This Lent on Friday evenings I am offering a teaching series called “The Wonder of Prayer.” It explores key facets of the prayer life. This is the fifth and final session.

The audio of the talk is above. The two parts of this second session are

* Review of Prayer and its Characteristics

* Liturgical Prayer

* Personal Prayer Rule

What is Prayer?

Combining the doctrines of prayer by S. John of Damascus and Father Martin Thornton yields a composite definition of prayer:

Prayer is spiritual activity: our lifting up of the heart and mind to the living God – anything we do which is conditioned by conscious relationship with Him, a relationship which is continuous, whether or not it is recognized or articulated.

Person Prayer Rule

* Personal devotion daily, or most days.

* a personal routine of prayer, done in sequence or in some pattern

* ideally, something in the morning and something in the evening. if possible, something midday.

* according to the four characteristics of prayer

* often developed through discussion with the parish priest, within spiritual direction

* it can change and adapt according to the life and circumstances of the person

This Lent on Friday evenings I am offering a teaching series called “The Wonder of Prayer.” It explores key facets of the prayer life. This is the fourth session.

The audio of the talk is above. The two parts of this second session are

* Review of Prayer and its Characteristics

* Types of Praying:

* Meditative

* Affective

* Contemplative

* Recollective

What is Prayer?

Combining the doctrines of prayer by S. John of Damascus and Father Martin Thornton yields a composite definition of prayer:

Prayer is spiritual activity: our lifting up of the heart and mind to the living God – anything we do which is conditioned by conscious relationship with Him, a relationship which is continuous, whether or not it is recognized or articulated.

Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.

SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.

The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.

A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.15

Behold, you are beautiful, my friend; behold, you are beautiful; your eyes are those of doves. Behold, You are beautiful, my love, and comely. Your couch is full of flowers. The beams of our houses are of cedar, our paneled ceilings of cypress wood.

A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede

When the Bride hears that a two-fold beauty has been brought together in her by the Lord, she then responds with a devout voice: “Behold, you a beautiful, my love, and comely,” as if she should say openly, “Surely whatever I possess of beauty, simplicity, and spiritual grace I have doubtless receive through Your generosity, by which I have come to possess both the remission of sins and the ability to do good. But You are truly beautiful and comely beyond compare, You Who are God, begotten of the Father before all worlds, and when the time for my redemption arrived you were conceived and born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, not only free from every stain of sin but also full of grace and truth, and You came into the world and lived in the world, and to all those who partake of Your grace You have even granted that they might also share in the virtues of Your beauty. Therefore you are beautiful and comely, that is, admirable both in the eternity of Your divine nature and in the dignity of the humanity that You assumed.”

If you find this edifying, please consider (if you haven’t already) becoming a paid subscriber. Your support goes directly to supporting the ministry of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality, a project I started 12 years ago to help to rebuild the Anglican tradition.

I spoke last Sunday in very high ways about the Eucharist. For example, I said that because Jesus Christ is the source and summit of our life, so the Eucharist, the blessed Sacrament of the Altar, is the source and summit of our life. The Eucharist is Christ, and Christ is Himself the Eucharist. I also said that no matter what our feelings may be on a given Sunday, or a given Liturgy of the Eucharist on a weekday, the very nature of the Eucharist is that it is Christ’s most precious Body and Blood. And I said that the Eucharist heals us because Christ heals us, and He is the Eucharist. The Eucharist strengthens us because Christ strengthens us, and the Eucharist is Christ. The Eucharist showers us with heavenly love because Christ is Love, Who became man in holy sacrifice for us.

That kind of understanding of the Eucharist and the Sacrifice of Christ is central to a right knowledge about Jesus. He took our flesh so that He could dwell among us. He became flesh to dwell among us as the Eucharist, as the Blessed Sacrament. The Eucharist is the Sacrament of His Passion, indeed the Sacrament of His Sacrifice. Yet understanding the Christ sacrificed at all took the Church time to realize. Really until Paul started writing his holy epistles–that is when the nature of Christ’s Sacrifice became widely known and widely understood.

