Next: Liturgical Prayer, the Rule Up: Prayer Previous: The Prayer of Jesus Contents
The distinction between mental and vocal prayer is very theoretical. For the ancients, psalmody was the natural expression of interior prayer, “the psalmody of the soul”.
The prayer of the Church was formed in convents. It provided an admirable rhythm for the day and night of a monastic community. The people did not participate in it except on Sundays and feast days; this imposed on the laity an effort to interiorize it in order that they might find themselves in the same prayerful rhythm through their hours of work and toil in the world.
In the beginning, the eucharist was celebrated only on Sunday, the day of the Lord. The weekdays brought matins, vespers and the other hours, following the prayer of the synagogue. It was a prayer of praise extended throughout the week, and a thanksgiving inspired by the mirabilia Dei [wonderful deeds of God].
The blessing on the day means that each day man restores to all things their biblical meaning: to be creatures of God, destined to praise him. “Not rendering evil... but contrariwise blessing, for unto this were you called.”22.72
In the evening, the blessing on the night expresses the astonishment of man that, in spite of his failures, he is still living and can thank God for having helped him. The day just spent is thus presented as a particle of sacred history, of the divine economy of salvation in which man has accomplished the task entrusted to him by God. It receives an accent of eternity, and as the ear of wheat, it carries the sun in each of its grains and bends under the weight of its own fullness.
Terce, Sext, None, marking the [third, sixth, and ninth] hours of the day [i.e., of daylight], effect a triple return to God in the midst of human occupations, a pause that opens time upon its liturgical and heavenly dimension. The offices of Prime and Compline, which begin and end the day, have their last chord in the middle of the night with the Nocturns, which are the vigils of the spirit, the watchful waiting of the wise virgins in order not to forget themselves and not to forget the bridegroom who is already coming and is now at the door.
St. John Chrysostom speaks profoundly of the Christian house as a place of prayer that makes it an ecclesia domestica. “Let your house be a church; rise in the middle of the night. During the night, the soul is purer and less heavy. Adore your master. If you have children, wake them and let them unite with you in a common prayer.”22.73 Even those who waste time or kill it are included in the vigils of those who pray in this way. They present to God men's cares and their thoughtlessness, their suffering, their sorrows and their joys. Every instant of our time is rejuvenated and refreshed by this contact with the ardor of those praying. The wild movements of the hands of the clock stop at the immovable noon of love, and on the dial of the liturgical mysteries time is reordered and redeemed. Time is directed toward its own end. Each of its rhythmic moments appears full of meaning and creativity; it preaches and sings of the kingdom.