12 October 2009

prayer as product of the church

"Even if [the Christian] does not use a traditional formula like the Lord's prayer or the 'Glory be to the Father', he prays within a whole framework of Christian ideas received from others. When his prayer is most spontaneous and from his own heart, the belief according to which he prays, the general type of his prayer and much--probably most--of his actual phrasing are actually drawn from what he has learned from others--his teachers, Christian services he has attended in the past, his mother, his Bible, many different sources. Ultimately it all comes to him, even the use of his Bible, from the tradition of prayer evolved in the worshipping church."

-Dom Gregory Dix, The Shape of the Liturgy

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