our personal prayer: we need to pause, to sit down, to open the readings of today’s Mass, and do all that is necessary to receive the Grace the Lord wants to give us today, to nourish us, transform us. Putting into practice his received word is essential. It is not an abstract prayer or contemplation. That would be an illusion. What we need is to do is to listen and put into practice what Jesus tells us today. And each day has its own bread.
Here our prayer finds itself intimately linked to liturgy. One finds it impossible to disentangle them.
As we see, Liturgy with all its richness structures and orientates our personal prayer. The relationship between them is direct; more so liturgy shapes our personal prayer. Jesus comes first, He initiates the dialogue, He initiates our prayer, He talks to us. Without his starting to talk we cannot talk back. He is the first one, the Giver. He is the Source of our Prayer.
Digesting Jesus: The Liturgy of the Eucharist
The second part of the Mass, the Liturgy of the Eucharist has such incommensurable richness impossible to address here in all its aspects: the work of our Redemption is accomplished, Intercession of Christ for the Church made, Praise given, etc. I will only talk about one aspect: the very moment of Communion. Here also, we receive the Sacrament of Communion. We receive all of Christ: body, blood, soul, spirit and divinity. Because of human weakness, we spend very little time allowing Jesus to really nourish us. This is the Sacrament of Sacraments: the entire Jesus himself is received. Who can understand the immense kindness and generosity of God here? The question we ask is: do we really benefit from this Sacrament? Can the three minutes we are prayer after receiving it be enough to allow Jesus to nourish us? No. This is why we should say that liturgy is the source (fountain) which nourishes our personal prayer. Adoration, silent prayer, Jesus’ prayer, contemplative prayer, the arrow prayer, are all a prolongation of our last Communion[6]. We receive Jesus in the Eucharist, we are living Tabernacles, He is stored in our heart, He doesn’t abandon us, He never takes back the grace He has given us. So what we need to do, is to take a silent moment daily (it can be 30 minutes, two 30 minutes, or two x 60 minutes) and enter into our heart – our “inner room” – and open the tabernacle of our heart and find Jesus and stay with Him. This will allow our last Communion to give forth its maximum fruits in our life.
Pope Benedict reminded us of this very deep theological connection between personal and liturgical prayer when he said: “God’s altar is our heart”: ““in the sacramental liturgy of the Church, the mission of Christ and of the Holy Spirit proclaims, makes present, and communicates the mystery of salvation, which is continued in the heart that prays.” Spiritual writers sometimes compare the heart to an altar” (CCC 2655): “Altare Dei est cor nostrum.”“[7] It is also an image used by St. John of the Cross. The reflection between the objective outer liturgy happening at the Altar and the inner one occurring in our heart[8] is something very deep and sheds an incredible light on the baptismal priesthood and the necessity of developing it, and of noticing how it grows with our spiritual growth until it reaches its culmen with a perfect syntony between the two. Here the “fructuosa participatio”[9] reaches its fullness. This area deserves to be studied and developed more.
Conclusion
I do personally believe that not only is liturgy the source and summit of our prayer but also that the Liturgy of the Mass can offer a solid structure for a renewed Spiritual Theology. May this year dedicated to Prayer be an opportunity to each one of us, and also for our catechesis, to revive our Mass and our personal prayer, and live their deep unity. The Mass is the source and the living spring of our personal prayer, and our personal prayer is a living Mass. Of course, it goes without saying that personal prayer and liturgy cannot be separated from our daily life, and from charity. It is charity, by putting Jesus’ word into practice, which makes us grow, which makes Him grow in us and bear divine fruits.
“The liturgy is also a participation in Christ’s own prayer addressed to the Father in the Holy Spirit. In the liturgy, all Christian prayer finds its source and goal. Through the liturgy the inner man is rooted and grounded in “the great love with which [the Father] loved us” in his beloved Son. It is the same “marvelous work of God” that is lived and internalized by all prayer, “at all times in the Spirit.” (CCC 1073)
[1] Jesus Castellano Cervera, “Liturgia y vida espiritual”, n° 27, Centre de Pastoral Litúrgica, 2006. A whole section of the book is dedicated to the topic: “Liturgia, oración personal, contemplación” with bibliography, pp. 265-281. Not to forget the issues of “Cuadernos Phase” 79 and 139, respectively: “Vida litúrgica y oración personal” and La liturgia escuela de oración”. P Jounel, “Liturgia y oracion”, in Cuadernos Phase n° 52, “Liturgia y vida espiritual”, pp.11-20.
