"The Anglican Communion has no peculiar thought, practice, creed or confession of its own. It has only the Catholic Faith of the ancient Catholic Church, as preserved in the Catholic Creeds and maintained in the Catholic and Apostolic constitution of Christ's Church from the beginning."
- Geoffrey Fisher, 99th Archbishop of Canterbury
Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, martyred for Christ in 156
"O happy fault! If we weren't sinners and didn't need pardon more than bread, we'd have no way of knowing how deep God's love is."
- Louis Evely
"Avoid, like the plague, a clergyman who is also a businessman."
- St. Jerome
"Slander is worse than cannibalism."
- St. John Chrysostom
"Tradition is the living faith of the dead. Traditionalism is the dead faith of the living."
- Jaroslav Pelikan
"The Jesus of Suburbia is a lie."
- Green Day
"It's true romance is dead I shot it in the chest and in the head"
- Fall Out Boy
"Don't just adore the Eucharist, enact it."
- William Cavanaugh
"If you can be talked out of your faith, you probably should be."
- Roger Ward
"Don't ever deny someone the luxury of being human or broken. That is not a luxury you yourself can afford to lose."
- Sarah Cunningham
"It is better that the United States be liquidated than that she survive by war."
- Dorothy Day
"Wherever the Psalter is abandoned, an incomparable treasure vanishes from the Christian Church. With its recovery will come unexpected power."
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Wednesday, July 06, 2005 What I like about the Office
It is our custom in our community to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. Several of us spent the last weeks of the school year doing it, gathering outside the little cafe in the College library to say the daytime office together over cups of coffee. (That, by the way, is what we mean when we talk about letting organic, incarnational community emerge in an appropriate form by the movement of the Spirit.)
I should clarify what this means. The Liturgy of the Hours is a set of 7 "prayer services" that consist of psalms, songs from scripture, ancient hymns, and readings primarily from the Old and New Testaments, and some from the early writings of the Church. (Check out Bryan's experience, and some resources, here)
In praying the Office, I'm being trained to quit trying to "get something out of" my reading of Scripture. It is a regular, daily practice, to be engaged in whether I feel like it or not. The Scripture reads me, and I sit with it, (often with my friends as well) whether I'm in the mood for it or not. When it's done, I can trust that this is indeed part of being transformed by the renewing of my mind, whether I "feel" transformed or not.
Because that's the way it happens. Often the Holy Spirit will do a very deep work when we don't think he's anywhere near. There is so much to be done in our redemption, and he doesn't always see fit to let us know exactly what it is, why it is, or what it looks like while it's going on.
My Spiritual director is an Anglican monk, he told me to pray the office whether I "felt" like I was getting anything from it or not. He told me that I was praying with the church, not by myself.
Kyle Potter, MTh (Oxon)
Catechist for Adult Formation,
Saint Patrick's Church
Missioner to Georgetown, Kentucky
Anglican Mission in the Americas E-mail me
Library Technician for Research Assistance & Cataloging
Department Liaison for Religion, Philosophy, Sociology & Theatre
Instructor of Christian Theology
Ensor LRC, Georgetown College
"The Church claims to be the most comprehensive human society there is - the new human race in embryo. And it claims this because of its belief that it is established not by any human process grounded in and limited by events, cultures and so on, but by God's activity." - Rowan Williams
6 Comments:
I heard you got a new job. Where are you working?
Joseph Beth, believe it or not. No matter what I do, I just have to be surrounded by books...
What timing! Take a look at my blog post from today.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was....
Kyle,
Great post. You nailed what I think is one of the best reasons for praying the office. Amen.
My Spiritual director is an Anglican monk, he told me to pray the office whether I "felt" like I was getting anything from it or not. He told me that I was praying with the church, not by myself.
Nice post.
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home