Who Am I?

Jesus Creed 20 – Abiding in Jesus

Posted: September 29th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: The Jesus Creed | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Jesus Creed 20 – Abiding in Jesus

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Love the Lord you God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind, and with all your strength.
The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.

This is a series of reflections on Scot McKnight’s book, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others. It’s a book I unequivocally recommend for anyone. Each chapter opens with recommended Gospel readings. The readings for this chapter are: Luke 10:38-42; John 15:1-17.

Scot begins with the idea that proper posture is important. There is no better place to abide in Jesus than at his feet.

God’s love for us in Christ is like a cellular connection: It is constantly available. He calls us to sit at his feet, attend to him, and absorb his life and love for us. How might we attend to Jesus so we have constant access to his love and life?

I do agree that we are called to union with Christ — that is our salvation. And I agree that such union is only possible when we assume a posture of humility. Moreover, Jesus is our only source of life and if we are not willing to receive our life from him, we have no life. However, the image of sitting at his feet is the image and posture of a student learning from the teacher. Jesus is the Teacher. That is certainly true. But as the gospel reading in John says, he is also the Vine. Posture is important, but as with all our metaphors, it falls short of capturing the fullness of the reality.

McKnight answers the question he asks above with the following three ways.

We can best attend to Jesus in at least three ways: listening to the Word, participating physically in worship and the sacraments, and engaging in Christian fellowship.

I don’t really disagree that those are three ways. Certainly the sacraments or mysteries sustain our union with Christ. But what about prayer? Fasting? Almsgiving? I don’t think abiding in Christ can be reduced to any three activities just as no one metaphor suffices.

Every time we fellowship with other disciples, we are in the presence of Jesus, and he is in our presence. What I mean here by ‘fellowship’ is any connection of Christians where, because they are together, they are in the presence of the Lord. Because the church is the body of Christ, each gathering of believers offers a whisper of his presence or the lingering aroma of his fragrance. This means that when we are in fellowship with others, we are actually attending to Jesus.

McKnight does bring Brother Lawrence into his discussion of abiding, so he recognizes the importance of continual prayer.  This was a hard chapter to summarize in any meaningful way. I suppose if he had really tried to delve deeply into the topic of abiding in Jesus, it wouldn’t have been a chapter. It would have been a whole book in its own right.


Four Hundred Texts on Theology (Third Century) 4

Posted: September 16th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: St. Maximos the Confessor | Tags: , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Four Hundred Texts on Theology (Third Century) 4

8.  If we perceive the spiritual principles of visible things we learn that the world has a Maker. But we do not ask what is the nature of that Maker, because we recognize that this is beyond our scope. Visible creation clearly enables us to grasp that there is a Maker, but it does not enable us to grasp His nature.

I think this is a particularly important point today. It is possible and reasonable to move to a position of general theism simply from our observation of the nature of reality. But that will not and cannot reveal the Father to us. We know the Father in and through the Son and to know the Son, we must experience his reality. Knowledge about him, even knowledge as revealed in the Holy Scriptures — even the Gospels themselves — is insufficient.

I’m drawing a mental blank on who said it, but I recently heard an excellent analogy. Picture the greatest modern authority on Abraham Lincoln. He’s read everything Abraham Lincoln wrote. He’s studied everything recorded by anyone who ever encountered Mr. Lincoln. There’s nothing about Lincoln that our hypothetical historian hasn’t uncovered, studied, and absorbed. He can safely say that he knows more about the 16th President than any other living person. Such a man would still not know Abraham Lincoln as well as Mrs. Lincoln did. In fact, he would be in position to say something like, “From everything I know about Mr. Lincoln, he was a great man. I wish I could have known him.”

How do we know Jesus? Experientially and mystically. We know him through his body, the Church, particularly when we are joined to it in Baptism. We experience him when we eat his body and drink his blood. We mystically commune with him in prayer. We know him as a bride knows her bridegroom.

Our observation and study of the material realm is important. It’s something we are created to do. In certain instances and with some people, such study can help us perceive that their may be a Creator or Maker. (Or it may not. Both are reasonable positions.) But Christianity says our God became flesh, became one of us in every way, so that we could truly know him and commune with him in the most intimate way. I think too many people today settle for knowledge of God rather than knowing God.


