Forgive me for cribbing, but I was reading the
address of our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, from his Wednesday audience this
week. I found it really spoke to me, and
hope it will speak to you:
Like the Apostles, we
too have repeated and we still repeat to Jesus, "Lord, teach us to
pray" (Lk 11:1).
In addition, in order
to live our personal relationship with God more intensely, we have learned to
invoke the Holy Spirit, the first gift of the Risen Christ to believers,
because it is he who "comes to the aid of our weakness; for we do not know
how to pray as we ought," (Romans 8:26).
At this point we can
ask: how can I allow myself to be formed by the Holy Spirit? What is the school in which he teaches me to
pray and helps me in my difficulties to turn to God in the right way? The first school of prayer, which we have
covered in the last few weeks, is the Word of God, Sacred Scripture, Sacred
Scripture in permanent dialogue between God and man, an ongoing dialogue in
which God reveals Himself ever closer to us. We can better familiarize ourselves with his
face, his voice, his being and the man learns to accept and to know God, to
talk to God. So in recent weeks, reading
Sacred Scripture, we looked for this ongoing dialogue in Scripture to learn how
we can enter into contact with God.
There is another
precious "space", another valuable "source" to grow in
prayer, a source of living water in close relation with the previous one. I refer to the liturgy, which is a privileged
area in which God speaks to each of us, here and now, and awaits our
response.
What is the liturgy?
If we open the Catechism of the Catholic Church – an always valuable and
indispensable aid especially in the Year of Faith, which is about to begin - we
read that originally the word "liturgy" means " service in the
name of/on behalf of the people" (No. 1069). If Christian theology took this word from the
Greek world, it did so obviously thinking of the new People of God, born from
Christ, who opened his arms on the Cross to unite people in the peace of the
one God. "Service on behalf of the
people," a people that does not exist by itself, but that has been formed
through the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ. In fact, the People of God does not exist
through ties of blood, territory or nation, but is always born from the work of
the Son of God and communion with the Father that He obtains for us.
The Catechism also
states that "in Christian tradition (the word "liturgy") means
the participation of the People of God in "the work of God." Because
the people of God as such exists only through the action of God.
You can read the rest of his address at the Vatican
website, along with all his addresses. We
are nearing the fiftieth anniversary of the October 11, 1962 opening of the Second
Vatican Council, on which we will enter the Year of Faith. It is worth noting that these are the
reflections the Holy Father is giving us to lead us to grow in that faith.
Monsignor Smith
