Denver’s very own Cardinal Stafford sat down with The Pillar to reflect on the Liturgy of the Hours, prayer, the Church, his own ministry, and a path towards renewal in this apostolic age. This interview comes ahead of a free online lecture, sponsored by the St. John Vianney Seminary Lay Division and titled “The Canticle of Praise: The Liturgy of the Hours and Parish Life,” that the Cardinal will be giving on Saturday, August 27. For more information and to register for the free lecture, visit the event page.
“The Liturgy of Hours was a way of the imitation of Christ and he was the only one that I considered to be a model of what it meant to be God’s child, God’s beloved son,” said Cardinal Stafford to The Pillar. “We have lifted [our hearts] up to the Lord, but that lifting up is something that we have to repeat throughout the day if we are following Christ. And it’s not onerous when you love Christ to follow him in his prayer life.”
Cardinal Stafford was sure to emphasize the intention of the Liturgy of the Hours upon its renewal in 1971, with the publication of Canticum laudis, the apostolic constitution that promulgated the revised breviary. “The Church is saying these hymns, these songs, 150 of them, have a place for all of the sorrows and joys of the human heart, the penance and the tears, and the clapping of hands and the kneeling down before God in joy in adoration. It taps every emotion in the human heart, and it did for me,” he said to the Pillar. “So I guess the Church was searching for a way to put joy into our hearts again. The Church renewed in us a prayerful way of expressing all of that. And of course, not only through the liturgy of the hours, also through the other great liturgy, especially the rediscovery of the liturgy of the Eucharist. I think Paul VI was definitely saying, and all of the folks that followed him, that we have to rediscover joy.”
Read the full article on The Pillar’s website here.
For more information and to register for Cardinal Stafford’s upcoming online lecture on the Liturgy of the Hours, titled “The Canticle of Praise: The Liturgy of the Hours and Parish Life,” visit the St. John Vianney Seminary Lay Division’s event page.