Saturday Evening Blog Post – August Edition

Posted: September 4th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Misc | Tags: , , , , , , | Comments Off on Saturday Evening Blog Post – August Edition

For this month’s edition of the Saturday Evening Blog Post, hosted by Elizabeth Esther, I’m breaking the rules and choosing several of my short reflections on some of St. Maximos the Confessor’s Texts on Love. (The texts are also called his Centuries on Love since he wrote four hundred of them.) There were several in August that I would like to share. Unlike my usual walls of text, these are pretty short reflections. I hope you find them helpful or interesting in some way!

Thanks for visiting. And if you are reading this and haven’t checked out the Saturday Evening Blog Post, I encourage you to do so. There are some pretty interesting people who participate.


The Jesus Creed 4 – The Jesus Creed as a Table

Posted: August 16th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: The Jesus Creed | Tags: , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Love the Lord you God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind, and with all your strength.
The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.

This is a series of reflections on Scot McKnight’s book, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others. It’s a book I unequivocally recommend for anyone. Each chapter opens with recommended Gospel readings. The ones for this chapter are: Matthew 11:16-19; Mark 2:14-17; Luke 19:1-10.

Tables create societies.

That’s the provocative sentence which opens this chapter. Reflect on the statement. Read the gospel readings. (Those are three of my long-time favorites, but we don’t seem to talk about them very often.) Consider sociological contexts. Consider your own experience. Scot McKnight continues with an amusing example, but we should have little problem coming up with many of our own. There is something about the way we gather together in so many ways to eat and drink. Something light … and something darker.

Tables can create societies; they can also divide societies.

There is something intimate about sharing a table. We may have masked some of that in our American culture (though it’s not hard to see glimpses if you look), but other cultures still clearly expose that reality in their approach to the question of who could eat at the table and how the meal is conducted.

Jesus used his table to create an inclusive society. And it was a society his contemparies understood as dangerous. In his culture, table customs were often used to measure Torah commitment. And they denounced Jesus. ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard.’ The accusation is more than it first appears. It is a precise quotation of an ancient Israelite law book … and it is pinned to Jesus’ lapel because of his table customs.

Tables don’t become walls strictly through meanness or evil intent (though the laws/customs of segregation certainly contained both). The Pharisees cared so much about those with whom they ate, making their table into a very high wall indeed, because “they were zealous in their commitment to how they thought the Torah should be applied.” It was a wall between the observant and the non-observant, sometimes even the accidentally non-observant. They would often refuse to eat or drink with anyone but other Pharisees.

But for Jesus the table was to be a place of fellowship and inclusion and acceptance… Jesus’ attitude gave him a bad name. For his custom of including all at the table, Jesus was called a ‘glutton and drunkard.’ This expression points to a legal charge against Jesus. The accusers of Jesus use the specific language from a passage regulating how parents are to make legal charges against a rebellious son. Parents are to take the son to the elders and say, ‘This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then they are to stone the rebellious son to death in order to purge evil from the community. Yikes!

Yikes, indeed! Of course, I was already familiar with the law in question. It’s in that largish category of Old Testament things I don’t understand and have difficulty reconciling, but mostly don’t much worry about. I do know it’s abused still today as an excuse to cast kids out (perhaps not actually stoning them, but not dissimilar in some ways). But that does provide a certain gravitas to the charge, one that is otherwise completely lacking in our cultural context. It’s only as I have been increasingly able to better understand the table in Jewish society (and lots of sources have helped me in that regard), that I’ve been able to understand the depth and intensity of these exchanges. And reflections on this law help me better understand the father in the prodigal son. Given the treatment of sons like the prodigal, it’s likely the father’s urgent concern for his son and need to reach him before anyone else in the community that has him racing down the road to him in a manner most unbefitting his station. As a prodigal of sorts I’m grateful that was the Father’s reaction to me. As a father myself, that’s the response I deeply understand. It matters little what my children do. I would never be able to stone them.

We can now put together our first few chapters. Jesus teaches that the center of life before God is the Jesus Creed. When the Jesus Creed turns into prayer, it becomes the Lord’s Prayer; when it becomes a story, it becomes the Parable of the Prodigal Son. And when it becomes a society, it becomes the table of welcome around Jesus.

Hmmm. If that’s the measure of the society created around Jesus, how well do our churches hold up. Sometimes pretty good, but much of the time? I think less so.

