Enacting the Kingdom

If we are truly to be the Canadian Orthodox Church, we need to be attuned to our people. Throughout this season, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri will explore ways that the Liturgy can (and should) reflect the place we're in, and specifically how we can effectively work with the efforts of Truth & Reconciliation with the indigenous peoples of Canada in an intentional and authentic way.

As a Church, our response to the TRC (Truth & Reconciliation Commission) is long overdue, but the work has now begun. We will be looking for a multi-layered response: individual, liturgical, parochial and institutional. And since we as Orthodox are not good at "trendy", this response must not merely be a reflection of the time we find ourselves in. Rather, it must be based on a deeply thought out, theologically sound reflection, that will serve us through the ages.

Truly, this is no small task! But here we begin.

It's time to wrap up our series on The Hours at Home!  We hope this has been as refreshing and freeing for you as it has been for us. So much of the emphasis in Orthodoxy can be on doing something "right" or "completely", but this series has been about how we can actually, in practical ways, engage in the daily prayer of the Church that makes sense of our experience of time and reconnects us to the natural cycle of the day, but also addresses how we live our life in the 21st century.

Remember, even if you could only spend 30 seconds, eight times a day, doing a simple act (lighting a candle ((this may be a sore spot for Fr Yuri, listen in to find out)), setting aside your devices, saying a troparion, with a word of prayer and a remembrance of God), this will be transformative of your human experience. Far more transformative, even, than if you spent half an hour or an hour every day charging through a bunch of texts without intention. What's important is the recovery of the connection to God's creation and its inherent cycles, daily, weekly and seasonal, and building a remembrance of God and our vocation as image-bearers.

Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri also propose a new way to think of St Paul's call to "pray ceaselessly" that will take the world off your shoulders. You are not doing these prayers alone! In solitude, perhaps, but never alone.

"Eight Days a Week": a classic Beatles song, yes, but also the Orthodox approach to the weekly cycle of prayer!

Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri discuss the theme of each day of the week, how they relate to our human experience, and also offer practical advice on how to incorporate the themes into our home prayer life.

We come now to the Ninth Hour, the last service of the day, and the time to re-collect ourselves after being disoriented by our many worldly cares and concerns during the day. Fans of "The Office" might transition from work by playing "Closing Time" (if you know, you know), but the Ninth Hour encourages us instead to use this time to focus on the theme of "return" — the cycle of the day returning towards beginning again, returning to our homes, the return of humanity to God's purposes.

Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey remind us that these hours of prayer, properly appropriated and used during our day are crucial for our spiritual, mental and bodily well-being. Whatever we can do, even it it's just one memorized verse, if we do it right and do it habitually until it becomes instinctive and a part of how we live, our lives will be so much the better for it. In essence, as Orthodox we need to become "old clockists".

Fr Yuri's book recommendation: "Deep Work" by Cal Newport.

In Psalm 54(55) we hear, "Evening, morning and at noon, will I tell of it and declare it  and He will hear my voice." We've already seen how Matins and Vespers are the bookends of the day, as dark transitions to light and light to dark. Now we see how when the sun is at its unrelenting peak, our daily rhythms also naturally lend themselves to prayer.  n fact, it has been a practice of Christians since the early Church, and of the Jews before them, to mark this time with prayer.

Fr Yuri speaks from personal experience how helpful incorporating the Sixth Hour into his day has been, from being the main liturgical gathering when St Maria's first became a mission, to today. Even in our modern world, the practice of setting aside ten minutes in the middle of your day to fully read the Sixth Hour is... dare we say... achievable, and encouraged!

The Third Hour is generally served between 9am and 12noon, which corresponds for many of us to the middle of our work morning. It's rather a rough time to stop for prayer, risking the interruption of our workflow. But what if — what if! — instead of seeing these services as being in competition with what we're doing in our day, we began to see them as a way of complementing and supporting our activities? Indeed, our activity will be informed and transformed by them. Even if you just have a moment while you get up from your desk and stretch, you can put it to good use.

Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey discuss the themes of this hour (the trial of Christ, the tasting of the forbidden fruit and the coming of the Holy Spirit), and how we can reflect on them to reorient and recalibrate ourselves that we might approach the busy-ness of our day in the right spirit (pun intended!). 

This is the hour in the daily cycle of prayer that doesn't have a high profile in the communal life of the church, often just tacked on to the beginning or end of another service, if it's celebrated at all.  In contrast to the other services, which have fuller expressions in the church and we are offering ways to do it more modestly at home, this particular service comes into its own when taken outside of the church. Here, Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey propose ways of giving this hour more prominence in the daily rhythm of our life.

At that transition moment between our morning routine and the launch into our day, with all that it shall bring, this is the opportunity to stand before God, pledging watchfulness and heedfulness to His word, acknowledging Him as the proper authority in all things. This is our baptismal pledge, that we would live our lives recognizing the Lord as King and God, and it is meant to affect every moment of every day.

Remember, even if you have only thirty seconds to mark the first hour — it will be worth it!

It is cockcrow, the time when light just begins to break through the darkness, and the time for Matins. But don't go out and buy your rooster just yet (Fr Yuri is still trying to return his!) — the goal of this series is to help you enact the services of the daily cycle at home in a practical and sustainable way.

Thematically, Matins is the mirror image of Vespers, straddling the transition now from dark to light. This transition is a sacramental moment, a transformational act we are all invited to be the priests of, offering up the darkness that God would be able to do something within and through it, and turn it again into light. In essence, this is the Christian life!

Regardless of the time you rise, Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri offer practical advice for enacting this service, stilling ourselves in the midst of what is and what will come, turning to God and placing our trust utterly in Him.

Midnight Office is a service that Orthodox Christians rarely do, if ever. But don't worry, we are not going to ask you to set an alarm in the wee hours of the morning, disrupting your much-needed rest!  The question this series is attempting to answer is, "How do the Hours make sense in (and how do they help us make sense of) our lives?", and not, "How do we artificially liturgize throughout our day?".

Fr Geoffrey and Fr Yuri explore the history of how the midnight office developed, discuss an ancient sleep pattern that fell into disuse (thanks, Thomas Edison!), and suggest opportunities we might have to re-incorporate these prayers and hymns of watchfulness, vigilance and protection. Perhaps we should not aim to serve the Midnight Office, the way our modern schedules work, but we should be prepared to serve it nonetheless. This practice might just bring purpose and peace to your middle of the night wakefulness!

The hymns and prayers of the Hours are intimately linked to the time of day, but also to our human experiences at that time of day. Compline is served in the evening, after supper, when the sun is fully set and our own biological rhythms are slowing down. The service invites us to silence, repentance and forgiveness - in fact, when done in the context of a parish or monastery, it concludes with a rite of forgiveness similar to that done as we enter into Lent on Forgiveness Sunday. After the Compline service, the monastics and faithful would retreat to their beds in the darkness and quiet.

Far from mandating NO tv, NO YouTube, NO electricity immediately following your evening meal, Fr Yuri and Fr Geoffrey suggest reasonable ways to mark this threshold between the busy-ness of our lives (with its bright lights, both natural and artificial, activity, food and entertainment) and entering into a reflective and meditative mood, putting both ourselves and our devices and our homes to bed.  No doubt this will transform your spiritual life and relationship with God, but also... you'll get a better sleep!