The Church has assigned to the choir the task of executing, in the name of the congregation, the various parts that are to be sung. These are very appropriately and skillfully inserted in the liturgy of the Mass, for sacred chant produces many wholesome results: it makes divine worship more solemn and more majestic, elevates the mind, exhilarates the heart, renders the disposition more peaceable, inclines to devotion, excites to piety, softens to mildness and compunction of spirit, produces a flow of tears and raises a desire of amendment, enables the soul to soar above the earth and all that is earthly and to lose itself in heavenly meditation.
St. Augustine depicts the powerful impression made by the chant of the Ambrosian hymns upon his soul: 'How I wept, O Lord, amid Thy chants and hymns, greatly moved by the voices of Thy sweetly singing Church! They poured themselves into my ears, these voices, and like drops Thy truth penetrated my heart: the fervor of devotion was awakened, tears flowed, and ah, how happy was I then!"
Thus the chants at the celebration of Mass, by a pleasing variety, drive away weariness and keep the participation of the faithful in the divine service ever on the alert. Formerly, they had a larger scope and were in the form of responsories, or alternate singing, conducted, according to a certain rule of repetition, by precentors and the choir.
Does the prayer for the Queen intend to pray (in our time) for Our Sovereign Lady, Elizabeth II, gloriously reigning, or the current "pretender"?
Does the prayer for the Queen intend to pray (in our time) for Our Sovereign Lady, Elizabeth II, gloriously reigning, or the current "pretender"?
I don't have a Queen.
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