The observant person’s table story: You can eat with me if you are clean. If you are unclean, take a bath and come back tomorrow evening. Jesus’ table story: clean or unclean, you can eat with me, and I will make you clean. Instead of his table requiring purity, his table creates purity. Jesus chooses the table to be a place of grace. When the table becomes a place of grace, it begins to act. What does it do? It heals, it envisions, and it hopes.

At his table, or by bringing them to his table, Jesus heals those who are spiritually or socially sick. He restores people to society. The table also envisions. “Jesus table fellowship actually creates a new vision of what Israel means and is to become. … ‘Israel’ now refers to those who love God by following Jesus. ‘Israel’ describes those who are spiritually attached to Jesus.” At the demonstrable, physical level, what our churches saying?

And finally, McKnight explores how the table hopes or anticipates the Age to Come. “sharing table with Jesus is a foretaste of the Kingdom of God for each of us.”


The Jesus Creed 3 – The Abba of the Jesus Creed

Posted: August 13th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: The Jesus Creed | Tags: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.
Love the Lord you God with all your heart,
with all your soul,
with all your mind, and with all your strength.
The second is this: Love your neighbor as yourself.
There is no commandment greater than these.

This is a series of reflections on Scot McKnight’s book, The Jesus Creed: Loving God, Loving Others. It’s a book I unequivocally recommend for anyone. Each chapter opens with recommended Gospel readings. The ones for this chapter are: Matthew 6:9-15; Luke 15:11-32.

My father golfed only occasionally, but one time he told me this golfing truth: ‘If you hit the ball straight, you will have better scores.’ The problem with truths, of course, is absorbing them into the core of our being so that they can shape our lives. Even today, when traipsing through weeds off the fairway or poking my club into some pond to retrieve a ball, I recall that little golfing truth my father told me.

He was, and is, right.

The most important divine truth ever given is far truer and even more difficult for us to absorb than a simple golfing truth. From Moses to Malachi and from Jesus to John, the Bible witnesses to this elemental truth: God loves us. He loves you, and he loves me — as individuals. This big truth needs to be absorbed into our beings.

God’s love is an easy creed to confess but difficult to absorb.

I’ve opened simply with a quote from the beginning of the chapter because that truth strikes me as so utterly foundational. He is a good God who loves mankind. The words and actions of far too many Christians say many things about God that stray from that simple statement. We need to be reminded. And we need to say it until we believe it.

There are many studies and articles today about ‘fatherless’ men (and women) and the way that experience shapes their lives. I would contend that, given the clear teaching and example of Jesus, no Christian can truly be ‘fatherless’, whatever their situation with their earthly father. Does that mean people can’t carry wounds, even deep wounds, from those (father, mother, or whoever) who should have loved us and cared for us, but didn’t? No! Of all people, I would certainly never minimize or denigrate that pain. But we are the people who should know this truth in our bones. We have an Abba who loves us, who will never abandon us, who will never hurt us, and who can heal us. It is because Abba loves us that we are able to love him and love others. Yet this can be a very hard truth to absorb and and a difficult reality in which to trust.

The Jewish people at the time of Christ did have a concept of God as a loving and protective father. It was not a completely new or alien concept to them as I’ve heard some modern Christians erroneously assert. But they rarely addressed God as “Father” in prayer, which Jesus almost always did. (Scot McKnight says the only exception is the ‘My God, My God’ exclamation on the cross.) Jesus also taught, even commanded us, to address God as Abba as well.

What Jesus wants to evoke with the name Abba is God’s unconditional, unlimited, and unwavering love for his people. In this name for God we are standing face-to-face with the very premise of spiritual formation: God loves us and we are his children.

McKnight describes this love as one which originates in the home where an Abba dwells. He also describes the home as the place our first understandings of God begin which are ‘transfers’ from both parents to God.

We are wired this way. This is not something we do rationally and intentionally. It is something we do instinctually.

Grant me this point, and I’ll give you one back: since none of us has perfect parents, none of us has a perfect sense of love to transfer to God. In fact, some of us — and I say this with the empathy of someone who has heard students’ stories for two decades — had awful childhoods, and just thinking about God’s love is confusing, bewildering, and nearly incomprehensible.

