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Chapter 24 - Catholic Prayer and Worship

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Chapter 24 - Catholic Prayer and Worship Chapter 24 - Catholic Prayer and Worship Come, let us sing joyfully to the Lord, let us acclaim the Rock of our salvation. Let us greet Him with thanksgiving. Come, let us bow down in worship, let us kneel before the Lord who made us. For He is our God, and we are the people He shepherds, the flock He guides. (Ps 95:1-2, 6-7) Jesus said: “The hour is coming, and is already here, when authentic worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and truth. God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in Spirit and truth.” (Jn 4:23-24) OPENING 1466. This chapter continues to develop how the Holy Spirit “gives life” according to the Creed. The last chapter explained how the Spirit “gives us life” by uniting us with Christ our Head, and with one another, in the Christian community, the Church. Now we take up a second way the Spirit is life-giving: by inspiring our prayer and sacramental life within that community. Thus we see how the Holy Spirit is the inner dynamic source of both our life in the Church (Chap. 23), and our prayer and sacramental life, which constitute the themes of this and the following four chapters (Chaps. 24-28). 1467. Even the very notion of “sacrament” provides a further connection between these chapters. In the last chapter we saw that both Christ and the Church can in a certain sense be called ‘sacraments.’ Both involve sensible realities which confer grace and which call men to faith and love by accepting Jesus and his Body, the Church. So Jesus in his lifetime called disciples to follow him even unto death, and in love to share his love. Likewise, “by her relationship with Christ, the Church is a kind of sacrament or sign of communion with God and of unity among all persons” (LG 1). Thus, Vatican II pictured the Church as the “sacrament” of Christ, making the Risen Christ present and active among us today. Therefore, the seven ritual sacraments we all know as Catholics must be seen as flowing directly from the broader “sacramentality” of Christ and the Church. 1468. This chapter, then, takes up our basic prayer life as Filipino Catholics. This includes us both as individual persons and as members of the Church who actively take part in its liturgy and share in its sacramental life. The Church’s sacramental life has been radically revitalized as a result of the liturgical renewal commissioned by Vatican II. This “new look” at liturgy and sacraments is the subject matter of this chapter. It forms the 1 indispensable support for the four subsequent chapters which deal with the seven ritual sacraments of the Church. CONTEXT 1469. We Filipinos are “spirit-oriented.” We are noted for our openness to the sacred, the transcendent dimension of life. This natural orientation provides a sound cultural basis for Christian prayer life. It shines through in our natural love for religious celebrations. “Filipino Catholicism has always put great stress on rites and ceremonies. Fiestas, processions, pilgrimages, novenas, innumerable devotional practices, both individual and communitarian, mark the concrete religious practice of most Filipino Catholics” (NCDP 319). 1470. Moreover, much of what the ordinary Filipino Catholic “knows of Christian doctrinal truth and moral values is learned through these sacramental and devotional practices” (Ibid.). For example: • we know God is Creator and Lord of all because we have been taught to ask His blessing on everything that touches our lives: not only our religious statues, medals, crucifixes, rosaries, but our homes, shops, offices and factories, our cars, bridges, ships and ports, our food and crops, our holidays and vacations. • we know Christ is our Savior because we make the novena of First Fridays in honor of his Sacred Heart, and share his suffering and death in the Stations of the Cross, especially every Good Friday; • we venerate Mary as our spiritual mother who intercedes for us with her Son because we meet her in the Panunuluyan and at the Belen every Christmas, and in the Salubong every Easter Sunday morning. We celebrate her month of May with Flores de Mayo, and pray her Rosary throughout the year, especially in October, the month of Our Lady of the Rosary. 1471. Religious rituals and devotional practices, then, play a key role in the faith-life of the Filipino. That is why it is so important to develop a clear and accurate understanding of what constitutes authentic Christian prayer and worship. One practical test for us would be whether we can explain simply, in our own words, what sacraments are (like Baptism, Eucharist, Marriage, Reconciliation), and how they work. Today, significant gains in the liturgy have already been achieved in many dioceses and parishes. For example, almost everywhere Filipino vernacular languages are used in the Mass and in celebrating the sacraments. Many new local hymns have been written and put to music for more active community participation. Lay ministers of the Eucharist have been installed, and prayer and Bible-study groups have multiplied. Perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament has gained new popular support. The “Misa ng Bayang Pilipino” and similar inculturated liturgies are indicative of the concrete advances of the past decades. 