[2] “non si può opporre la preghiera interiore, libera da ogni forma tradizionale, «pietà soggettiva», alla liturgia, che è la «preghiera oggettiva» della Chiesa. Ogni autentica preghiera è preghiera della Chiesa: mediante ogni preghiera sincera qualcosa avviene nella Chiesa ed è la Chiesa stessa che prega perché è lo Spirito Santo, che in essa vive, che in ogni singola anima «prega per noi con inenarrabili sospiri”, the quote is from St. Edith Stein, “La preghiera”, pp. 29-30; GDK, 21-22. quoted in Jesus Castellano OCD, “Edith Stein, la preghiera della Chiesa”, (http://www.nostreradici.it/EdithStein-preghiera.htm). See opus cit. Jesus Castellano Cervera, “Liturgia y vida espiritual”.
[3] “in your compassion, O merciful Father, gather to yourself all your children scattered throughout the world” (Eucharistic Prayer III)
[4] See the efforts made by Laurence Freeman OSB to explore a more contemplative Mass and his article: “The Contemplative Parish” in, “Priests & People”, June 2002, pp. 218-222. Translated online here: “La parroquia contemplativa”.
[5] Ordination rite: “Accept from the holy people of God the gifts to be offered to him. Know what you are doing, and imitate the mystery you celebrate; model your life on the mystery of the Lord’s cross.” Also: “they are asked to take example from that with which they deal” (Vat II, P.O. 13).
[6] See “Preghiera del cuore e Messa” in Jean Khoury, “Preghiera del cuore alla scuola di Maria”, Edizioni Segno, 2009, pp. 115-137.
[7] Quoted in: – “Liturgy, school of Prayer: the Lord himself teaches us to pray” BENEDICT XVI, GENERAL AUDIENCE, Wednesday, 26 September 2012.
[8] Regarding the relationship between the external liturgy at the altar and the internal liturgy in our heart see “l fuoco di Maria”, Jean Khoury, “Andiamo alla scuola di Maria, come entrare nel mistero di Maria”, Edizioni Segno, 2009, pp. 244-269. See also : Jean Khoury, « Mary’s Fiery Prayer, Trinity, Altar, Fire and Offering », Amazon, 2018.
[9] Pope Benedict in his different studies and publications tried to deepen the “Fructuosa participatio” suggested more than once in the documents of Vatican II. See “active participation” in Joseph Ratzinger, “Collected Works, Theology of the Liturgy”, 2014, pp. 106-110. Deepening it would greatly serve in the formation of seminarians also. See “La nozione di “partecipazione alla Liturgia” secondo il Vaticano II” in Jean Khoury opus cit. pp. 264-269.
Don’t forget this short impactful Course: Liturgy and Spiritual Life (see the link. You can watch the first hour) If you are interested to know more, please contact us.
Also, you have this book: “Praying the Mass”
Praying the Mass
The goal of this book is to help the faithful to live better the Mass, to enter into the grace of the Mass, to understand what God wants to give us and how we can benefit from the graces of the Mass.
The Mass has everything in it; it is the summary of the Gospel; it is the summary of Jesus’ life; it contains God’s entire gift for us. One Mass would be enough! Its richness is incommensurable. With the help of the great masters of spiritual life like St. Teresa of Avila we can enter more deeply in the Mass and benefit from its immense richness.
Liturgy is Prayer. Liturgy is the norm of Prayer. Liturgy is the source and summit of our prayer. Have we explored the depth and richness of Liturgy? We often remain fixed on the exterior acts of worship and forget that true worship is “in Spirit and in Truth” (John 4:23-24), that we have an altar in our heart because of the Baptismal Priesthood and that we are called to participate in the Mass in a deep and way.
St. Teresa of Avila teaches us contemplation –i.e. God’s intervention in our prayer which elevates us in Him– but she recommends a more perfect prayer, a prayer which unites “vocal prayer” and “mental prayer” (the Prayer of the Heart). We can say the same about liturgy: to live liturgy in a more perfect way we need to unite the exterior rites with an inner participation which leads to true contemplation.
This book is composed of various articles published on the website of the School of Mary (www.schoolofmary.org). One might find some repetitions, but in spiritual life, repetition is always beneficial.
1- The Specificity of Christian Prayer
2- The Immersion in the Trinity
3- Liturgy as Prayer
4- Two Types of Contemplation
5- Lectio Divina and Contemplative Prayer According to Carmelite Spirituality
6- Raising Awareness of the Liturgy of the Word
7- Proposal for a Celebration of the Liturgy of the Word
8- Prayer of the Heart and Communion
9- Transfiguration and Mass
10- Mary’s Fiery Prayer