The point he makes strikes me as deeply important. I have to say I’ve never considered my childhood ‘awful’, though it seems those who hear me describe some of the more dramatic parts of it do. Now this is not because I’m in denial about the reality of my childhood. There’s a lot of it that was, at times, distinctly unpleasant. But it rarely devolved to something ‘awful’ and my overall sense has never been that it was ‘awful’, though there are times I’ve wondered why myself.  I think that’s because there were almost always multiple adults around me who genuinely and deeply loved me. And I knew it. There is something richly nourishing about being loved, whatever your other circumstances might be. Apparently it is even able to temper some pretty difficult and painful experiences. In fact, despite the overall stability and even prosperity of some people’s childhood, if love had to be earned, I think their experience was in some ways much worse than mine. Even so, McKnight’s overall point is granted. My path to full conversion was … circuitous and difficult.

McKnight then explores how the parable of the prodigal son is what the Jesus Creed looks like as a story. He notes something critically important — Jesus offers this story as his justification when asked why he eats with sinners.

He justifies his love for others (the second part of the Jesus Creed) by appealing to an Abba who is the focus of the parable.

McKnight then explores how central absorbing this truth and knowing or experiencing our Abba’s love for us is to all healing and spiritual growth. Trust. Abiding. Surrender. All that and more requires that we be open and receptive to that love. And then McKnight wrote something that resonated deeply with my experience and practice at the time I first read it and which still marks my life today.

Another way to open up to Abba’s love is to repeat throughout the day a short prayer reminder: ‘Father, thank you for loving me.’ The wisdom of short — sometimes called breath — prayers has been planted in the church, in the pages of the Bible, and in the lives of spiritual advisors.

And finally, McKnight closes the chapter with this.

The Jesus Creed is to love God, and the premise under the Jesus Creed is a promise of truth: Abba loves us.


Praying with the Church 11 – Following Jesus Daily, Hourly, Today

Posted: August 6th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Praying with the Church | Tags: , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Praying with the Church 11 – Following Jesus Daily, Hourly, Today

These are reflections on Scot McKnight‘s book, Praying with the Church, that I wrote and shared with a small circles of friends in 2006. I’ve decided to publish them here only lightly edited. Since they are four years old, they don’t necessarily reflect exactly what I would say today, but they do accurately capture my reaction at the time.

This is the concluding chapter of the book and in it Scot ties the threads of the book together. He begins by reminding us of the two kinds of prayer: “personal, privation devotion — praying in the church; and public, communal worship — praying with the church.” The focus of this book has been the latter. So how do we, as individuals in our own contexts, adopt this practice? Scot offers some suggestions.

First, we need to have realistic expectations. It’s unlikely that any of us can thoroughly revamp the order of our lives instantly and dive into an observance of all the offices of the Liturgy of the Hours on day one. If you have a personality at all like mine, it can certainly be a temptation to try. I took his warning here to heart. It spoke right to me. That’s why I’ve moved slowly and thoroughly examined each practice I have adopted or modified. And I’m in no rush to add more. First I feel a need to allow the ones I have so far attempted to speak into and reshape my life to the extent they will. And then move to the next. The goal, after all, is not to achieve some herculean pinnacle of effort, but rather to change ourselves into people of prayer, which I take to mean people shaped and ordered by the rhythms of the sacred.

However, this is balanced by its counterpoint. We have to try. If we attempt nothing, we will not progress at all. Whatever approach we choose, we must try something or we will stay where we are today. I suppose if you’re completely satisfied with your present prayer life, that would be OK. I guess. I do wonder, though, if Jesus would expect us to follow him in some sort of sacred rhythm of prayer as well as our own private prayers of intercession, devotion, and simple relationship. This is, after all, the way he lived and the way he taught. Who understands us better? It’s the same sort of reaction I have to those who speak dismissively or negatively about liturgy. The only example we have in scripture of an order of worship given directly by God is deeply liturgical and symbolic. Might that be because God knows us better than we know ourselves? And in truth, every worship I’ve seen falls into liturgical patterns even if the word is avoided. How much uproar was there in our church when we moved the offering to the end of the service? That was a change in our liturgy. I think we are too dismissive of these sort of things. And we are dismissive because our view of the nature of people is not correct. But that could be just me.

