Songs of Deliverance
We’ve really lost the meaning of liturgical prayer these days. The chief issue isn’t whether we like liturgy or not – there is only one norm for Christian worship, and that is the liturgy of the Eucharist – but how we approach it. Most of us approach liturgical prayer as if it were private prayer said by people who happen to be kneeling or standing together in the same room, and this is a problem.
Liturgical prayer is never private prayer. It is the prayer of the whole Body, the Church. It is going on all the time, ceaselessly, as the Psalmist says: From the rising of the sun unto the going down of the same the Lord’s name is to be praised (Ps.113:3); and Let the heaven and earth praise him (Ps. 69:34). This is what happens in the Church, which exists simultaneously in time and beyond time.
The activity of the Church is prayer, praise, and adoration – in short, Worship. This is what we are made for, and this is what we do. The question we need to ask ourselves is how far we allow God’s grace to take us up into this ongoing, ceaseless work of prayer and worship which is the life of the Church. We cannot live any kind of Christian life without prayer, and we must spend time every day in prayer if we are to survive as Christians – it is not negotiable. We are definitely called upon to have a personal rule of prayer. And we are called upon not just to pray, but to live lives that are lives of prayer, where prayer is the characteristic of our whole life.
But personal, private prayer, though indispensable, is only one part of our life of prayer. As Christians, we are no longer just individuals, but members of a Body. We take our identity from our role in the Body. Hell is the place where rugged individualism has its final outcome. And so the foundation of our personal prayer life must be the liturgical prayer of the one Church, that ongoing song of prayer and worship – it’s worth noting that in the Revelation of St. John, the ongoing prayer and worship of the Church in eternity is repeatedly described as something sung.
When we engage in liturgical prayer, at Mass or in the Daily Office, we are joining our voices to a song that has been going on since time began, and that will continue after time has been done away. We join, we work to fit our voices in, to harmonize – we do not compose or conduct. So when we come to Mass, for example, we do not come here to pray our own prayers, or to listen to the prayers of the Liturgy – we come to pray the prayer of the Church, with the Church, in the Church, and through the Church. The old rule is, “Don’t pray during Mass – pray the Mass”.
Just a few weeks ago we had a Collect that describes us as people to whom God has “given an hearty desire to pray” (Trinity III). Do you have, in fact, a hearty desire to pray? I’m a priest, and I can tell you that most of the time I do not have a hearty desire to pray. But when you and I pray the Collect together at Mass we are neither of us praying in our own voice and this is important to remember. We are speaking with the voice of the Church. It doesn’t matter, in liturgical prayer, whether there is a match between what I feel at any moment and what the Church prays. I am leaving myself behind when I enter into liturgical prayer – I am doing par excellence what the Epistle for Trinity III commands: I am humbling myself under the mighty hand of God (I Pet. 5).
Take as an example the praying of the Psalms in the Office. We do not pray the Psalms in the Office because of what it does for us, but it does have a useful effect of helping me realize that my feelings and my state of mind at any given time may or may not be aligned with the tenor of the Church’s prayers. And this teaches me that I need for the most part not to concentrate on my feelings and mental state when it comes time to come to Mass or to pray the Office. This is a first step toward a real humility, for it forces me to say about myself when I enter upon the great song of the Church, “I am out of tune today; I don’t fit very well right now”.
The living, worshipping, praying Church is being formed into the image of Christ. Each of us is called to be formed into the image of Christ, as well, but we do this, not on our own, but in the context of the Church. Each parish should be humbly working to conform itself to the pattern of the Church through the ages, and each parishioner should be working, within the parish, to be made a part of that pattern. This is true humility.
But it is also true prayer and true worship. There is no true prayer or worship without repentance, and there is no repentance without humility. Repentance, like prayer and worship, isn’t something we do once and are done with: repentance must be ongoing and constantly renewed. If we are to live lives of prayer and worship, we must live lives of repentance.
This comes to us most reliably from our humble entrance into liturgical prayer in the Mass and in the Office, where we are led through forms of repentance that train us and tutor us in penitence. When we enter into the ongoing, ceaseless prayer of the Church, we learn humility and penitence, and humility and penitence lead invariably to joy.
Joy, however, is not an emotion, but is a settled disposition that comes from contemplating God’s beauty and love. Yet Joy is not something that we can call up at will, either. We will often find ourselves out of tune with the worship and prayer of the Church, but we must never lose heart, never separate ourselves from this river of life. We must remind ourselves, “God can bring me into tune; God can make me fit; God can give me joy”, even when humility also realizes that this process may take a long time and will certainly require lots of patience.
There is an ancient Greek term for this process: ἔκστασις (ekstasis) which means “to stand outside oneself” – from which we get our word “ecstasy”. Ecstasy comes from leaving ourselves behind, from stepping outside of ourselves and into the great pattern of Christian worship and prayer. So don’t worry if you find yourself out of tune – if you don’t seem to have “an hearty desire to pray”, or if you don’t feel the penitence you confess in the Liturgy, or the thankfulness you express there. Pray the Liturgy – enter into it. Dismiss the promptings of wayward thoughts and emotions.
At all costs, continue to sing the song of the Church, because it is true. God always gives the Church “an hearty desire to pray” – that is why prayer is offered ceaselessly by the Church to God. There is no time of the day or night when there is not somewhere Mass being celebrated or the Office offered. And God gives nothing to the Church that he does not give, through the Church, to her members. The life of the Body is one.
Imagine being able to open a doorway and to gaze upon the life of heaven. Liturgical prayer, in forms that have been consistently validated by the Church, is exactly that – a doorway to heaven. If it seems lifeless or unappetizing to us, it is because we have become tone-deaf and blind to beauty. We have become strangers to joy. And yet, there it is, the music and beauty and joy of heaven in the presence of the angels of God, waiting for us, calling to us to join, hinting in a deeply mysterious way that the addition of our halting, uncertain voices is just what the Composer intended to bring the whole composition to its joyful crescendo.
The Psalmist foresaw all this when he wrote, Thou art a place to hide me in; thou shalt preserve me from trouble; thou shalt compass me about with songs of deliverance (Ps. 32). Who are we hiding from in Christ? Primarily from ourselves, for we are our own worst enemies, and the world and the devil can do nothing if we don’t let them in. This hiding of ourselves from ourselves, wrapping ourselves in the life of the Church (which is the life of Christ), immersing ourselves in the song of deliverance which the Church never ceases to sing, this is true ecstasy, true joy, This is salvation.
