![]() ![]() When we respond to the cantor, we have an opportunity to foster meditation on the Word of God through repeating one thing drawn from the readings or the purpose of the celebration. Let’s turn the Psalms into our vocabulary for prayer and for life. It’s not just the psalm today that helps us to pray and pray well: the psalms are a school of prayer that should shape all our conversations with God and all life’s aspirations. Sometimes they serve to sober us or cheer us when the reasons for our happiness or discomfort are superficial. The psalm enables us to go beyond our own prayer to that of the Church’s: we join our hearts in joyful psalms to everyone with cause for rejoicing and join our hearts in psalms of supplication with everyone suffering trials and in need of consolation. ![]() ![]() Sometimes our moods or concerns may not reflect what we’re saying in the psalm: they could be joyful and filled with gratitude when we are suffering and in need of consolation. Through our liturgical prayer, the whole Church prays to God. In this moment the cantor leads the faithful praying to God, and even the priest or bishop celebrating responds: together all of us gathered in worship praise God through the psalm, and we become the chorus of that prayer through reciting or singing the refrain. Why not sing the whole Psalm? The cantor singing the Psalm (or the lector reciting it) gives us another opportunity to meditate on how the Church raises her voice to God: what does she ask for? What was she praising? Many of the hymns we sing in Mass are inspired by this: the psalm is not only something addressed to the listeners by the cantor, but a prayer addressed to God. Through the First Reading, we’ve been listening attentively to the Word of God, and the Responsorial Psalm gives us our turn to respond. They’re a proclamation of the Word of God in which the listeners also participate through the refrain ordinarily taken from the readings of the day.Ī prayerful response to God after hearing His Word In reciting them, we take up formulas of worship that were used by the Jews in the Temple centuries before the coming of the Messiah. The psalms are older than Christianity itself. We go from the simple “the Word of the Lord…Thanks be to God” to a more specific invocation and petition usually inspired by the readings. It begins with the Introductory Rites and ends with the Concluding Rites.Īnother way of dividing a Mass is into its "ordinary" parts-those texts which, with some variations, are part of the Mass on a daily basis-and its "proper" parts-the texts of prayers and selection of Scripture readings proper to the specific feast, feria or other occasion being observed.After the First Reading, the Liturgy of the Word continues with the Responsorial Psalm. In the Roman Rite, the Mass is made up of two principal parts: the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist. ![]()
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