Yet, there are hints that the disciples sensed some of this during Christ’s human life. Saint Peter said to Jesus, “To Whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life!” Peter also said of Jesus, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!” Certainly the Blessed Virgin Mary had a strong sense of Who her Son was, and Who He always will be. Saint Mary Magdalene and the other holy myrrh-bearing women had a good sense, as well. Saint John the Apostle, the beloved disciple, shared this sense with the holy myrrh-bearing women.

Yet most of the disciples fled the Cross when Jesus was nailed to it; they would not have fled if they knew that the Passion of Christ was the most glorious sacrifice possible. They were confused and uncertain Who Jesus was, and uncertain of what His death meant. But somewhere, amid their confusion, there was a seed growing in them. This is how God works: He plants seeds in our heart that are intended to grow in us, so that we are able to conceive the holy Jesus in our hearts, and bear Him in our minds. It takes time, but the power of God’s seed is infinite. It always grows in good soil.

In our Gospel account from Saint Matthew,, the Mother of Saint John and Saint James, the sons of Zebedee, named by Jesus as the “sons of thunder,” speaks to Jesus. She is doing so because her sons asked her to. They had seen the Transfiguration of Jesus and it opened the eyes of their heart, and began to transform them. Seeing Jesus transfigured meant a seed of glory was planted in the hearts of James and John. In seeing Him transfigured they also witnessed Elijah and Moses appearing, one of the right of Jesus and one on the left. They heard a voice from the cloud which overshadowed them, say, “This is my beloved Son, Hear Him!” And they were told by Jesus, as they came down from the mountain after the Transfiguration, to tell no one the things they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. What they saw left a mark on their soul. This is the seed that was planted.

They wanted to be at the right hand and at left hand of Jesus as He entered His kingdom. Why? Because they saw Moses at the right hand and Elijah at the left hand of Jesus as He appeared to them in His transfigured glory. That seed which was planted started to grow. They were filled with zeal, they were filled with strong desire to be with Jesus. They wanted to imitate Moses and Elijah, two Saints of the Church, and to be able to speak with Jesus in His glory as Moses and Elijah spoke with Jesus. James and John, in other words, wanted what we should all want. They had zeal which we should all have. They were filled with desire that we all should be filled with. And even us more so than them, because unlike them, we have the benefit of the New Testament writings and two thousand years of the prayer of Holy Church, and they did not. We have the Eucharist, and at that time, they did not.

And because of this, we know something very important, that had yet to be revealed to John and James: to enter into the glory of Christ and be with Him requires that we be with Christ in His Passion. We must be with Christ as He offers His Body and Blood in holy sacrifice: doing so both as the Sacrifice and the High Priest Who offers the Sacrifice which is Himself. The new covenant is the covenant made with Christ’s Body and Blood shed in His Passion, which is the beginning of all creation.

As Paul says, everytime we receive the Eucharist, we proclaim Christ’s death. When we receive the Eucharist, we proclaim the Gospel, for Christ’s death means forgiveness of sins, salvation, and eternal life. Christ’s death, His Passion, is the source of all new creation, and the summit of earthly existences: for Christ is the Light of the world, through Whom all things are made, and all things through Him are remade. This is why the Eucharist, which is Christ, heals us, strengthens us, and showers us with heavenly benediction. Because of the Passion of Christ, He is able to live in us, and we are able to live in Him, Christ the King of all Creation, Who lives and reigns with the Father, in the unity of the Holy Ghost: ever one God, world without end. Amen.

