Wednesday, April 9, 2014

Blessed Maria Angela Astorch...

...is sort of a patron for those of us who not only pray the Liturgy of the Hours but find it to be the primary focus of our spirituality. She is a capuchin nun of the renaissance era who lived in northern Spain. When Blessed Pope John Paul II beatified her in 1982, he referred to her as the "mystic of the breviary", because she was so immersed in the psalms, scriptures, and readings from the Fathers.  I'm looking hard for more of her writings on the Divine Office, but so far have only found this single quote and have no way of knowing how accurate a translation from the Basque/Catalan language it might be.  But it does convey the ideal of praying liturgically with the universal Church until that prayer--the prayer of Jesus to His Father--becomes our own personal prayer as well:
"It happens to me very, very often that, while singing the psalms, His Majesty communicates with me through interior sensations the very thing which I am singing in such a way that I can say that I am truly singing the internal feelings of my spirit and not the composition and verses of the Psalms." - Blessed Mary Angela Astorch