Day by Day (Mid-week Message)

 

 

Day by Day

Fr. Tony’s Mid-week Message

September 17, 2014

“O most merciful redeemer, friend and brother,
may I know thee more clearly,
love thee more dearly,
and follow thee more nearly, day by day.  Amen.”

--from the Prayer of St. Richard of Chichester

The Psalmist sings, “Seven times a day do I praise thee; because of thy righteous judgments” (Ps. 119:64).  From this sprang the tradition of monastic prayer throughout the day.  Just as the year is marked with seasons and the liturgical calendar reflects this with different colors, themes, and moods, our daily personal prayer life and spiritual practice is marked by the rhythms of the day and different prayer hours.   Following ancient Jewish practice, the liturgical day began at sundown the day before: “the evening was, and the morning was, the first day” (Gen. 1:5).  Thus the basic shape of the monastic prayer services (or “offices,” since they were seek as a duty or work required of the monks) was: 

         Evening:       Vespers

         Bedtime:       Compline

         In the night:  Vigils or Nocturns

         Sunrise:         Matins or Lauds

         Morning:       Prime or Terce

         Noon:            Sext

         Afternoon:     None (rhymes with “bone”)

When Archbishop Thomas Cranmer wrote the first Book of Common Prayer at the English Reformation, he simplified these complex monastic offices for use by the laity into two simplified services:  Daily Morning and Evening Prayer.  But the desire for monastic spiritual practice and prayer life continued, as seen in the family of Anglican Deacon Nicholas Ferrar ordering its life with ongoing prayer throughout the day at the house in Little Gidding in the first decades of the 1600s. Though not professing vows, they were called by Puritan detractors as "protestant monks and nuns." 

Our current prayer book thus not only has Morning and Evening Prayer, (BCP pp. 75ff and pp. 109ff) but also several short offices: for noon (pp. 103ff), vespers (pp. 109ff), and compline (pp. 127ff).  In addition, it gives us “Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families” (pp. 137ff), short five-minute offices for the morning, noon, early evening, and close of the day.   This wealth of prayer forms gives us all the chance to begin or enhance our prayer life at any level, and allows us to continue observing some form of the daily offices even when our schedules change and do not allow full length prayer offices.  

Anglican priest John Wesley (whose followers later became the Methodists) preached on the pattern of the day in our spiritual life this way: 

 “Our wise creator [has] divided life into these little portions of time, so clearly separated from each other that we might look on each day as a fresh gift of God, another life, which we may devote to his glory; and that every evening may be as the close of life, beyond which we are to see nothing but eternity.”  —“Sermon XXVI: Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount, Discourse VI”, in Wesley’s Works (New York: Emory and Haugh, 1831), p. 242.

Prayer and short meditative practices throughout the day help keep us centered and focused.  They empower us, comfort us, strengthen us, and give us joy.  They bring us together.  As Anglican priest and hymn writer John Keble wrote,

“New every morning is the love
our wakening and uprising prove;
through sleep and darkness safely brought,
restored to life and power and thought.

New mercies, each returning day,
hover around us while we pray;
new perils past, new sins forgiven,
new thoughts of God, new hopes of heaven.

If on our daily course our mind
be set to hallow all we find,
new treasures still, of countless price,
God will provide for sacrifice.

Old friends, old scenes, will lovelier be,
as more of heaven in each we see;
some softening gleam of love and prayer
shall dawn on every cross and care.

The trivial round, the common task,
will furnish all we ought to ask:
room to deny ourselves; a road
to bring us daily nearer God.

Only, O Lord, in thy dear love,
fit us for perfect rest above;
and help us, this and every day,
to live more nearly as we pray.”

May we pray unceasingly in word and service, follow the cycle of each day in spiritual practice, and become closer to Jesus, day by day. 

Grace and Peace,   Fr. Tony+