In addition to speaking about how Jerusalem above is our mother, Saint Paul in our Epistle today speaks of our freedom. He speaks of our freedom in Christ, because Christ has set us free. In speaking of freedom, Paul means freedom from sin. He means freedom from sinful ways, sinful habits which are called passions. Paul means freedom from being a slave to sin, or a slave to the world. In Christ we are a new creation. In Christ the eyes of our heart see above the firmament into the heavenly places. In Christ the dry land of our sinful existence, the dry land of spiritual darkness becomes earth, becomes capable of growth because of God’s grace. Dry land cannot grow grass which bears seed; dry land cannot grow fruit trees bearing seeds in the fruit. When we are slaves to sin, we swim in the waters of darkness, of the abyss. Christ brings us out of the darkness, because Christ is our light. And God parts the sea, He gathers together the waters so that dry land appears. And He calls us earth: this is the freedom we have in Christ, that being free, we can spiritually grow, that on the earth, which is to say in our heart, we can bear fruit and have seeds within ourselves, indeed that our heart can contain the seeds of all good works and virtues, that we can perform works of love and works of mercy, which are brought forth from the good treasure of our heart.

Our Collect invites us to be comforted by the grace of Christ, that in our suffering we may be relieved by the mercy of Christ. And what can comfort us more than Christ Himself? Who can provide grace to us but Christ Himself? Who may bestow mercy upon us to relieve us from our suffering, our wounds, our hurts but He Whose very nature is mercy, Jesus Christ Himself? Our Lord Jesus gives us the peace which passes all understanding, and He does so by His presence. He does so personally for each one of His children. He does so personally for each of his parish churches as a Body, because we are His Body.

And to His Body the Church He gives His Body and Blood in the Blessed Sacrament, in the most holy Sacrament of the Altar, the Eucharist. Saint John teaches us that Jesus Christ distributes Himself to those who were seated. The image of being seated most powerfully is given us in the image of Saint Mary Magdalene, seated at the feet of Jesus. In being seated at the feet of Jesus, she offers herself as a living sacrifice to God. In being seated at the feet of Jesus, she adores Christ, listens to Christ, and puts all of her focus on Christ. In being seated at the feet of Jesus, her heart is centered on Christ and His Sacred Humanity. In being seated, she is fed by Christ, as He fed the five thousand who were seated.

In feeding us within Himself, Christ transforms us. We are transformed because the Sacrament of Christ’s Love, which is the Eucharist, fulfills its purpose in us. Receiving into our bodies Christ’s Body and Blood, we are drawn to become that which we receive: and we receive He Who is Love, so that we are drawn out of darkness, out of being merely dry land, to become fertile earth upon which the seeds of the Gospel grow. Christ’s Gospel seeds grow in our heart and transform our heart. Christ’s love envelops us and covers us and protects us. Christ’s love heals us, cleans us, and feeds us. Freedom in Christ means the ability to grow up to the fullness of the stature of Christ. Christ’s love perfects us.

Because Jesus Christ is the source and summit of our life, so the Eucharist, the blessed Sacrament of the Altar, is the source and summit of our life. The Eucharist is Christ, and Christ is Himself the Eucharist. Thus the Eucharist is itself the surest tradition, the one tradition on which we always can safely rely. Thus we adore the Blessed Sacrament. Thus we always allow the Blessed Sacrament to shower upon us heavenly benediction. No matter what our feelings may be on a given Sunday, the very nature of the Eucharist is that it is Christ’s most precious Body and Blood. The Eucharist heals us because Christ heals us, and He is the Eucharist. The Eucharist strengthens us because Christ strengthens us, and the Eucharist is Christ. The Eucharist showers us with heavenly love because Christ is Love incarnate, Who became man in holy sacrifice for us, and Who always lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

We hear Saint Paul today teaching us to be imitators of God, as beloved children. If we takes that the slightest bit seriously, then we are immediately drawn to a great pause. Paul wants us to imitate God?!? That’s quite a big ask. Usually we are urged to imitate the Saints. And as difficult sounding as that might be, the Saints are at least human! They are like us, and we are like them. But we are not like God.

