Be nourished by prayer and Scripture
Here is a quotation by St. John of Karpathos which does not need any commentary by me, of all people.
Blessed is he who, with a hunger that is never satisfied, day and night throughout this present life makes prayer and the psalms his food and drink, and strengthens himself by reading of God’s glory in Scripture. Such communion will lead the soul to ever-increasing joy in the age to come.
June 29th, 2009 | Tags: Bible, Lectio divina, prayer: continual, Psalms, salvation | Category: Adjutorium |
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Printable version
Printable version
Ack! I didn’t think to click on your name and see if you had created a blog! I’ve been missing it for weeks! Months! All the wasted time!!!
Seriously, I’m really excited about this. I would read anything you wrote avidly, even a commentary on the phone book. Please post often. If you like, I’ll send you some of the stuff of yours I have archived for fodder.
None of my students know what “fodder” means. Sigh.
By the way, the five prayers were the Lord’s Prayer, the Apostle’s Creed, the Magnificat, Psalm 119 and the Adjutoriuim, right? What? I spelled Adjutoriuim wrong? But you did it that way yourself. You also spelled it Adjutorium, so I guess I just got confused.
Having payed your back for your pedantery, I bid you a fond farewell.
Well written! By the way, you never told me you had another blog (on Lulu) or what you meant by my lack of devotion for the flag having something to do with a skewed incarnational theology. And while I’m at it, what are your thoughts on impanation/consubstantiation vs. transubstantiation?
Well, finally after four years or so I got around to saying something about transubstantiation. I don’t really answer the question you asked, but my answer does point toward what I think about the whole question as you did ask it.
My scores were almost exactly the same…
While I know thou art a sinner, I wouldn’t say you have “haman-ness”. He was MUCH worse than you!
I agree with your thoughts regarding transubstantiation. Another question. If we cannot, and perhaps should not, explain the mystery; should it prevent co-celebration of the Eucharist?
[grumble grumble] Your first comment on the new blog and already you found a typo. Well, I guess I should be grateful. [gritting teeth] [squinting] [sucking in air] There! I’m grateful. Thank you for noticing that.
Good question about co-celebrating the Eucharist. I think maybe a new post on the subject would be called for. When I have time, I’ll write something up, maybe call it “Eucharist Theories, part 2.” To answer it one must be able to juggle/balance(?) theory and practical reality.
As for Haman being worse than I, I’m not sure. His sin was certainly more spectacular than anything I’ve managed to come up with so far, but I can be pretty bad in my own petty way when I try. And I doubt he spent his nights dreaming up ways to be wicked for the sake of wickedness; I am sure his actions seemed reasonable to him, even good by his standards. Most of my sinfulness does not have even that justification. Frankly, he had the power to sin big; I don’t.
Please pray for me. After all, I’m the one Jesus had to die for.
When I did my Holy Saturday concert thingie, I looked up a lot of the Orthodox traditions for the Harrowing of Hell. One that I particularly liked was that they put a coffin in the middle of the isle. So, I took the Alleluia coffin (that we use at the beginning of Lent) and used that instead. I don’t know if the people got the point, but I quite liked it.
What did they do with the Alleluia coffin? Did they bury it in the ground? Just hide it away? I have never been in a church that did this, but I think the burying of Alleluia is a delightful thing. I would like to bury it in the ground, or have an old-fashioned Old English sepulchre in the church, but that has never been practical at any of my congregations.
They hid it away and I pulled it out for Holy Saturday. Then, on Easter Sunday, they opened it and released the Alleluias. Pretty cool, for Lutherans.
I think you’re on the right track noting this limitation. At the very least, prayer is a dialogue with God in which God is leading. However, these days I think more of prayer as communion with God; us being in each others’ presence.
Here’s my problem. When I pray “regularly”, like at night or in the morning, I find myself forced to come up with words. It’s not “from the heart” at all. I think those times would be ideal times to use this. But those “from the heart” prayers, even then, I think I would classify as “in the moment” prayers.
Which is all to say, I find I rarely do things “from the heart.” That is a sad realization.
This is something I have been planning to write about later. I think the situation is different for different people. Some folk can open their hearts up to God and a torrent of real, appropriate, honest words just floods forth. Others of us can’t do it. I believe the Adjutorium is appropriate for all Christians; but for those of us with this problem, it takes on an added benefit. I know that I get tired of being told, “Just pray to God like you would to a good friend.” Sometimes it works, sometimes not. The truth is, I wouldn’t let any of my good friends spend as much time with me as God does, or demand communication from me as often as I am supposed to pray to God. Heck, I’m a hermit, and there’s a reason for that. Perhaps this means that I really do pray to God as I talk to my friends: rarely and then very deeply. I am sure, too, that my situation and yours must be incomprehensible to those lucky souls who can “just talk to God” all day long and into the night. I have no idea what’s up with them, and they don’t understand me, either.
I’d best quit now so I still have something to write about later. Next post (maybe) will be: The Adjutorium as prayer of deep trust.
Perhaps it means that, instead of eradicating terrorists, we are to sain them? And to be willing, even eager, to experience martyrdom at their hands?
Well, now you’ve gone and terrified me. There is probably something to what you almost say, since I know that everything Jesus calls me to is something I don’t really want to do to begin with. Jesus and St. Paul certainly do not think that preserving this earthly life is the top priority (see, e.g., last Sunday’s epistle, 2 Cor. 5:6-10 and all accounts of the Crucifixion). And certainly vengeance, my first impulse, is not even on the list of possible Christian values. Honestly, I’d rather not think about it.
Sooooo …. what would be a good, one sentence definition of prayer?
Good question. Our definition must include
All these and more. So how to summarize all that? How about this:
That’s wonderful!
