This is the second of my Lenten addresses on the theme 'The Discipline of Prayer', to be delivered at St Mark's Dundela (DV!) on Wednesday 8 March 2006.
The Discipline of Prayer (2)
In the morning, while it was still very dark, Jesus got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed. And Simon and his companions hunted for him…
(St Mark 1.35-36)
‘God is present everywhere – present to the good and to the evil as well, so that nothing anyone does escapes his notice; that is the firm conviction of our faith. Let us be very sure, however, without a moment’s doubt that his presence to us is never as strong as while we are celebrating the work of God in prayer.’
(from Chapter 19 of the Prologue to the Rule of St Benedict)
Everything that we do, everything that we think and everything that we desire is known to God, even before it is known to ourselves. Such things are also understood more deeply by God than by ourselves. We can hide nothing from God even if we fail to acknowledge something, whatever it is, to ourselves. And so given that very humbling and almost fear-inducing truth, we might ask ourselves, ‘What is the implication of this in our prayer life?’ and ‘Does this in any way change our method of praying?’
When we acknowledge that even the deepest darkest secrets are known very clearly by the Almighty, then we cannot avoid being humbled in our approach to prayer. This is I suspect one of the first stages of a disciplined approach to prayer. That we rid ourselves of any false expectations or fallacies such as that God will only hear and respond to things that we tell him and that the things that we do not mention go unnoticed. One of the most rudimentary things which our liturgy teaches us is to settle in the knowledge that our hearts become very open and vulnerable in prayer. We ourselves as entire human persons become vulnerable if we are genuinely open and honest in prayer to God: that cannot be avoided.
At the beginning of every service of the Holy Communion in our church we pray the Collect for Purity. It is a very ancient prayer of course, pre-Reformation in origin and much beloved of Thomas Cranmer in his revision of the liturgy. But it is a prayer which expresses our ‘attitude’ in devotion; it is the prayer which we should pray at the outset of any formal, liturgical encounter with God, no matter how or when. It is a prayer that we should not only say blindly, but take some silent time to consider and ponder:
Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
To recite this prayer is, you might say, comparable to consuming a large glass of ice cold mineral water first thing in the morning, or to taking a walk before breakfast in a forest on a cold frosty winter morning with sun splitting the trees. The Collect for Purity is the equivalent of pouring a refreshing, cleansing, purifying balm over your entire being: hence the name, the Collect for Purity. It is a prayer so simply written, yet so vastly full of profound truths about God, about ourselves and about the nature of our encounter with God.
In this prayer we ask for the Holy Spirit to renew our jaded spirits for the task which is ahead of us, that of worshipping the Almighty in the Sacrament, we ask for the breath of the Holy Spirit to blow away the cobwebs of deceit and distraction and temptation, and to draw us into a place of calmness and peace where we can leave behind our stresses and daily occupations and concentrate afresh on the living God. We approach God’s presence in the knowledge that when we confess our sins, the slate will be wiped clean.
The Collect for Purity also expects of us what we might think is the impossible; that our love for God may be perfect: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you… But it is not always helpful to think of something as ‘impossible’: God desires us to be as perfect as we can become in our prayer, he desires that our worship might be honest and open; but never expects the impossible. It is this notion of vulnerability once again: that only when we open ourselves honestly, can the grace of God to flow into us. Then, we might have a chance to be as perfect as we can be, in God’s presence.
At the beginning of each day, let us attempt to do as Jesus did in our reading tonight from St Mark’s Gospel: go to a quiet place and pray before everyone starts hunting for us. And in order to focus our minds, let us make it our duty to slowly read the Collect for Purity to wash away our fears and misconceptions; to make ourselves aware once again that God can peer into every crevice of our innermost being.
Let us allow ourselves to become vulnerable so that God’s purity might flow into us and our love for him be perfect.
(St Mark 1.35-36)
‘God is present everywhere – present to the good and to the evil as well, so that nothing anyone does escapes his notice; that is the firm conviction of our faith. Let us be very sure, however, without a moment’s doubt that his presence to us is never as strong as while we are celebrating the work of God in prayer.’
(from Chapter 19 of the Prologue to the Rule of St Benedict)
Everything that we do, everything that we think and everything that we desire is known to God, even before it is known to ourselves. Such things are also understood more deeply by God than by ourselves. We can hide nothing from God even if we fail to acknowledge something, whatever it is, to ourselves. And so given that very humbling and almost fear-inducing truth, we might ask ourselves, ‘What is the implication of this in our prayer life?’ and ‘Does this in any way change our method of praying?’
When we acknowledge that even the deepest darkest secrets are known very clearly by the Almighty, then we cannot avoid being humbled in our approach to prayer. This is I suspect one of the first stages of a disciplined approach to prayer. That we rid ourselves of any false expectations or fallacies such as that God will only hear and respond to things that we tell him and that the things that we do not mention go unnoticed. One of the most rudimentary things which our liturgy teaches us is to settle in the knowledge that our hearts become very open and vulnerable in prayer. We ourselves as entire human persons become vulnerable if we are genuinely open and honest in prayer to God: that cannot be avoided.
At the beginning of every service of the Holy Communion in our church we pray the Collect for Purity. It is a very ancient prayer of course, pre-Reformation in origin and much beloved of Thomas Cranmer in his revision of the liturgy. But it is a prayer which expresses our ‘attitude’ in devotion; it is the prayer which we should pray at the outset of any formal, liturgical encounter with God, no matter how or when. It is a prayer that we should not only say blindly, but take some silent time to consider and ponder:
Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden; cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name; through Christ our Lord. Amen.
To recite this prayer is, you might say, comparable to consuming a large glass of ice cold mineral water first thing in the morning, or to taking a walk before breakfast in a forest on a cold frosty winter morning with sun splitting the trees. The Collect for Purity is the equivalent of pouring a refreshing, cleansing, purifying balm over your entire being: hence the name, the Collect for Purity. It is a prayer so simply written, yet so vastly full of profound truths about God, about ourselves and about the nature of our encounter with God.
In this prayer we ask for the Holy Spirit to renew our jaded spirits for the task which is ahead of us, that of worshipping the Almighty in the Sacrament, we ask for the breath of the Holy Spirit to blow away the cobwebs of deceit and distraction and temptation, and to draw us into a place of calmness and peace where we can leave behind our stresses and daily occupations and concentrate afresh on the living God. We approach God’s presence in the knowledge that when we confess our sins, the slate will be wiped clean.
The Collect for Purity also expects of us what we might think is the impossible; that our love for God may be perfect: Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you… But it is not always helpful to think of something as ‘impossible’: God desires us to be as perfect as we can become in our prayer, he desires that our worship might be honest and open; but never expects the impossible. It is this notion of vulnerability once again: that only when we open ourselves honestly, can the grace of God to flow into us. Then, we might have a chance to be as perfect as we can be, in God’s presence.
At the beginning of each day, let us attempt to do as Jesus did in our reading tonight from St Mark’s Gospel: go to a quiet place and pray before everyone starts hunting for us. And in order to focus our minds, let us make it our duty to slowly read the Collect for Purity to wash away our fears and misconceptions; to make ourselves aware once again that God can peer into every crevice of our innermost being.
Let us allow ourselves to become vulnerable so that God’s purity might flow into us and our love for him be perfect.
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