Parable and Conscience Meditation November 27

Liturgy  November 27

. . . common prayer, life, and work, must again and again be critically examined in the light of our special sources of inspiration . . . (Const. 8.2).

The list of in the Constitutions of our sources of inspiration include the following:  the Gospel, the Rule of St. Augustine, our traditions, the values of our world and the needs of the Church and society.  We are obliged to take account of this list regularly in evaluating our way of praying the liturgy and our other community prayers.  Evidently our prayer should accord completely with the Gospel:  we pray to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit.  The hymns, prayers, sharing, symbols, gestures and homilies, even if they use sources other than Christian, must be faithful to the proclamation of the Gospel.  The celebration of the liturgy should reflect the ideal of the Rule that asks us to make room for our differences, while maintaining our fraternal union.  With regard to our traditions, during certain epochs the Order has known her own liturgical adaptations, particularly in the Liturgy of the Hours.  This spirit of freedom is encouraged by our current Constitutions  and other documents of the Order.  We are to make creative adaptations to our proper situations as local communities and provinces.  The course and the content of our community prayer should be marked also by the values of our world that accord with the Gospel and by the needs of the Church and society.  Our liturgy should be contemporary.

The one who doesn’t want fruit, rejects the tree.  (Luba)