I must confess, it was different that the priest, me, wasn’t in charge. I have a liturgist’s determination about what shared prayer should look like. Ellen took a different tack, “We’re going to keep this really simple. Let’s just read some Bible and a couple of psalms, have some silence, offer intercessions as we’re moved to, and say the Lord’s Prayer.”
We believe that the love of God in Christ has sanctified and transformed our whole life—not just the happy bits. Christ was like us in all things except sin and walked the same paths of pain and sorrow that we tread. If every Sunday is a festival of the resurrection (and it is), then it is only fitting that each Friday (except during our high-party seasons) be likewise a remembrance of the cross.
I could tell that something quite wonderful was going on, even though nothing appeared to be happening. There was a look on people’s upturned faces I had never seen before. They were paying attention to something I couldn’t see that made them serious and calm. I was thrilled. I was told this was a church.
One, or perhaps “the” most marked trait of monastics of any stripe are their focus on the psalms as a primary way of prayer. Be it Benedictines chanting in choir or Jesuits whispering psalms to themselves as they go about the world, psalms are part and parcel of a monastic’s toolbox.
Some time back as I drove to work, I noticed a dead squirrel in the middle of the opposite lane. Two other squirrels were trying to rouse him, shaking his body to and fro without success. A third was chattering from the bank on the side of the road, clearly agitated. They were all running back and across the road. Should I stop? Keep going?
How do I pray psalms of protection knowing that God does not work this way as far as I have ever experienced? I cannot believe in a God who pulls some out of the plane crash and not others. Although I would love to be rescued from death in most circumstances, I believe we are mortal and things happen that take our life away.
How’s your prayer life? Anyone here satisfied with your prayer life? I have spent 20 years in parish ministry, and never yet has someone plopped down next to me and said, “You know what Bonnie? I’ve got this killer prayer life.”
They didn’t question whether I was “eligible” to pray for them, bring the sacraments to them, or love them. They clung to me like a life boat and I in turn held steady at their grasp. As they watched their children struggle their relief at the presence of the priest was often palpable. In that moment all they cared about was the fact that a child, their child, was dying and that I was there.
I usually dislike having liturgy texts and hymns projected on a wall, but projected words in that Sunday’s bilingual Spanish and Basque mass felt simply welcoming. My wife and I can follow liturgy in Spanish reasonably well, but when the old priest was praying in Basque, projecting the Spanish translation of his words on the church’s old plaster wall felt like godsend.