Musings about Faith

One of the most wonderful gifts that comes to us through the ancient monastic tradition are the orders for daily prayer which have been and continue to be prayed daily in many communities.  Last summer I spent almost a week at St. Meinrad's Archabby and it was wonderful to prayer the daily office (as it is called) with the monks.  The services are: Lauds at 3:00 AM (times are approximate and vary from location to location); Morning Prayer at 6:00; Noon Prayer at 12:00 noon; Evening Prayer at 6:00 and Compline at 9:00 PM.  Now the ancient tradition also included other brief services at 9 AM and 3:00 PM.  Our hymnal - Evangelical Lutheran Worship and also the Lutheran Book of Worship before it, contained beautiful settings of the office services of Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and Compline.  Evening Prayer and Compline are especially popular in Lutheran circles.  Episcopalians use Morning Prayer with a bit more regularity.  Every night at Lutheran Summ...

***What is prayer? How do we pray? In the Gospel of St. Matthew (chapter 6) Jesus addresses these questions and expresses to his disciples some very new and different ways of understanding prayer. First, Jesus uses negative examples (verses 5-8): "Do not pray as the hypocrites do…" he tells them. Don't make a public spectacle of your prayer and piety. In fact don't even use very many words, the essence of prayer is not the words we speak to God. What then is it? "When you pray, pray in this way, Our Father…" ***What follows is perhaps one of the most important, beautiful and misunderstood prayers in the history of Christianity: "The Lord's Prayer." For what is most striking and important is that this prayer is rooted in Jesus' understanding of the Kingdom come. The Lord's Prayer is a Kingdom Prayer, and its placement at the conclusion of the Eucharistic prayer and before the distribution lifts that up before the faithful in a p...