'...the soul in paraphrase, the heart in pilgrimage...'

It is my turn this Lent to preach at the Wednesday Lenten services. Not an easy feat, I must say, but a useful one. I have chosen for my theme, 'The Discipline of Prayer'. This is the first of the addresses, given on Ash Wednesday.

The first part of the address is sort of a bit vague- it really introduces Lent, and then the prayer aspect of Lent becomes more apparent in the latter half of the address!


The Discipline of Prayer (1)

Lent is, in some ways, like a mirror, because we look at our own reflection. We gaze at ourselves long and hard, though in doing so we eventually stop seeing our own self and, we hope, begin to see glimpses of God, through us, behind us, above us, over our shoulder, or all around us.

It is not always easy looking in the mirror, because we don’t always see what we would like to see. We sometimes see things that we wish we could change. That’s a fairly normal feeling. Of course like anything, we can be too hard on ourselves and allow the mirror to exaggerate what is really there and our own eyes become clouded to the truth. And Lent might be a little bit like all of this. We look at our spiritual selves, we examine our way of life, even as basic as the routines that we have developed and we ask ourselves, is this healthy for us, is this the best model for ourselves in order that God can penetrate our hearts, souls, minds and lives and draw us closer to Godself.

We look in the mirror and examine ourselves as we are. We accept and affirm what is healthy, what brings us life and happiness and hope and what leads us to God, and we decide to change those things which are unhealthy, those things which push God and ourselves apart and which bring us depression and despair. We hope by doing this that we can in some ways develop a healthier life, particularly spiritually and allow God’s power to steer us through the curves and bumps of the rest of the year. Some people might crudely call Lent an MOT or a spiritual spring-clean. Whatever image we use, it is good to see Lent as a positive rather than a negative gift of the Church to us. We are given the space in church to take time to examine ourselves…to look into the mirror and gradually see glimpses of God through our own reflection.

None of this can of course ever be done completely by our own powers, though of course it does demand a certain amount of effort and discipline on our part. But the church is there to help in this instance and is here to help us foster healthiness in our spiritual lives. And of course, most importantly, the grace of God will always enlighten our own efforts.

One of the traditional manners of the Lenten discipline is to concentrate more intensely upon prayer. Many churches will increase the services of worship offered or open their buildings more often so that people can come and seek the solace of a sacred space in which to engage with prayer on a much more rigorous level. Places of worship will offer special Lenten services or Lenten study groups, again to cultivate the idea of a Lenten pattern.

For the next 5 or 6 Wednesdays in Lent, we shall be exploring the idea of prayer as a discipline. Not just a discipline for Lent, but for the entire period of our lives as followers of Christ. The word discipline can sometimes evoke negative vibes, especially if we think of discipline in relation to authority, or over-powering control of one person over another or related to punishment. But this is not the discipline we wish to focus on. The discipline we talk of means the ordered, structured, regular pattern of prayer which the Anglican liturgy offers us and encourages us to maintain day by day both individually and communally. During the next weeks we shall be searching the deeper meanings of some of the very familiar prayers known to the Anglican, for example the Collect for Purity and others. These sorts of prayers have followed many a wandering soul and brought them back to God and through their familiarity, have encouraged and developed a renewed discipline of prayer and devotion.

There is, I suppose a certain degree of recognition in the modern world that prayer is not an easy thing to regularise, especially if one exists outside of a monastic community. And that is very true. Perhaps some will feel that prayer is a chore, or a duty to be done, something expected of a Christian, rather than something which we are drawn to or that we yearn for. Or maybe there is a little bit of both in each of us. Yes, prayer is a duty, it is something which we are required to do and in this sense it is a discipline. But it is a discipline which should never cause resentment, nor add to our busy-ness, nor should it ever be an added pressure, or simply another slot in the diary.

Prayer, wrote George Herbert, is the soul in paraphrase, the heart in pilgrimage. It is the lifting up of the heart and mind towards God. It is listening with the ear of the heart. In our lives we need the love of God constantly, because without it we sink into spiritual wilderness and death; prayer is the only way to open our hearts to that love. Amen.