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About The Georgia bulletin (Atlanta) 1963-current | View Entire Issue (Jan. 19, 1989)
Page 2 • Faith Today Sacramental time zones By Father Lawrence Madden, SJ NC News Service e who are Ameri cans are notorious for having short memories and for taking greater in terest in the future than in the past. But recently we have begun to learn that contact with our past is essential if we are to be healthy peo ple and live in a healthy society. We are showing greater interest in the history of our country, of our institutions, towns and cities, even our old buildings. We seem to want to understand their meaning and to preserve them for future generations. Religious ritual such as the kind we celebrate in the sacraments also is an activity where the past can be encountered helpfully and creatively. The sacraments, such as baptism and the Eucharist, always encompass three time zones: the past, the pre sent and the future. The sacraments focus in on the presence here and now and the power of the risen Christ. But the sacraments celebrate the present in the context of the past, in an at mosphere of remembrance. Christian liturgical prayer follows Jewish prayer in this regard. Most Jewish prayer began by recounting what God had done for his chosen people in the past. Jewish worship recalled such events as the deliverance from Egypt or the giving of the covenant at Sinai by reading from Scripture. The Jews then gave thanks and praise to God for his mercy and continuing protection. The Jews also thought that as they remembered the events of the past they somehow could take part in them. Remembering made the events of the past present for their spiritual benefit. When Christians assemble to celebrate the sacraments we also begin by reading an account of God’s actions recorded in Scripture. This is done to help us remember God’s loving acts on our behalf, especially the life, death and resur rection of Jesus and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit upon the church. But we also believe that by pro claiming the account of God’s acts in this manner, Christ becomes pre sent in a special way in our midst. So the proclamation of the record of the past is an occasion for a present experience of Christ in our midst. When the assembly celebrates the sacraments such as baptism or Eucharist, it remembers and per forms the sacred words and actions of the past praising God for his mer cy. And the effects of Jesus' saving actions in the past become present for our salvation now. Recalling the past in this way helps us to find deeper meaning in our lives in the present. It frees us into fuller life, a life enlivened by Christ. This remembrance of the past transfers life and meaning to us now. In our liturgical celebrations we remember the past, we affirm the present and we are prompted to look forward with some imagination to the future God wants to bring about. It is a future marked with the char acteristics of God’s kingdom: justice for all, peace for all, love for all. All three time zones — past pre sent and future — are integral to Christian liturgy. We must live in all those zones if our lives today are to have meaning and direction. (Father Madden is director of the Georgetown Center for Liturgy, Spirituality and the Arts in Washington, D C.) Praying the hours away By Father John Castelot NC News Service hen the bishops at the Second Vatican Council were trying to come up with a clear expression of just what is meant by tradition, they found it difficult to put into words. A bishop of an Eastern rite propos ed the notion of tradition as understood in his branch of the church. “For us,” he said, “tradition is the response of God’s people to the word of God in every age.” In other words, it is not something static. Rather it is dynamic, ongoing. One way people respond to God’s word is in prayer. A prayer that ex emplifies this well is the Liturgy of the Hours, the official prayer of the church. With its origins in ancient monas teries, the Liturgy of the Hours has become the daily prayer of the clergy and of countless religious congrega tions of men and women. With some adaptation it also has become the prayer of men and women in all walks of life. As a response to God’s word, it is incomparable. The heart of each of the hours is a group of Psalms. In the Office of Readings (in the early morn ing), one reads a passage of Scripture. The second of the two readings is a selection from the writings of Christian saints and scholars, from Clement of Rome in the first century up to the documents of Vatican II. Usually these selections comment on the Scripture readings — “the response of God’s people to the word of God in every age.” Praying the hours each day one FOOD FOR THOUGHT- Father Robert Kinast says that in the liturgy we discover our spiritual roots, our origins. The liturgy reminds us where we came from and therefore helps us to know who we are now. •The Israelites always recalled their past when they worshiped God. Why do Christians also do this, according to Father Lawrence Madden? •How is the liturgy, with its link to the past, also linked to your future? Second Helpings. Catholic Household Blessings and Prayers is a new book compiled by the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy. The five-part, 400-page book includes daily blessings, morning and evening prayers and bless ings for special times in family life. (U.S. Catholic Conference Publishing Ser vices, 1312 Mass. Ave. N.W., Washington, D.C. 20005. 