I do not know where this comes from. Maybe from Uwe Michael Lang from his book. I found it among some of my papers.
Liturgical prayer is a form of public speech, and hence it
is not surprising that in Christian antiquity, the threefold
officia of classical rhetoric were applied to it as well. The
reasons for this are presented succinctly by Mary Gonzaga
Haessly in her seminal, though virtually unobtainable, work
on Rhetoric in the Sunday Collects of the Roman Missal:
All these devices of the art of language are necessary for us, for
they enable us: to grasp clearly the lessons embodied in the
Prayers (docere); (2) to make these lessons more acceptable to
us through the charm of diction and structure, in a word,
through their appeal to our aesthetic sense (delectare); (3) to
persuade us (movere) to mold our conduct in accordance with
the principles of faith set forth in the Prayers. This explains
why rhetoric is, and must be, found in the liturgy: it is to dis-
pose us to pray "ut oportet," as we ought to pray.
“The liturgy is … a participation in Christ’s own prayer addressed to the Father in the Holy Spirit. In the liturgy, all Christian prayer finds its source and goal. Through the liturgy the inner man is rooted and grounded in ‘the great love with which [the Father] loved us’ in his beloved Son” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1073).
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