The Office - A Short Wednesday Homily

 

The Office? No, not the excellent British comedy series which was hard to watch on account of its cringe making realism but rather the daily duty of prayer. St. Benedict of Nursia broke this up into eight periods: Matins or Vigils, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline, thus sanctifying the day on into the night.

In the Anglican world, the wicked if skillful liturgist Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, conflated these into the twofold Office of Morning and Evening Prayer. It's solid stuff, especially in the language of the old prayer book (1928) as opposed to the horrific, banal, unsayable modern language variants cooked up by expert liturgists in the 1970s and beyond.

SSH Chapel, my old place

That said, consider the benefit of a set order of prayer, canticles, and readings from the psalms and the Old and New Testaments; every day, morning and evening. Not only does this free the person at prayer from having to cook it all up themselves, which tends to mean they don't, but also unites them to the common, daily, prayer of the Church.

Back to Cranmer, who was burned at the stake in Oxford for being a wicked heretic. Perhaps he was, but I'd argue he did a masterful work of making Benedict's Monastic Office accessible to the laity. Bold call: Look here, laic, you too can sanctify the day as well as priests and religious, provided of course that you can read. 

SSH High Altar, well done RW for bringing it back and so much more

And that's just it, provided you can read. This, punters, is at something of a premium right about now and forces the question: As we sink into barbarism, and we are, will the Church keep the light of civilization burning in the encroaching darkness? She's done so before and I'll wager she'll do so again.

We had five souls at Evening Prayer today in this small garrison style Mission we call the Compound, and there we were, praying with the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, Mystici Corporis Christi, and you know what? The gates of hell shall not prevail.

God bless you all,

LSP

Ghostly Counsel

I find this helpful, you might too:

WHO has not sometimes thought: If I could see Jesus Christ as he was on this earth; if I could talk with him, if I could have certainty from those divine lips, and read assurance in those steady eyes, then I should lay hold of God.  So we think, but not so he teaches.  He is in the Supper Room, desiring in that last opportunity to enlighten his disciples' minds and to assure their faith.  But beyond a point he cannot.  He cannot teach them as fully, he says, as the Holy Ghost will teach them hereafter.  It is not so much the word of Jesus knocking at the mind's door that secures his admittance; it is the God within drawing the bolts with invisible fingers.  When your pride, he says, when your self-sufficiency has been shattered by the experience of my death, the Spirit will secure the admittance of all the truth you need to know.  And so it is: after half an hour's repentance before the cross of Christ, the Spirit shows us what years of study cannot discover, and what Christ present in the flesh might not avail to make us see. (Austin Farrer, Crown of the Year)

 

I can't and won't add to that.

God bless,

LSP