Apostolate of prayer

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The Apostleship of Prayer ( Fri : L'Apostolate de la Prière) is a by French Jesuits was to start apostolate to Sacred Heart devotion and Eucharistic adoration . This work quickly spread worldwide. According to canon law it is a public association of believers (can. 212-320).

history

In 1844 the Jesuit father François-Xavier Gautrelet, spiritual in Vals near Le Puy-en-Velay , founded the Apostolate of Prayer and directed it until the 1860s. Pope Pius IX supported the work and in 1866 confirmed the first statute. Henri Ramière took over the management of Gautrelet in 1861, made significant progress and published the monthly magazine Messager du Cœur de Jésus - Bulletin mensuel de L´Apostolat de la Prière in Toulouse . for which he wrote until 1884. This magazine had a wide circulation. When the First World War broke out , it appeared in 42 countries and in 26 languages ​​with 3,000,000 subscribers. The Messager became an important publication of the French Catholics in the sometimes heated debate with the anti-church political currents in the last decades of the 19th century. Thanks to Fr. Ramière, the apostolate of prayer spread around the world, and many religious orders with both contemplative and social objectives joined him. At the time of Father Ramière's death, there were 35,000 contact points worldwide with around 13,000,000 members. At the beginning of the 1930s the prayer apostolate had around 30,000,000 members, in Germany - active since the Catholic Day in Würzburg in 1864 - over 500,000. The organs of the association in Germany were the messenger of the Divine Heart , the men's apostolate , Mother's Sunday and wife and mother .

Under the direction of Fr. Luis Martin (1892 to 1906), who was previously the editor of the Spanish edition of the Messager , the apostolate of prayer was placed under the Jesuit order. Pope Leo XIII. renewed the statutes in 1896. In these it was determined that the respective superior general of the Jesuits is primarily responsible for the apostolate of prayer. In practice, he appoints a director general from the orders. The Jesuit General Vladimir Ledóchowski transferred the leadership of the prayer apostolate to Rome in 1926. After the Second Vatican Council , the statutes were confirmed again in 1968, which have been changed in line with the times. In the second half of the 20th century, the work lost its importance in Western Europe, but is still very much alive in the Spanish-speaking world. According to its own information, it now includes 60 million people in 1,600 dioceses.

Practice of the apostolate of prayer

The apostolate of prayer describes itself as "daily prayer practice". Scattered all over the world, believers pray daily on issues that are determined or confirmed by the respective Pope for the individual months (the so-called prayer opinion ). The first concern usually mentions a general ecclesiastical or socio-political topic (for example “family” or “globalization”), the second is particularly dedicated to the young churches in Asia, Africa and Latin America. According to our own understanding, the Pope's apostolate in prayer is both a participation in the needs and concerns of others and a deepening of one's own spirituality. "I look up, I perceive, I involve the others" correlates with "Placing everyday life in God's hands." In this sense, the Jesuit general Hans-Peter Kolvenbach at the time described the apostolate of prayer as the path to holiness for the Christians Third millennium.

literature

  • Otto Syré: Apostolate of prayer. What's this? Introduction to its history - shape - present. Gratzfeld, Butzbach 1982
  • Aloys Van Doren: Apostolato della Preghiera. Il pensiero del S. Padre. Spiritualità AdP, Roma 2002. ISBN 978-88-7357-272-5

Web links

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  1. ^ Confirmation of the statutes by Pius IX. ( Memento from July 7, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
  2. ^ History ( Memento of March 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (English, French, Spanish), viewed April 14, 2010
  3. ↑ Number of members and importance in Germany: LThK Edition 1932, Sp. 318
  4. ^ Peter Hans Kolvenbach: L'évolution historique de l'Apostolat de la Prière ( Memento of March 17, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ^ Statutes of the GA from 1968 (English) ( Memento from September 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 54 kB)
  6. ↑ Apostolate of prayer: This is how prayer works ( Memento of September 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
  7. ↑ Christian life in the sense of the prayer apostolate ( Memento from 7 July 2012 in the web archive archive.today )