1988. Hardback, $18.95. Also available from the same office are Daytime Prayer for $6.95 and Night Prayer for $2.95, taken from the Liturgy of the Hours.) has a real sense of being part of the universal prayer of God’s people all over the world, all around the clock. One has a sense too of being in volved in that dynamic process called tradition. While reading the responses of others to God’s word, people are reading and responding to that word themselves and coming to realize just what the author of Hebrew's meant when he wrote, “Indeed, the word of God is living and effective” (Hebrews 4:12). Praying the Liturgy of the Hours is a daily experience of being rooted in the past, responding to God in the present and preparing for the future. It is an experience of fellowship with God’s people in every age, with the biblical authors and the people they wrote about, w ith Christian w'riters of all centuries. All of them have something to say to us in the present. It is an experi ence of history, of our rich heritage, of continuity with the past and of in timate fellowship in the present. In Luke’s “Magnificat” Mary praises God for her present blessings, for doing “great things for me” now and for looking with favor on his special friends, the powerless, the poor and the hungry. It ends with “remembering his mercy, according to the promise to our fathers, to Abraham and to his descendants forever” (Luke 1:49-55). All of history is involved in Mary’s prayer — past promise, present fulfillment and hope for the future. (Father Castelot is a Scripture scholar, author and lecturer.) A meeting place of • friends By Katharine Bird NC News Service T he da}' began with mor ning prayer and ended with evening prayer at " an Eastern Orthodox monastery in Cambridge, N Y , where the Rev. Robert Wilken attended a meeting of the Lutheran- Orthodox consultation. Describing morning prayer, Mr. Wilken, a Lutheran minister and * church history professor at the University of Virginia, said it fit squarely in the Eastern tradition of f spirituality. Presented in four parts, the service was all sung, he said, lasted more than an hour and included lots of '■ incensing of icons. In Rome several years ago, my day also began with morning prayer at the Foyer Casa Unitas, a former hostel for travelers. Held in the hostel’s small jewel of a chapel, morning prayer was very * short. Led by a nun who operated the hostel, it included psalms, a song, a Scripture text and a reading, from a saint or church dignitary. It was simple, informal and beautiful. People today are praying the Liturgy of the Hours, the church’s i ancient prayer, in other settings besides churches and chapels. They are part of what some liturgists t see as a growing trend in spirituality. In Washington, D C., it is not rare to see someone riding the subway flipping from section to section in a prayerbook while saying morning prayer on the way to work. And people pray the Liturgy of the Hours in their homes too, using prayerbooks developed especially for home use. While the unabbreviated form of the liturgy includes prayers for seven different times through a 24-hour period, the prayerbooks for home use often are simplified. Some in clude only morning and evening prayers. Others provide prayers and readings for a number of the hours. For-people at home, this prayer offers advantages, once they get beyond the initial difficulty posed by learning to use an unfamiliar prayerbook. For many people, the prayer offers a few moments of much needed peace before plunging into a hectic day, or a way to unwind before go ing to sleep at night. The Liturgy of the Hours also brings people into contact with man}’ of the vibrant, interesting saints and holy people who preced ed them. Some, like the writer or writers of the Psalms, are anonymous. But their feelings and needs come through loud and clear in the Psalms. They speak of rage at the un fairness of life, of sorrow and of fear, and of delight and praise for the Creator. Others, like the writers of the daily readings, are iden tified. Here we listen to people like St. Stephen of Hungary in the 11th century. He speaks in moving tones to “my beloved son, my heart’s treasure and our hope for future descent.” Stephen, like parents in every age, gives his son advice. He tells him to take care of the church be cause it is “young and a newcomer in our kingdom.” He also tells his son to be kind to strangers, not just ro important people and family. We also meet St. Elizabeth of Por tugal from the 14th century. Married to a king, she has come down in history with the reputation of a peacemaker. She faced the difficult trial of seeing her son and son-in-law at loggerheads. In the 17th century St. Francis de Sales, bishop of Geneva, tells readers to find a devotion suited to their lifestyle. Adding that married people have concerns different from those in religious orders, he says spiritual practices should be accommodated to the “strength, activities and duties” of each person. Reading the Liturgy of the Hours day after day, month after month, people begin to see that the saints and great thinkers of the church had to struggle to make sense of God and their lives, just as we do today. Like us, they too struggled with family and work and friends. We also learn that no emotion, no event, no need is so insignificant that we cannot take it to God in prayer. Gradually, we begin to see that we are part of a suppor tive network of friends and allies reaching back into time. (Ms. Bird is associate editor of Faith Today.) Page 3 • Faith Today TALK FAITH TODAY OVER AT HOME... Faith Today is a religious education supplement that is read at home by countless individuals, at their leisure. Research shows that •couples read and discuss Faith Today •parents pass Faith Today along to their teen-agers •and the Children's Story in Faith Today is read aloud to children. But Faith Today also is put to use by educational groups and discussion groups of many kinds — in parishes, schools, homes. This pull-out supplement is a service of your Catholic paper that supports the ongo ing work of religious educators, covering the major areas of adult religious education today: •Scripture •liturgy and the sacraments •morality and justice •doctrinal matters •faith in the marketplace •and ways to make faith on integral part of homelife. Readers say that Faith Today helps to strengthen their faith and relates to their current life. They find it easy to read and most worthwhile. Watch for Foith Today on topics like these. Read Foith Today ot home. Pull out and save your editions. And put them good use in parish and school groups. 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