Nothing In Humanity Equals The Grandeur And The Beauty Of The Catholic Liturgy . . .

This Article is taken from VULTUS CHRISTI

As in the Cenacle, the Prayer of the Church is persevering and permanent Prayer, for the clock of time strikes not an hour when Prayer does not spring forth from the hearts of millions and millions of Christians. Literally, that voice of Prayer in the bosom of Christianity is not hushed day or night. As in the Cenacle, the Church’s universal and permanent Prayer is magnificently unanimous, and, it may be added, divinely harmonious.

THE SACRED LITURGY.

Nothing in humanity equals the grandeur and the beauty of the Catholic Liturgy, that is, of the immense concert of organised Prayer in the circle of Christianity, resounding everywhere: The voice of Christ the Head and of His Mystical Body, the Church. The Church prays, at one same time in all parts of the world, by those Members whom she has hierarchically and officially charged with her Prayer. From the rising of the Sun to its setting, ascends that permanent, universal and harmonious Prayer, that is like a continuous aspiration by which the great Mystical Body of Jesus Christ draws to itself, develops and increases incessantly, the Life of Divine Grace, the Life of God in us.

THE ECCLESIA ORANS.

Such is the Church, living like the Cenacle, by Divine Grace as by its own element, and inhaling Divine Grace by the power of Prayer. The more a Christian institution, under whatever form, would represent and express in a more perfect manner the Life of the Church and the Life of the Cenacle, the more it should, like Christianity in the universe and like the Apostles in the Cenacle, immerse itself in Divine Grace and drawing Divine Grace to itself, by the enactment of the Sacred Liturgy and by ceaseless Prayer.

Therefore, all the Religious Institutions that, from age to age, have sprung from the ever-fruitful womb of the Catholic Church, have in this respect been formed to the image of the Ecclesia Orans, the praying Church, as the praying Church herself was formed to the image of the Cenacle.