1472. Yet the Second Plenary Council recognized that “in the Philippines, worship has unfortunately been often separated from the totality of life” (PCP II 167). Prayer is still often relegated to mere external observance of religious conventions. This is clearly manifested by numerous “Born Again” Filipinos who admit that they were once practicing Catholics, but “never understood what they were doing.” 2 Perhaps the greatest separation is between our prayer/worship on one side, and our moral life on the other. Despite notable efforts at integrating prayer and the thrust for justice, many Filipino Catholics still seem to consider them completely apart. Many are surprised when asked if their Christian Faith and worship enter into their moral decisions. Apparently, they had never thought of it before. If asked how one gains God’s grace, the reply is invariably “through prayer and the sacraments.” To this answer must be added the Gospel stress on simple acts of loving service of one’s neighbor. 1473. Finally, within Catholic Filipino’s prayer life itself there is the gap between private devotions and piety, and the Church’s liturgy which “is often still too formal, too predominantly priest-centered” (NCDP 330). There is an urgent need for greater community participation, inspired by concrete tangible sacramentals such as we have on Ash Wednesday and Palm Sunday. PCP II calls for a “Renewed Worship” that involves the whole of life, including prayer life, popular religious practices, and liturgical renewal (cf. PCP II 167-81). What is needed is a more active, more affective worship that can inspire and lead Filipino Catholics by actual exercise and practice, to ground their personal devotions and piety on Scripture and the Church’s liturgy. EXPOSITION 1474. Following the order of the NCDP, this chapter first takes up the general elements of Prayer, its methods, Scripture base, and the heart and levels of Christian Prayer. A second section deals with Worship, followed by the third on the Liturgy and its essential qualities. The fourth major section explains what sacraments are, their threefold basis in human nature, Christ, and the Church, and how they work through faith toward saving encounters with the Lord. The final section deals with the related themes of Sacramentals and Popular Religiosity, particularly Devotion to Mary, Ang Mahal na Birhen. I. PRAYER 1475. Filipinos instinctively realize the need for prayer. We are brought up in a Christian culture to believe in the God revealed by Jesus Christ, a personal God who personally relates to us by adopting us as his sons and daughters. He calls us to a personal response in faith, hope and love. This personal faith-relating to God is prayer (cf. NCDP 321). Christian prayer, then, is a loving, conscious, personal relationship with God, our all-loving, good Father, who has adopted us through His beloved Son, Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit. It is “intimate conversation with God who we know loves us” (St. Teresa of Avila). Actually, it is the Holy Spirit who brings us into this life of communion and fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ (cf. 1 Jn 1:3; 2 Cor 13:13). Authentic Christian prayer, then, is always Trinitarian, since it is through Christ that “we have access in one Spirit to the Father” (Eph 2:18). 1476. Prayer develops a conscious awareness of our relationship with God. This relationship depends fundamentally on WHO GOD IS, and WHO WE ARE. It grounds several basic types of prayer. As creatures called to become children of God, our prayer is one of adoration of our Creator and thanksgiving to our heavenly Father, whom we petition for our needs. As sinners we pray in contrition for forgiveness from our divine Savior, and offer Him all our thoughts, words and deeds. Thus, we have the 3 basic types of prayer __ adoration, thanksgiving, petition, contrition and offering. They are in no way imposed on us, nor are they simply a product of a particular time, place or culture. Rather they spring from our deepest selves, our kalooban, inspired by God’s Holy Spirit. Prayer can thus be described as the very life of our hearts and souls, to which the Holy Spirit gives life (cf. CCC 2623-39). A. How To Pray 1477. It is natural for most Filipinos to think of prayer primarily in terms of explicit vocal prayers like the Our Father or the Hail Mary, or devotional acts of piety like novenas to the Blessed Virgin Mary or their patron saints.
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