Scot’s third point is that we must have space for silence. While the prayers can be said anywhere, we should establish a place that can become our sacred space of solitude and silence and prayer. I’m reminded here of the Celtic Christian tradition of “thin places” where the veil between heaven and earth is worn thin. By returning to a single place, it becomes a place where the presence of the invisible and spiritual can be sensed. As in Psalm 131, it becomes a place where we can truly quiet our soul. And we must become quiet. For prayer is not just about speaking. It is about being open and sensitive to God as well.

For his fourth point, Scot recommends variety and flexibility. I tend to think is a concession to the sort of people we have been shaped to be by our present American culture. However, it’s a concession that in no way bothers me. Sometimes we just have to recognize who we are, and most of us are people who will turn from a discipline of prayer and damage our prayer lives if we find it dull and inflexible. I strove to follow the “Baptist” ideal of quiet time and prayer for several years. (I tend not to expect instant results, so give such things time.) And it started fine, but fairly quickly became oppressive in its strictures and stayed that way however I tried to vary it. Such has not happened at all with those disciplines I have so far adopted in this tradition, even though on the surface they might appear dull and repetitious. Instead they are shaping my life in ways that was not true of the more intellectual and less ordered Baptist discipline. Perhaps this is a distinction between those still shaped by the Enlightenment forces of the last couple of hundred of years and those of us less shaped by them? I don’t know, but I do think it’s possible.

I like Scot’s rule: “Avoid making rules about prayer.”

His fifth observation is that we need depth and breadth. Take a deep bath in a prayer book or a specific tradition. Give it three months to a year. This one is second nature to me. I forgot it was even in here. Further, I thirst for breadth of understanding. Scot points out what I have found to be true. No practice or discipline yields instant results. But over the course of months or years an effective discipline will anchor itself in the very fabric of our being.

The sixth observation is that we need to know what to say first, words of adoration and dedication. And that is how all the prayer books open each time of prayer.

Seventh, we need to use the Psalter. Of course, all prayer books use it, so if we use a prayer book, we will use the Psalter. Even without a specific prayer book, we must bathe ourselves in the Psalms. Billy Graham did, reading all the Psalms every month. And if we don’t read all the offices of the prayer book, we may want to add to what we do incorporate the rest of the Psalms.

Eighth, we need to recite the Lord’s Prayer and the Jesus Creed every day. This is also a great place to begin. Other than the Jesus Prayer, this is the part I have already begun. It’s not enough to have their words stored in our memory. We need to say them out loud to make them a part of our being, part of who we are.

Ninth, we need hymns and readings. The Church has loved to sing and the Church has produced great writings through the ages, wisdom from which we can benefit. Both practices are important to maintain.

And so Scot closes with an invitation for us all to join with the Church in the basilica in prayer, adoration, and reverence of our Lord.


Praying with the Church 10 – How the Divine Hours Prays with the Church

Posted: August 4th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Praying with the Church | Tags: , , , , | Comments Off on Praying with the Church 10 – How the Divine Hours Prays with the Church

These are reflections on Scot McKnight‘s book, Praying with the Church, that I wrote and shared with a small circles of friends in 2006. I’ve decided to publish them here only lightly edited. Since they are four years old, they don’t necessarily reflect exactly what I would say today, but they do accurately capture my reaction at the time.

Scot next explores a modern prayer book called the Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle. Here is the online site: http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/

Scot opens with the most common complaint about prayer books, “that one has to have five or six ribbons, a couple of bookmarks, and an accurate memory to become comfortable with A Manual for Eastern Orthodox Prayers and The Liturgy of the Hours and The Book of Common Prayer.” Another complaint is that many “genuinely want to pray with the Church and don’t want to have to pray with only one branch of the Church.” The Divine Hours addresses both of those complaints. It puts everything on one page (or at least in sequence) and includes prayers and writings from all the traditions.

Each “divine hour” takes about 5-10 minutes and includes the following:

The Call to Prayer
The Request for Presence
The Greeting
The Refrain
A Reading
The Refrain
The Morning/Midday/Vespers Psalm
The Refrain
The Cry of the Church
The Lord’s Prayer
The Prayer Appointed for the Week
The Concluding Prayers of the Church

Compline includes some readings from spiritual classics.

The purpose of set prayers is not to receive some ecstatic blessing. The purpose is to provide a sacred rhythm that centers our lives, orders our day, enlarges our hearts, reminds us of old truths, and provides us with words to express both what we feel and think as well as what is appropriate at this time of the year in the Church calendar.

