Welcome! Holy Communion; Before and After - Tapa blanda

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... PREFACE However sincere may be the often-expressed distaste for artificial forma of prayer, there is, if I mistake not, deep down in human nature a certain instinctive craving for the adequate expression of its needs and emotions. We do not want to memorialise the Almighty in the language appropriate to a civic address, but, on the other hand, we are not always quite content to use the simple formulae or the stumbling improvisations of spiritual childhood. We feel that something more is expected of us--otherwise, why lift our voices in supplication at all to the God who already knows what we crave? Our moods are very various, our thoughts about God and our own souls are often more entangled than our ideas about anything else in the world. The spiritual guide who helps us most is he who can interpret ourselves to ourselves; and to nobody do we feel a deeper gratitude than to one who can put into simple words the vague longings after good which we know not how to utter in any form that satisfies us. Thus our objection to written prayers arises not so much from the fact that reading our petitions makes them unreal, as because we so rarely meet with a book which says just what we want to say, and says it worthily in terms that ring natural and true. After all, the Church has always encouraged the use of forms of prayer--at least to aid and supplement private devotion. During penitential seasons we still retain in our liturgy the traces of an interesting practice of the early ages, which Mgr. Duchesne has aptly designated Voraison collective. In this the President of any Christian assembly after a subject had been announced to the congregation present and a space of time had been left them for private recollection upon their knees, rose to...