Good Words: Brother David on Honesty in Prayer

Good words in this meditation by Brother David Vryhof (Society of St. John the Evangelist) about how we can be honest with God in our prayer lives, because God knows us better than we may know ourselves:

"The Triune God sees and knows everything about us, even what we keep hidden from others.  When we realize that God sees it all and still loves us with an unwavering love, we can risk being honest in our prayer.  God does not want to hear from us lovely platitudes or empty promises or carefully crafted words; in prayer God desires our honesty. Genuine prayer is always truthful and real.  We can pray the truth about ourselves because God is trustworthy and faithful.  Because of this, we can bring to God the whole of our lives, not just our ‘spiritual selves.’  As we say in our community’s Rule of Life:

The life of prayer calls for the courage to bring into our communion with Christ the fullness of our humanity and the concrete realities of our daily existence, which he redeemed by his incarnation…. We are to bring him our sufferings and poverty, our passion and sexuality, our fears and resistances, our desires and our dreams, our losses and grief.  We must spread before him our cares about the world and its people, our friends and families, our enemies and those from whom we are estranged.  Our successes and our failures, our gifts and shortcomings are equally the stuff of our prayer…

                                       (The Rule of the Society of St John the Evangelist, chapter 22, page 45)  

 

Brother David’s complete message and an audio recording of it may be found here.

 

The Daily Offices: A Rich Resource of Anglican Spirituality

 

 

 

The Apostle Paul urges us to “pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Th 5:16-18).

 

This is a tall order when we have to feed ourselves and others, work, sleep, provide care, and do the myriad other things that occupy our time.  

 

The early church compromised; St. Benedict set fixed times of the day and night for prayer for monastic communities, which became known as the canonical hours: small services called matins and lauds (usually counted as a single hour), in the middle of the night; prime, at sunrise; terce, 9 a.m.; sext, noon; none, 3 p.m.; vespers, sunset; and compline, bedtime. 

 

These fixed hour services became known as the Daily Offices, from the Latin word officium meaning duty, following the idea that Christians had a duty to pray regularly.

 

During the English Reformation, Thomas Cranmer simplified the daily offices and boiled them down to four services:  Morning Prayer (also called Mattins), Noon Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline.  All four of these services can be found in the 1962 Prayer Book.    Thus our tradition of daily prayer is essentially Benedictine.

 

Cranmer’s idea was that these short and simple services could give clergy and laity alike a structure for regular prayer and scripture reading that would deepen their spiritual lives while allowing them to live and work in their daily lives.

 

Old time Anglicans will remember Morning and Evening Prayer on Sundays and some who have lived in institutional settings may know the offices as well.  Compline got Fr. Michael through a difficult year at a church boy’s school and he loves it to this day.  

 

Sadly, most Anglicans today don’t get much chance to say and hear this ancient and rich prayers, which can ground us in our faith and orient our day on God and God’s purpose for us.

 

However, lately at All Saints we have been to revive this tradition with some success, in that a few people are showing up to join our clergy in the mornings and evenings.

 

The schedule we are aiming for is as follows;

 

Morning Prayer:  Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 8am

Evening Prayer:   Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 5pm

 

However, this schedule may vary slightly from week to week, depending on the availability of our clergy to lead, so please check our parish Facebook page or the bulletin.    

 

Services will be be adapted from the Book of Common Prayer and are easy to follow.  There will be no Eucharist, hymns, or sermons and each service takes about 20 minutes.   The Elgin Street double doors will be unlocked 5-10 minutes ahead of time.  When clergy are unavailable to lead, lay people are perfectly welcome to say the offices, and Sharon and Michael can provide instruction on that (it’s easy).

 

If you can’t attend but would like to  try the Daily Offices at home, there is a simple version which you can download from https://anglicancompass/dailyofficebooklet and there is also an app that you can download from the Prayer Book Society at https://prayerbook.ca/common-prayer-app/

 

We would be delighted to train some of our parishioners to lead these services, so they can be offered with regularity.   There is absolutely no reason why a layperson can not lead morning or evening prayer, it’s easy to do and the clergy can show you how in ten minutes.

 

Of course, the daily offices are purely optional, so take this merely as an invitation to deepen your prayer life if any of these days, times or methods are convenient.     As is true of most things Anglican, the old rule applies:  all may, some should, none must.  

Notable Quotable: Laurie Skow-Anderson On Asking God For Help

Depending on our traditions, some Christians are more comfortable than others at asking God for help, it seems to me. Some feel that God is able and willing to intervene in our daily lives, while others see God as working at a more distant, macro level. In a meditiation on Psalm 30, Lutheran pastor Laurie Skow-Anderson (Trinity Lutheran Church, Pelican Rapids, Minnesota) wonders why some Christians seem more comfortable with the latter view.


How do you need God's help today? During prayer time with our Wednesday after-school children's program, sitting in a circle on the floor, I asked the children how they need God's help. They had no trouble answering that question. They needed God's help getting along with their brothers or sisters, with their homework, and for Grandma when she is sick. I did an experiment with the church council, during prayer time before one of our meetings. I asked the council how they needed God's help in their lives this week. It was quiet for a few moments, before the first brave soul said, that it was hard to think about how she needed God's help. I found that it was much harder for the adults to ask God for help than it was for the children. What does that say about us if we don't seem to need God's help? Do you need God's help today?


This meditation from Laurie comes from a series of devotions, offered daily by email by Luther Seminary. You can check them out and, if you wish, sign up for them here.