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.

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.

Sometimes, it's just none of our business.

O God, come to my assistance

O Lord, make haste to help me

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