We can go right down the list: God is Eternal, and we are not. God is Incomprehensible, and we are not. God is outside the conditions of time and space. God is Perfect, and perfect in all attributes with which we speak of Him: perfect beauty, perfect truth, perfect goodness. God is not merely holy – He is Himself Holiness. God is not merely loving – He is Himself Love. He is the source of all, the lover of all, the sustainer of all. So, sure, let’s imitate Him.

Let us bear in mind words I preached last Sunday: Lent is the season especially to focus on holy lives, and the holiness which must be part of every Christian’s experience, because as Saint Paul teaches in his epistle to the Hebrews, “Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” This is what Saint Paul is after: imitating the holiness of God. Or simply: that we are to walk in holiness. Walk in love, holy love, the holy love of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross: walk as Christ loved us, and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Holiness is the life we are called to live. Our lives must not be polluted by sexual immortality, or impurity of any kind. There ought be no filthiness, foolish talk, or crude joking, Paul says. Rather, let us always offer our thanks to the God we adore. We are to walk as children of the light, always seeking to discern what is pleasing to the Lord, and then doing those things as a habit. And we are to expose works of darkness around us, works of darkness we come upon, we are to expose, but bringing in the light of Christ. We are to follow God’s commandments – to love God with everything that we are, and to love our neighbor as ourself, that and all the other commandments of God. We are to pray daily, worship regularly, study Scripture as we are able, and perform works of mercy. All of these sorts of things come up when the subject is a life of holiness.

Yet holiness is also an attitude, a disposition, a posture or stance before God. We develop this attitude through being in right relationship with God, and here I mean having the right understanding of our relationship with God. Our relationship with God, from His side, is continuous. He is always keeping us in existence, moment to moment. And because He is Creator and we are creature, and He is perfect Creator, then He always has a perfect love for His creatures, a perfect love for us at all times. And as I said before, God is Eternal, God is Incomprehensible, God is perfect. He dwells in Light inaccessible, and dwells outside the conditions of time and space. When we think of Him, acknowledging Who He is ought to take our breath away. Our God is an awesome God.

This is where holiness emerges. We adore God, we behold Him, and then we look at ourselves. The sight of God comes first, then the sight of self, and all holiness springs from these two sights. To see God clearly and to see self clearly, we are drawn into holiness through the true vision of both God and self, and God and His people. We perceive the difference between God and us, and this difference is immense: He is Creator, we are creature, and each of us is one of countless creatures all created by the Divine Maker. Yet being like nothing, we are loved by God Who is the Maker, Creator, and Sustainer of all.

And holiness springs from knowing how prone to temptation we can be: temptation from the flesh, the world, and the Devil and his demons. Jesus provides us with necessary caution and wisdom in the spiritual life. Yes, by the grace of Christ unclean spirits go out of a person, and they are the better – the much better – for it. Yet rather than celebrate good times, we must have caution, our Lord insists. We must have caution and not let our guard down, because the demon is surely to return, and return with more unholy demons. The unseen warfare of the spiritual life requires constant vigilance.

And so we ask our Almighty and awesome God to stretch forth the right hand of His Majesty. We ask Him to be our defence against all our enemies. We ask His protection, we ask the protection of our Guardian Angel – that by His grace we are able to avoid immortality, impurity, filthiness, and foolishness. We ask the strength to reject the invitations of those walking in darkness – invitations to join them in seemingly benign revelry. We ask that by God’s grace our house is guarded by the blood of the Lamb – the blood of Jesus Christ, Who gives Himself to us always as holy Sacrifice that we are drawn to participate in His ever-living Sacrifice as He lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

This Lent on Friday evenings I am offering a teaching series called “The Wonder of Prayer.” It explores key facets of the prayer life. Last night was the third session.

The audio of the talk is above. The two parts of this second session are

* What is Prayer? (a review)

* The Threefold Regula — the Rule of the Church

* Penitence and Petition

We review prayer as such as well as the threefold Regula (the Rule of the Church). Then we look at the four characteristics of true prayer—reviewing Adoration and Thanksgiving and introducing Penitence and Petition.

What is Prayer?

