Let’s be honest: prayer often is not easy. Which of us truly knows how to pray? What words do we use in the wake of devastating loss or in a deep depression? How do we articulate our needs and desires without trying to sway God’s hand too much or telling God how to answer our prayer? When you are numb from grief or, alternatively and oddly, when things are going swimmingly, finding the right words to pray eludes us.
Which is why St. Paul’s description of prayer in his Letter to the Romans is some of the best news in the Bible. “The Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words” (Romans 8:26). Paul gets it all out there: we simply don’t know the right way to pray. We’re human. On this side of the Fall (using the words of theologian Lauren Winner), we will inevitably ask for the wrong things. And yet, the effort is worth everything. The answer is not to stop praying but to let God pray within us, as Rowan Williams says. We must submit, we must cede control, and this is not easy for us.
I usually think of St. Paul’s words in relation to wordless prayer. Sitting silently as our interior space aches with grief or holding our anger intentionally before God is prayer. We lack the linguistic facility to articulate what we really need, so the Spirit prays within us. But there is another way in which we can let the Spirit pray within us and make ourselves available for God to answer our prayers in his good time, as much as that may seem like procrastination to us. This making ourselves available is perhaps most effectively seen in the regularity and rhythm of the Daily Office.
A priest friend of mine recently remarked that the rhythm of daily prayer (the Mass and the Daily Office) is the “heartbeat” of the parish, especially in Anglo-Catholic ones that make an effort to keep this rhythm. I believe this is true. It seems less than honest to put on a splash on Sundays for Sung or High Mass without recognizing the echoes of that prayer during the week. Daily prayer—ordinary prayer, maybe with only a priest praying the Office, or with one or two in the congregation at Mass on a Thursday—is what keeps us humble. It’s easy to enjoy the sumptuousness of a Sunday Mass, but the ordinariness of daily prayer ensures that we are actually intending to stick with God in good and bad times. There is no pomp and circumstance in daily prayer. Sundays are when we eat, liturgically, whatever we want—fried foods, lipids, sweet desserts (except maybe during Lent!). On weekdays, we need to ensure that our diet is healthy for the benefit of our spiritual system. Daily prayer is also a humbling reminder that prayer can be sustained by even one or two pray-ers, whose prayers intercede for all. When schedules don’t permit everyone to be present on Monday or Tuesday for Evening Prayer, those who are there pray for us. We need each other as members of Christ’s living Body.
And people come. I can’t usually predict when they will come, but strangers wander into the church as our doors are open for prayer. Some stay to pray with us. Some realize they want to stay with us long term. People’s need for prayer is not limited to Sundays.
Tomorrow, we have an opportunity to spend one of the waning days of Lent reminding ourselves of the power of ordinary, daily prayer. Our Rector’s Warden, Donald McCown, will lead a Lenten Quiet Day inspired by the interesting quasi-monastic seventeenth century community of Little Gidding, England. Dr. McCown will tell us more about it tomorrow, but suffice it to say that the historic witness of Little Gidding is a part of what we aim to do at Good Shepherd. We keep the rhythm of daily prayer suggested by our Book of Common Prayer. It’s not fancy or complicated. It’s just what we do.
If you’re looking to claim a few moments of quiet and prayerful reflection during Lent, I encourage you to attend tomorrow’s Quiet Day. You can register online. In the middle of the day, at noon, we will celebrate Mass for the Feast of the Annunciation; all are welcome for that. For a moment, we’ll let the extra-ordinariness of a Major Holy Day interrupt the ordinary rhythm of daily prayer.
Often, prayer is about not trying too hard. It’s simply placing yourself intentionally before the Triune God, within whose life prayer is already happening. The Father has sent his Son, in the power of the Spirit, to sweep us up into that divine life of prayer, so that we may ultimately live with him. Whether aching with pain or complacent with happiness, our task is to remember to place ourselves there before God. For when we don’t really know how to pray, which is most of the time, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. Thanks be to God.
Yours in Christ,
Father Kyle