{"id":5872,"date":"2006-01-03T11:42:20","date_gmt":"2006-01-03T11:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/just-because-you-should.html"},"modified":"2006-01-03T11:42:20","modified_gmt":"2006-01-03T11:42:20","slug":"just-because-you-should","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/just-because-you-should.html","title":{"rendered":"Just because you should"},"content":{"rendered":"

Go down and read the thread on the Liturgy of the Hours, particularly the comment by Dominican Brother James Dominic Brent:<\/a><\/p>\n

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When I first started, I ran into the problem that the Psalmist\u2019s mood or prayer often clashed with mine. When I was in a mood for lamentation, the Psalmist was shouting for joy; when the Psalmist was lamenting, I was ready to give praise and thanksgiving to God. Only rarely did the Psalm that was put before me match my mood or state of mind at the moment. How could I persevere in this practice given the routine clash between my prayer mood and the prayer required of me by the Liturgy of the Hours?<\/p>\n

I resolved this question by discovering in the Tradition an extremely profound notion that opened up a whole new level of meaning in the Psalms. I discovered St. Augustine\u2019s notion of \u201cthe whole Christ\u201d. The whole Christ is the body of Christ both Head and members together. The whole Christ is the single organism composed of both Jesus in himself and all those incorporated into Him by baptism (living and dead). The whole Christ is a quasi-person who speaks and acts like anyone else. According to St. Augustine, it is the whole Christ who prays the Psalms. The Psalter, therefore, is first and foremost the prayer that Jesus prays to the Father. Every line in it is \u201cvox Christi\u201d. Thanks to the Holy Spirit who unites us all as members into Jesus, we have access to the voice or words by which Jesus himself prays to the Father (see Eph.2: 11-18). That is what one prays in the Psalms (see CCC 2599 \u2013 2606, especially 2606).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Go down and read the thread on the Liturgy of the Hours, particularly the comment by Dominican Brother James Dominic Brent: When I first started, I ran into the problem that the Psalmist\u2019s mood or prayer often clashed with mine. When I was in a mood for lamentation, the Psalmist was shouting for joy; when…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nJust because you should - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/01\/just-because-you-should.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Just because you should - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Go down and read the thread on the Liturgy of the Hours, particularly the comment by Dominican Brother James Dominic Brent: When I first started, I ran into the problem that the Psalmist\u2019s mood or prayer often clashed with mine. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5872\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}