Combining the doctrines of prayer by S. John of Damascus and Father Martin Thornton yields a composite definition of prayer:

Prayer is spiritual activity: our lifting up of the heart and mind to the living God – anything we do which is conditioned by conscious relationship with Him, a relationship which is continuous, whether or not it is recognized or articulated.

PENITENCE AND PETITION

1. Julian of NorwichRevelations of Divine Love, chapter 5

We need to have in our knowing the littleness of creatures and to hold as naught (“nothing”) all-things that are made, so that we can love our God Who is unmade. For this is the cause as to why we are not at east in our heart and soul: that we seek here rest in those things that are so little, in which there is no rest, and do not know that our God is Almighty, all-wise, and all-good. For He is the true Rest. God wills Himself to be known, and it pleases Him that we rest in Him. This is the cause why no soul can rest: it cannot rest until it is made nought as to all things that are made. When we willingly see ourselves as nought, and that this is how we love God and see Him as all in all, and we are able to receive true spiritual rest from God and in God.

2. Julian of Norwich

God, of Thy goodness, give me Thyself:for Thou art enough to me,and I may ask nothing that is lessthat may be full worship to Thee;and if I ask anything that is less,ever me be in want – for only in Thee I have all.

3. Confession of Sin from the Book of Common Prayer

Let us humbly confess our sins unto Almighty God.

Silence may be kept.

Almighty God,Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,maker of all things, judge of all men:We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness,which we from time to time most grievously have committed,by thought, word, and deed, against thy divine Majesty,provoking most justly thy wrath and indignation against us.We do earnestly repent,and are heartily sorry for these our misdoings;the remembrance of them is grievous unto us,the burden of them is intolerable.Have mercy upon us,have mercy upon us, most merciful Father;for thy Son our Lord Jesus Christ's sake,forgive us all that is past;and grant that we may ever hereafter serve and please thee in newness of life,to the honor and glory of thy Name;through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Evenings With Bede is a homily podcast. The episodes are taken from the Sunday solemn Plainsong Evensong services of Saint Paul’s, New Smyrna Beach, Fla., where I am Rector.

SEASON TWO is devoted to understanding the Song of Songs with the Venerable S. Bede as teacher, and yours truly as interpreter. We will go verse by verse through the entirety of the Song of Songs.

The format is a short passage from the Song of Songs, then comes commentary from the Bede, and finally an interpretive homily by yours truly expounding upon both. The audio for all three is found above. The text of the two passages is found below.

A Lesson from the Song of Songs, 1.15

Behold, you are beautiful, my friend; behold, you are beautiful; your eyes are those of doves. Behold, You are beautiful, my love, and comely. Your couch is full of flowers. The beams of our houses are of cedar, our paneled ceilings of cypress wood.

A Lesson from a Treatise by the Venerable S. Bede

Thus far, the Church has been receiving from her Redeemer gifts that she invokes as tokens of love. Then He responds to her by way of reward: “Behold, you are beautiful, my friend; behold, you are beautiful; your eyes are those of doves.” It is as if He said, “Behold, you are beautiful in the pure works with which you live soberly and justly and piously in this world; behold, you are beautiful in the simplicity of heart with which you apply yourself to good deeds for the purpose of eternity alone, awaiting the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God. Your eyes are those of doves, the eyes of your heart are simple and pure and utterly free from all duplicity of deceiving or pretending; behold, they are greatly blessed because such eyes as these will see God.” And again as if He said, “Your eyes are as those of doves because your spiritual senses are endowed with understanding”; for since the Holy Spirit descended upon the Lord in the form of a dove, rightly are the spiritual senses and gifts signified by the terms “doves” or “those of doves.” Again, Christ’s friend has the eyes of a dove because every soul that truly loves Him inwardly in not like a bird of prey aroused by any craving for external things, nor does she contemplate any harm that she might inflict upon living things; for they say that the dove is gentle by nature and contemplates everything that happens with a heart that is simple, meek, and humble.

