Liturgy November
Since we are to bring all men and women to Christ by our lives of total service, we must help them pray; accommodating our prayer to them, we should invite them to participate in the redemptive prayer of praise which we, together with all creation, offer to the Lord of all (Const. 17.3).
There is a sense in which the establishment of Canons Regular in the Church is an error of history. From the beginning of the Church’s practice of liturgical prayer, including the Liturgy of the Hours, the liturgy was considered an act of the whole Christian people. The Christians of the first centuries could not imagine “deputies” to replace them in liturgical prayer. Christians of old felt the obligation to observe the public rhythm of prayer because of their Baptism. Why did the Liturgy of the Hours, in the end, become the prayer book (“breviary”) exclusively of the clergy, and even then of them primarily as individual persons? Why were religious communities like Canons Regular organized to take in hand the celebration of the Hours in their chapels, effectively isolating and replacing the greater ecclesial community at prayer? Perhaps the truest sense, then, of our vocation today as Canons Regular needs to be to guarantee and animate a vibrant liturgy with the local Church and not simply for it.
The cassava bread for the wedding is not prepared by only one woman. (Yaka)
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