A particularly wonderful and challenging (and much needed on my part) post by Rachel Fulton (ie Fencing Bear at Prayer):

‘The first thing to realize about praying the Hours is that it is not about me or you or our precious interior feelings, but about God. It is, as Taunton so aptly put it, about praying Christ’s prayer to the Father, about “putting on” Christ and becoming his mouthpiece. We pray “through Christ” because we are praying the words Christ used to pray, particularly the psalms. From this perspective, it doesn’t really matter whether we feel anything at all, mystical, meditative, contemplative or otherwise, so long as we are praying with our mouths and our full attention. The point is for the Church–that is, all of us, not just the institution–to be “[praising] the justice of [God’s] decrees,” as the psalmist puts it, “seven times each day” (Psalm 119:164).’

Read the rest: The Work of God.