If you find this edifying, please consider (if you haven’t already) becoming a paid subscriber. Your support goes directly to supporting the ministry of Akenside Institute for English Spirituality, a project I started 12 years ago to help to rebuild the Anglican tradition.

Our patron, Saint Paul, has a word today about true holiness. And we also hear the curious story Jesus and the Canaanite woman, about which we will speak about in a moment. Paul teaches that God called us to a lift of holiness. That holiness is characteristic of our prayer life, indeed how we walk, so as to please God. Indeed, as David says in our Psalm: that we lift up our soul to God, in Whom we put our trust. Our lives ought be different than regular lives of non-Christians. So we will get into that more.

I completed my sermon last Sunday with these words: Let us say unto the Lord: Lord, Thou art my hope, and my stronghold. And how do we say this but in prayer? Prayer is the lifting up of the heart and mind to God, taught S. John of Damascus, 8th century Church Father. Let us truly pray, by lifting our heart and mind to God this whole season of Lent. This is what makes Lent a holy season: that our prayer is more intense, that our prayer is more robust, that our prayer is regular, which is to say, daily. End of those words.

So Lent is the season especially to focus on holy lives, and the holiness which must be part of every Christian’s experience, because as Saint Paul teaches in his epistle to the Hebrews, “Strive for peace with all men, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.”

This is one of the lessons our Lord seeks to teach us through the Gospel account from Saint Matthew. The thing to immediately notice in passage is the tension evident between the disciples and Our Lord Jesus. “Send her away, for she is crying after us,” they implore Jesus. But Jesus does not send her away, but rather listens to her, talks with her, and eventually praises her great faith, so much so that we are left with the impression that it was her great faith that healed her daughter from the demon, indeed exorcised her of the demon.

The next thing to notice is the dialogue between Jesus and the Canaanite woman. After the disciples attempted unsuccessfully to command Jesus to send her away, He says “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before Him – she knelt, that is, she worshiped – and she said, “Lord, help me. And He answered, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” And she said, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” Then Jesus answers, great is your faith! Be it done for you as you desire.” It sounds on a plain reading that Jesus is being unloving at first and is trying to exclude the woman. But if that we the case, it would violate basic doctrine about Jesus, that His very nature is love and that His Mission from the beginning is always for the salvation of all peoples. So what is going on here?

It is not Our Lord who is being taught about compassion and love, but rather the disciples and their hardened hearts, and by extension, us and our hardened hearts. Both of the seemingly inflammatory statements by Jesus—the first, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” and the second, “It is not fair to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs”—reflect the exclusionary attitude of the Jewish religion of Jesus’s day, as well as the centuries prior. The Jews had been looking for a political messiah to restore political power to them and allow them to complete the rebuilding of the Temple and thereby overthrow their occupiers, the Romans. The last thing they wanted was a Messiah for all peoples Whose very showing of divine power was to die on the tree of the Cross—and be a voluntary failure according not to the illumined eyes of the heart, but rather according to the closed and blind eyes of the world. But it was always the plan of Jesus to show the world what it means to be God by the way He died as a human being.

In other words, Jesus used this moment with the Canaanite woman to teach not her but the disciples words He had taught to Isaiah centuries before: “Foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to Him, to love the Name of the Lord, and to be His servants, every one who keeps the Sabbath, and does not profane it, and hold fast My covenant—these I will bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer.”

And this is what holiness means: God is at work in all people, with no exceptions. He was at work in the prostitute Rahab in our first reading, so much so that through her faith, Joshua led the sons of Israel through the Jordan into the promised land. He was at work in the Canaanite woman, so much so that through her faith not only was her daughter healed, but it was used by Jesus to teach all Christians about real faith. Recognizing that God is at work in all people mean our heart and mind are holy, that they are partaking of the living water springing up into life eternal, indeed participating in the celestial water which is above the heavens. Such a heart and mind have been applied to lofty and exalted things, and able, as Saint Paul teaches, to regard no one from a human point of view, even to put on the mind of Christ, which we all are called to do – to love as Christ loves. Through the grace of Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with the Father in the unity of the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.

