Topic: Some theological & liturgical reflections on the “Prayers of the Faithful” at weekend Masses
Source of this posting: Newman Parish bulletin
Date originally posted: December 5, 2001
Moderator who originally posted this source: P.Leach
Question: Why do we almost always have “Prayers of the Faithful” at Mass? What’s the ‘point’ of having them? Is there a ‘right way’ or a ‘wrong way’ that we ought to be offering these Prayers?
Answer:
The Church teaches that the single greatest liturgical privilege of Catholic Christians, incumbent on us by virtue of Baptism, is the priestly responsibility of offering prayer to God for the world and for the Church. We can discharge our obligation to pray for the whole of creation in our personal prayer; or we can write our prayers in the Parish Book of Intentions; or we can speak our prayers out loud in the context of the Sacred Liturgy. God delights in us and in our supplication!
When we choose to say our prayer out loud at Mass, we need to be mindful of the community which we are asking to pray with us. So, spoken prayer, generally, needs to have the following characteristics:
1. We should speak loudly enough for everybody in the room to hear us. (Forcing people to strain to hear often breaks the concentration of our prayerful attitude.)
2. Our prayers should include whole classes of persons rather than being limited to a single individual. (For instance, praying for my friend who has cancer is perfectly acceptable, but I should conclude my spoken prayer by saying something like, “and ALL those who need healing.”)
3. Since God already knows our ‘special intentions,’ those kinds of prayers are usually not especially beneficial to the larger community because we don’t know for what you are asking us to join you in prayer. (For example, “For a special intention” is a perfectly wonderful prayer, but is not essentially communtarian in nature and so can be prayed just as earnestly in the silence of one’s heart.)
4. Most people have some difficulty in focusing on long or convoluted spoken prayers which suggests that if we decide to ask the community to join us in praying, we will do best if we try to keep our intentions short and to the point.
Enlightened and moved by God’s word, the assembly exercises its priestly function by interceding for all humanity. Because “the joy and hope, the struggle and anguish of the people of this age and especially of the poor and those suffering in any way are the joy and hope, the struggle and anguish of Christ’s disciples,” the church prays not just for its own needs but for the salvation of the world, for civil authorities, for those oppressed by any burden, and for the local community, particularly those who are sick or who have died.
Thus, even though the intercessions may be quite concrete or particular in content, they should always look beyond the concerns of the local assembly to the needs of the whole church and of the wider world. As such, they are a sign of the communion of the particular assembly with all other assemblies and with the universal church.
~from the Pastoral Introduction to the Order of Mass, composed for the revision of the sacramentary currently being prepared by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy (ICEL).