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On Prayer

© Michael P. Spencer

I am by no means an expert on prayer. That said, I will admit that of my spritual gifts, prayer is the one area where I seem to have a special affinity. I like being creative with my prayer life, and I like sharing my ideas about prayer with others. Sometimes I think I was created with the spiritual life of a monastic without the patience for the cloister.

The days of the medieval monks and nuns were ordered around the prayers of the hours. Called the "Work of God" by St. Benedict, eight times each day the Benedictine religious would pause to pray and reflect. Today, in the Anglican tradition, we have four prayer services daily, called the Daily (or Divine) Office. I like to pray the Office as a way to order my day. The first words out of my mouth in Morning Prayer (also known as Matins or Lauds) are the familiar "O Lord open my lips;and my mouth shall proclaim your praise." At noon, I take time to calm myself from the stresses of the day with the short form of Noonday Prayer. Evening Prayer, or Vespers, is especially enjoyable when you can participate in a sung version, called Evensong. The last service of the day, Compline, is a serene way to calm the mind and prepare for sleep.

The Office is really meant for corporate worship, but many of the Anglican churches include forms for personal devotion in their editions of the Book of Common Prayer. I tend to use different versions for different liturgical seasons. I like the New Zealand BCP's version of Compline, and I pray that most of the time. Sometimes as a Lenten discipline I choose to read long forms of the Office or maybe just one of the services if my schedule is tight. For Advent I like to use the Church of England's prayer book, because it reminds me of the language and "smells and bells" of my childhood Christmas Eve services. During the Pentecost season (or Ordinary Time) I use forms from a breviary (prayer book intended for monks or nuns) from a Roman Catholic order of Benedictine nuns. And when I'm feeling particularly conservative, I use the versions of the Office from the American 1928 BCP. (This happens more often than you might think!)

I like to use just the one version of Compline, because it was orginally intended to be memorized and chanted by the monastic community in the dark before going to bed. I have the New Zealand version memorized, but I still use the book just out of habit.