Great God, make speed to save me.
Loving Lord, make haste to help me.
I asked because I had kind of taken Kierkegaard’s position, “The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.” Also, some of what you mention, I would think, could be included in saintly intercessions.
Wouldn’t you also need to include, say, sweeping? And liturgy?
Maybe prayer is that communication which brings us closer to God?
Please do not include the words “liturgy” and “sweeping” in the same sentence or paragraph. Almost always they are put together as “sweeping reform of the liturgy”, which absolutely gives me hives.
Sweeping the floor could indeed be included as prayer. It depends on the interior disposition of the sweeper. And public worship, too, with the same stipulation. The examples I mentioned are all things that people pretty much do only when they are intending to pray per se, whereas sweeping and public worship (see how elegantly I avoid doing what I just told you not to do?) are often done without deliberate intention to pray.
Kierkegaard’s statement reminds of this by Dag Hammarskjöld:
The problem with Kierkegaard and Hammarskjöld is that they represent a decidedly adult understanding of prayer. I mean an understanding which children are mostly not capable of, into which one must grow and mature. It is, I believe, superior to the more childish view, but that child’s view–prayer is asking for stuff–is valid and respectable. Jesus is recorded as having prayed that way, and he taught us to. It is respectable to believe that prayer changes God, though better to look forward to its changing me.
The “prayer changes me” attitude is more mature and sophisticated because (I believe) everybody capable of it is capable of the other, while not all those capable of understanding prayer as asking for stuff and trying to get God to change his mind are able to understanding the other way.
I wrote Terry Pratchett, recently, and told him that, although he’s probably an athiest, he gave me one of the best pictures of what Jesus did for us I’ve ever seen. In “Feet of Clay,” a golem named Dorfl is purchased by the good-hearted Captain Carrot. Carrot tells Dorfl he is free, but Dorfl can’t understand this. So, Carrot opens his head (where the chem goes) and puts the receipt of purchase in.
He gives Dorfl to himself.
Dorfl then chooses to A) earn money to help other golems purchase themselves and B) work at the Watch with Carrot.
If that ain’t Christianity, I don’t know what is.
I just listened to the Orson Wells adaptation of “The Man Who Was Thursday.” I hadn’t thought of it before, but turn of the century anarchists were what Muslim extremists are today. It makes me sad, because it seems that the only people willing to die for what they believe in are almost always willing to kill for the same cause.
Where are the Christians willing to die, but not to kill? (Not sure I’m one of them. It sounds really nice when I say it, but the reality would probably be too much for me.)
I suppose the answer would include the relational. See, one of my problems is that I don’t really pray. Not right and not regularly. The selfish, childish person bringing their Christmas list to God has an infinitely richer prayer life than mine.
So, maybe, because prayer changes us; prayer is anything that maintains that contact with God that we might be changed?
Amen.
And if you were to pray the Adjutorium regularly, the quality of your prayer life would increase automatically.
So take a deep breath, right now:
“O God, come to my assistance;
O Lord, make haste to help me.”
And then pray it one more time. And once more. Now you are done for the moment. There. You have just prayed in a high quality way. That wasn’t hard.
I think our prayer lives are similar. And that is why the Adjutorium is so appealing to me.
If this is supposed to be for everybody, which is true, then it is sad that only monks do the Psalms part and mostly only certain Protestants,and not all, do the Bible part.
This is so creepy. First, one of the main ways (before celtic lists) that I would test out ideas was to imagine myself being interviewed by someone famous, like the Poprah. I would hone my answers until it was something with which I could live and have others know what I thought.
Second, I had this SAME realization, but with Hugh Hefner instead of a demon. He’s at least honest while most Christians (by which I mean myself) hide our sins big and small. He at least throws his finger in the face of God while I pledge sonship but live as a rank stranger.
Doesn’t this make exorcism an act of deep hypocricy(not to mention bad spelling LOL) than if the demons are more honest about their standing with God than we are?
Hello, Harold. I’m glad you found my blog.
Frankly, I don’t even want to think about your question. I’m afraid it boggles my poor brain.
Harold (the helicoptor?),
We do it out of obedience and love. Just because someone honestly says, “I’m going to kill your child,” doesn’t mean we have to respond, “Well, since you were honest and I’m a liar, go ahead.” Plus, at least we’re TRYING (sometimes) to be obedient. We WANT (more or less) to be. We’re just epic failures.
Knowing Harold, I know that there was a mischievous grin on his face as he typed that.
Actually I wasn’t (this time), believe it or not. The irony of the situation just struck a really profound cord in me, although I will admit I enjoy unexpected twists, paradoxes and such. One of the most deepest spiritual paradoxes I struggle with is we are truely sacred beings (if for no other reason the breath of the devine spirit bestowed upon us makes us so) and yet as humans we can engage in the most horrific acts of evil against each other. Reminds me of the Nuremburg (sp) hearings post WW II where the German High Command pointed out the allies were comitting alot of the same acts which they were standing trial for. Definitely not defending the nazi high command, mind you, but it definitely tainted the purity of the allied cause.
Keeping in mind that this is a thought experiment, since I do not (as far as I can tell) know any actual demons.
The demon has made a deliberate decision at some level to reject the Lordship of God. He does not value God at all, sees no reason to be subject to him, and therefore does not care — is not ashamed — that he refuses to place himself under Him. In fact, he is proud of that rejection.
On the other hand, I at my best have chosen be subject to my Lord and, at worst, have at least not chosen to reject him. So when I do not live up to that, when I live as if he were not my Lord, I feel ashamed. Therefore I lie about it to myself and maybe to others to protect my fragile ego. That is a fault, but it comes from something good — at some level I want to do the right thing, but I don’t do it.
So in the end, I come out better than the demon.