The Divine Hours are comprehensive, not complete. And they are selective. They are designed to be affordable and accessible to those unused to a prayer book tradition. And according to Scot, they excel at that goal.


Four Hundred Texts on Love (Second Century) 21

Posted: August 3rd, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: St. Maximos the Confessor | Tags: , , , , , | Comments Off on Four Hundred Texts on Love (Second Century) 21

57.  There are virtues of the body and virtues of the soul. Those of the body include fasting, vigils, sleeping on the ground, ministering to people’s needs, working with one’s hands so as not to be a burden or in order to give to others (cf. 1 Thess. 2:9, Ephes. 4:28). Those of the soul include love, long-suffering, gentleness, self-control and prayer (cf. Gal, 5:22). If as a result of some constraint or bodily condition, such as illness or the like, we find we cannot practice the bodily virtues mentioned above, we are forgiven by the Lord because He knows the reasons. But if we fail to practice the virtues of the soul, we shall not have a single excuse, for it is always within our power to practice them.

Personally, I find the sorts of things St. Maximos describes as virtues of the body much easier than the ones he describes as virtues of the soul. And yet, if we do not fast, how will ever learn self-control? If we do not minister to people, how can we ever love them? And if we never perform vigils, will we learn to pray — much less pray without ceasing? They are interconnected and intertwined. As a rule, when we act in an outward way through the powers and abilities our bodies provide us, we also act inwardly such that, if it is our will to become a different sort of person, over time we will.

God does not abandon us to that struggle. Indeed, he gives us himself. Nevertheless, it is our struggle, for we struggle ultimately with our own will. It’s the perennial question, what sort of person do we choose to be?


Praying with the Church 9 – How the Anglicans Pray with the Church

Posted: August 2nd, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Praying with the Church | Tags: , , , | Comments Off on Praying with the Church 9 – How the Anglicans Pray with the Church

These are reflections on Scot McKnight‘s book, Praying with the Church, that I wrote and shared with a small circles of friends in 2006. I’ve decided to publish them here only lightly edited. Since they are four years old, they don’t necessarily reflect exactly what I would say today, but they do accurately capture my reaction at the time.

Once again, at least one online example of the Anglican Book of Common Prayer is here: http://vidicon.dandello.net/bocp/index.htm

The origin of the Book of Common Prayer dates back to the first Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer. We have to remember that Bibles were rare and expensive through much of history. People gathered to hear it read because that was the only way they could. Cranmer’s goal was to so institutionalize the practice of reading Scripture that the entire Bible would be heard each year. Each day the church bells would ring (morning and evening) and the locals would gather at the service, where they would begin to learn the Bible. That is what lies at the heart of the BCP. Cranmer provided a book that provided daily written prayers and daily readings from Scripture. The BCP has been revised a number of times over the centuries, but that has remained its core. Like the Liturgy of the Hours, the BCP also, when used properly, will have its adherent recite the whole Psalter every month.

Scot also notes, amusingly, how bound up we get in our traditions. Y’all know what “Amen” means, right? It’s the transliteration of an Aramaic word that means, “I agree”. It was a word for public, not private, prayers. Originally, the person praying in public would not say “Amen”. (Surely a person agrees with their own words.) Instead, those listening would say Amen to verbalize their agreement with the prayer. Praying with the Church in written prayers, “Amen” or “I agree” is especially appropriate if used thoughtfully. We are challenged by the prayers of others and challenged to stand with the Church in our agreement with them. That can take courage and require that we set some of our own prejudices aside.

Another contribution in the West by the BCP is its focus on morning and evening prayers. The full Liturgy of the Hours is difficult, as we already explored, to fit into the life of the lay person. Condensing it to morning and evening made the BCP more accessible while still covering much that the Hours covered. It is not as rigorous, but it is still a good rhythm and one modeled on the most basic use of the Shema (though perhaps not intentionally).


Praying with the Church 8 – How the Roman Catholics Pray with the Church

Posted: July 30th, 2010 | Author: | Filed under: Praying with the Church | Tags: , , , , | Comments Off on Praying with the Church 8 – How the Roman Catholics Pray with the Church

These are reflections on Scot McKnight‘s book, Praying with the Church, that I wrote and shared with a small circles of friends in 2006. I’ve decided to publish them here only lightly edited. Since they are four years old, they don’t necessarily reflect exactly what I would say today, but they do accurately capture my reaction at the time.

