Based on your feedback, morning insights are now: "The Cafe"
As I'm working on my book on prayer, I think what I'm seeing is that the Church fathers treat the word "Amen" as a confirmation of a prayer that someone else prays - in other words, when the priest/presider prays a prayer that the lay people do not pray or verbalize themselves (most especially the Eucharistic prayers), then the lay people say "Amen" as a way to acknowledge their participation in the prayer. But if you pray a prayer, saying the words yourself, you don't really need to say "Amen" at the end, since you already said the prayer. So for example, in Mass we say Amen a bunch of times when the priest prays, and of course we have "the great Amen" to assent to the Eucharistic prayers, but when it comes time to pray the Our Father, we do NOT say Amen, because WE prayed the prayer ourselves.
Now, to be fair, we DO say Amen after the Creed, but that was added at the end of the early Church period. And full disclosure, no Church father that I know of actually explains any of this. It's just an observation.
Thoughts...?
Dear friends - Please take 10 minutes to watch this personal update from me:
I mentioned in The Journey that I wrote a song based on Isaiah 2, which is one of my favorite OT passages:
In days to come, the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest mountain, and raised above the hills.
All nations shall stream toward it. Many peoples shall come and say:
“Come, let us go up to the Lord’s mountain, to the house of the God of Jacob, That he may instruct us in his ways, and we may walk in his paths.” For from Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
He shall judge between the nations, and set terms for many peoples.
They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; One nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again. House of Jacob, come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!
I hope you like the song!
I hope to have another installment of THE JOURNEY up this Saturday - here's the text for the rest of the chapter - I didn't bother with the colored text since this is all from the Gospel of John.