This Lent on Friday evenings I am offering a teaching series called “The Wonder of Prayer.” It will explore the many facets of the prayer life. Last night was the first session.

The audio of the talk is above. The two parts of this second session are

* What is Prayer? (a review)

* The Rule (Pattern) of Prayer

* Adoration and Thanksgiving

The first part reviews the basic definitions of prayer from S. John of Damascus and Father Martin Thornton. The second part looks at two characteristics of true prayer: Adoration and Thanksgiving.

What is Prayer?

1. “Prayer is the lifting up of the heart and mind to God.”

(S. John of Damascus, d. 749, Greek Church Father)

2. Prayer is our spiritual activity: anything we do which is conditioned by relationship with the living God.

Prayer is continuous relationship with God, whether or not that relationship is recognized or articulated.

(Martin Thornton, d. 1986, Anglican priest and confessor)

Putting those two together yields:

Prayer is spiritual activity: our lifting up of the heart and mind to the living God – anything we do which is conditioned by conscious relationship with Him, a relationship which is continuous, whether or not it is recognized or articulated.

ADORATION AND THANKSGIVING

From the Anaphora of Saint Basil the Great(Eucharistic Prayer D from the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, in traditional idiom)

All remain standing for the SURSUM CORDA

Celebrant The Lord be with you.

People And with thy spirit.

Celebrant Lift up your hearts.

People We lift them up unto the Lord.

Celebrant Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.

People It is meet and right so to do.

The Celebrant continues

O Master, the One Who Is, Lord God, Father Almighty, Who Art to be worshiped, it is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, to glorify Thee, O Father, and to give thanks unto Thee, for Thou alone art God, living and true, dwelling in Light inaccessible from before all time and for ever. Fountain of life and Source of all goodness, Thou hast made all things and didst fill them with Thy blessing, creating them to rejoice in the splendor of Thy radiance. Countless throngs of angels stand before Thee to serve Thee night and day; and, beholding the glory of Thy presence, they offer Thee unceasing praise. Joining with them, and giving voice to every creature under heaven, we praise Thee, and glorify Thy Name, saying,

Celebrant and People say or sing the SANCTUS

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of hosts: Heaven and earth are full of Thy glory.Glory be to Thee, O Lord Most High.Blessed ✠ is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest.

All kneel. The Celebrant continues

We acclaim Thee, holy Lord, glorious in power, Whose mighty works reveal Thy wisdom and love. Thou hast formed us in thine own image, giving the whole world into our care, that in obedience unto Thee, our Maker, we might rule and serve all Thy creatures. When our disobedience took us far from Thee, Thou didst not abandon us to the power of death, but in Thy mercy Thou didst come to our help, that in seeking Thee we might find Thee. Again and again Thou didst call us into covenant with Thee, and through the prophets Thou didst teach us to hope for salvation.

Thou didst so love the world, O Father, that in the fullness of time Thou didst send Thine Only-Begotten Son to be our Savior. Incarnate by the Holy Spirit, born of the Virgin Mary, He lived as one of us, yet without sin. To the poor He proclaimed the good news of salvation; to prisoners, freedom; to the sorrowful, joy. That Thy purpose might be fulfilled, He gave himself up unto death; and rising from the grave He destroyed death and made the whole creation new.

And that we might live no longer unto ourselves, but unto Him who died for us and rose again, He sent the Holy Spirit, His own first gift for those who believe, to complete His work in the world, bringing to fulfillment the sanctification of all.

[INSTITUTION NARRATIVE, and then]. . . And now, O Father, we celebrate this memorial of our redemption. Recalling Christ’s Death and His Descent among the dead, proclaiming His Resurrection and Ascension to Thy Right Hand, awaiting His Coming in glory, and offering unto Thee, from the gifts which Thou hast given us, this Bread and this Cup, we praise Thee and we bless Thee.