Before I start writing my thoughts on this chapter, I’ll note there is an online site with the English text of at least some of the Liturgy of the Hours, including readings. Since I’ve never seen the printed version, I have no idea how complete it is. But there’s certainly quite a bit here:  http://www.ebreviary.com/

The Roman Catholic tradition of praying with the church has been deeply shaped by the Rule of St. Benedict from the fifth and sixth century, shaping the monastic order of that tradition. At the heart of his rule lies the hours of prayer also called “offices”. The full rhythm of the hours of prayer stand in “protest against the busyness of a world enthralled by work and money and the relentless pursuit of the time clock. Here, in contrast, we find a day punctuated by prayer and worship.” That image reminds me of the C.S. Lewis observation that only lazy people are busy. We are naturally “lazy” and unwilling to order our lives by the rhythms of God. Set prayers and readings help us in this regard.

He then explores the details of Benedict’s rule. The Liturgy of the Hours has more explicit offices than any other. The day begins at midnight with Vigil or Matins, which is the Office of Readings. This office focuses on readings from the great writings of the church. Next is the morning prayer or Lauds, which can be done anytime between 6AM- 11AM. Next, though it’s generally not used anymore, was Prime somewhere between 6AM-7AM. Next comes Terce, the midmorning prayer, at 9AM. This is followed by Sext, the midday prayer, at noon. None (Italian — rhymes with tone), the midafternoon prayer, is at 3PM. Vespers, the evening prayer, can take place anytime between 3PM and 6PM. And finally there is Compline, the Night Prayer, before retiring for the evening.

Of course, the full set of offices are designed for monastics and it is generally not possible for a non-monastic to routinely follow all the hours, though certainly recommended at special times or during a retreat. As with all traditions, the base of the Liturgy are the morning and evening prayers (Lauds and Vespers). Sometimes lay persons can incorporate other of the hours into their daily rhythms, but those two lie at the heart.

The full liturgy of the hours is a four volume work. This is often called the Breviary. A shorter, one volume version is called Christian Prayer. The basis of the Roman Catholic prayer book, as with all prayer books, are the Psalms. And the other prayers are some of the best prayers penned by centuries of Christ followers. Mary figures prominently, of course. But we (as Protestants) need to deal with the scriptural fact that Mary herself prophesied that future generations would call her blessed. And we don’t do enough to give thanks to the most important woman in church history, the mother of Jesus.

The Liturgy of the Hours is the most complete prayer book in the history of the Church. However, that very fact also makes it the most complex. Scot relates his own personal story with the Breviary. He struggled with it for some time, but never could quite unravel how to use it. Then one day, on a flight, he sat next to a young woman who pulled out a “green book filled with ribbons and small bookmarks, stuff hanging out and other things falling out.” Scot recognized the book as a volume of the Liturgy of the Hours for Ordinary Time. Having struggled with its complexity, Scot asked her to explain it to him. She did the best she could in their short time together and at least got him oriented. And so he recommends, if you really want to learn how to use a prayer book of any tradition, find someone who already uses it and ask them to teach you.

Scot then provides an example of one session of morning prayer (lauds). The prayer begins with the Invitatory (“Lord, open my lips. And my mouth will proclaim your praise”) and Psalm 95 (which is prayed every morning) and then moved to Week I, Monday morning prayer, and said (or sang) a hymn, most of Psalm 5, and a short prayer about that psalm. Then he was invited to pray 1 Chronicles 29:10-13, Psalm 29, and another short prayer. Next he was directed to recite 2 Thessalonians 3:10-13, say a short responsory prayer, then (as for each morning) the Canticle of Zechariah from Luke 1. The morning session ends, as it does each day, with some intercessions, the Lord’s Prayer (“Our Father”), and then two concluding prayers. This takes about 15 minutes and everything is said or sung out loud. If you followed the full hours, the entire Psalter is recited every month.

Throughout the chapter, Scot has a lot of excerpts from the Liturgy of the Hours, discussion of some of the simpler prayer books drawn from it, and quotes and writings about famous Christians shaped by the Hours. It’s neat to read.