Hearing the words through Christ, with Christ and in Christ may bring to mind the moment during Holy Mass when the priest holds aloft the precious Body and Blood of our Lord, it is also the way we experience Christ’s presence during The Liturgy of the Hours.
Dom Marmion, in Christ, the Ideal of the Monk, writes:
We must never forget this capital truth of the spiritual life: all is summed up, for the monk as for the simple Christian, in being united, in faith and love to Christ Jesus in order to imitate Him… He is the center of monasticism as of Christianity: to contemplate Christ, to imitate Him, to unite our will to His will in order to please the Father, that is the sum total of all perfection. The Father has placed all things in His beloved Son; we find in Him all the treasures of redemption, justification, wisdom, heavenly knowledge, sanctification; for us everything lies in contemplating Him and drawing near to Him.[1]
What does this mean? While praying the Hours, our relationship with Christ is developed and deepened. We draw near to His heart, enter in and allow ourselves to be transformed into His image and likeness.
In the Hours, we encounter Christ and pray the same words He prayed. As a faithful Jew, Jesus knew the words of the psalms by heart – the very same words we pray during The Liturgy of the Hours. In so doing, we experience with our Jewish brothers and sisters their covenant relationship with God and the wealth of emotions that relationship entails. And in that experience, we enter into union with Him.
It is also during this time that we lend our hearts and voices to all creation so that it too may join in glorifying God. Of everything that God created, only the human person is able to praise and glorify Him. Only to us has He given the gift of reason and that enables us in turn give thanks for all things in the name of all creation.
Additionally, it is in our prayer during the Hours that we unite our prayer to Christ’s prayer to the Father and make intercession for the needs of the world, of the Church, of those who have asked for our prayer in their needs and necessities, and those intentions we each hold in the secret of our hearts.
May we through The Liturgy of the Hours pray through Christ, with Christ and in Christ so that in God, all things may be glorified (Rule of St. Benedict, Chapter 57).
[1] Marmion, Dom Columba. Christ, the Ideal of the Monk, 6th Edition, B. Herder Book Co., St. Louis , Missouri
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