It is the work of Christ to complete, through the direct teaching of the Holy Spirit, His preached Gospel. Scripture thus in the main tells us what to do, but not how to do it. Scripture gives us the sacraments, but the Church adds their formularies, prayers, setting. The Scripture most often shows us the spirit; the Church describes the body in which that spirit is lodged. Therefore it is that she is denounced by her enemies as something formal, whereas she is but the outward and visible sign of an inward, invisible grace. Because her children are not souls merely, but men, she has to give them not God only or some gifts divine, but all that is sacred tabernacled in its incarnation. So, too, prayer must be a natural, spontaneous act; it must be the free talk between friends, between God and myself. Nor, indeed, is there anything on earth so free as prayer; even the air is only "a chartered libertine." To taste of the joy of life, to feel its rush of pleasure in the spring-time, to know all that is meant in the sheer ecstasy of existence, to take delight in some flower or fruit, to be alive in the sunshine, to experience the relief when duty has been done, or the pleasurable sensation when we have been generous, or to have found once again a friend all this is perfect prayer, prayer unspoken, but fully expressed. But prayer must be of endless variety to suit our endless need. Some times it must be formless, for our whole sensations cannot be formally represented; but sometimes also it must take on forms the stiff, brocaded dignity of life; for these, too, are human, none the less worthy of God because they are wholly the work of man. Those who wish to pray always without form, often end by praying not at all.
There are, then, certain formal prayers which are also required by the nature of man; the Psalms, the Canticles, and the Our Father represent the Scriptural use of this kind of prayer; and the lives of good and holy men have very frequently closed with verses of these upon their lips. Savonarola and Saint Francis sang the Psalms; and as He chanted the twenty-first Psalm, the Master on the Cross bowed His head and died. There can be, therefore, no objection to the mere fact of formal prayers. Acting, then, on the inspiration of the same Spirit through whom the Scriptures themselves became the Word of God, the Church composed her liturgy. In this, as in the Biblical prayers, it is worthy of note that the main method is the prayer of praise. It is this precisely that suffers least from being formalized, since we praise God, not for what is in us and therefore changing, but for what is in Him and therefore unchanged. Hence these can have, without any danger, the impersonal touch which formal prayer must always exhibit: in the Gloria in excelsis we have a very good example of what is meant. This language can be common to the wide world; and since the liturgy of the Church is intended exactly for the devotion of a congregation, it must be composed to suit rather the mass than the individual. It is always, therefore, general rather than particular, and consequently has practically no danger of becoming stilted. For this reason, accordingly, the liturgy of the Church is the one exception to the rule that prayer in order to be really meant should be spontaneous. This, while on the whole true for the individual, is false for mankind generally.
We should, therefore, though there is no compulsion in the matter, be eager to follow the liturgy, by understanding its own words. We become in this way united to the Church Catholic of all tongues, ages, and climes. We find our faith becoming stronger and less timid when it feels itself one with such countless numbers. The sense of isolation, of dwelling as strangers in a foreign land, is lost when we grow conscious at Mass or Benediction or at the reception of any of the sacraments, that we are bridging over all times and places. All the world over, what we see and hear and are saying is being witnessed by others besides ourselves. We are not lonely travellers toiling after some lost trail, but a huge army, whose uniform and whose battle-songs are the traditions of our race. We enter into the inheritance of all the saints. All that is best in literature, art, religion, is swept up and gathered into one the wonder of the Mass, the depth of the Psalms, the night-prayer of Compline, the radiance of the office of Prime, the consoling tenderness of the Office for the Dead. Here Hebrew, Greek, Latin are like three solemn kings who bring their gifts to Christ. Out of all nations have come the creators and preservers of the liturgy; and these bring with them the spirit and the genius of their own peoples. All find there some lot or part in the magnificent yet simple services, the curious, often now unmeaning rubrics that speak as relics of bygone cultures and civilizations, the cumbersome classicalism of Byzantium, the decadent paradox of Carthage, the fantastic interpretations of Alexandria. Yet not the past only is mirrored there, but the present: "French lucidity and German depth, the ordered liberty of England, the flaming heart of Spain."
- text taken from Meditations for Layfolk by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.