The Spindle of Prayer

For those of us who live in the secular world, daily life is overwhelmingly heterogeneous. This is especially true of college students. Even I, a recluse, am constantly in contact with varied settings and events, often against my own isolated nature. 

Where is the balance, the equilibrium, the binding force that makes sense of the various activities that I face throughout the day? Am I merely a conglomeration of different functions and masks, one person at this hour and another person altogether at another? 

My typical day can see wild ranges of activity. In a span of a few hours, I may go from the physical discipline of toilsome exercise to four hours straight sitting in seminars, bent on keeping astride the subtle quirks of Greek or grasping at the winding threads of a theological argument. But in both extremes, a strain echoes. 

There are moments of complete focus on a task, where my mind is forced into the present at least because I must be there to learn and perform well. There are spaces of silence and contemplation in the chapel where I wish I could attain that classroom focus at will. Throughout either mode, a refrain repeats.

There are walks in silence, in weather fair and foul. There are the occasional (fumbling) attempts to hold my own in a party or social setting. There is a phrase that binds two such disparate moments together:

Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto; sicut erat in principio et nunc et semper, et in saecula saeculorum. Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit; as it was in the beginning, is now and will be forever.

Every moment of every day is drawn together by the Gloria Patri, recited in the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church’s punctuated prayer that consecrates every moment, mood, and mode of action. The liturgy’s form is simple and old beyond reckoning: Five different prayers for five different times of day, each prayer with its own set of psalms and canticles with the Gloria Patri, with its readings and intercessions, with its supplications and entreaties.

There is the Office of Readings, which I prefer to pray in the half-light before dawn; there is Morning Prayer before Mass; the Daytime Prayers which I place in the midst of my daily labors; there is Evening Prayer awaiting me after I have set my work aside; there is Night Prayer as my head hits the pillow. No part of my day does not hear the psalms and the Gloria Patri.

Thus, the various phases and moods of the day are not obliterated or muddled together, but drawn into a higher unity which respects their differences. On my way to a class, let there be one of the Hours, with a petition for wisdom and focus. Before a run, let the Gloria Patri be on my lips with a prayer for safety and strength. Before I lay my body to rest, let the psalms be my prayer for a restful night and, when the time comes, a perfect death. The continuity is there.

As a spindle weaves threads together, the Liturgy of the Hours binds all the different times and periods in the Church and the community into one grand tapestry: the seasons of the Church calendar and the solar calendar, the fasts and the feasts, the times for mourning and the times for rejoicing, all interlaced and interlocked in the bittersweet image of the pilgrim Church. 

Moreover, through the omnipresence of the psalms, this liturgy has a special capacity to speak to the individual in any situation and disposition. It puts the reader in touch with the full range of human emotion and every shade of devotion, from the exalted heights of pious joy down to the very lowest depths of despair and apathy. The psalter is a divinely inspired instrument, each psalm a key on the grand organ that is the human spiritual experience, both the quotidian and the extraordinary. The Liturgy of the Hours is the structure, the sheet music of this prayer-song.

Perhaps the greatest strength of the Liturgy of the Hours is its habitual nature. I often find spontaneous and free-form prayer difficult and burdensome, but the Hours shore me up and always put holy words on my lips, even in darker and drier times. Together with daily Mass, which the Hours point toward and commend, this prayer of the Church is the expression of a lifelong commitment to God through thick and thin. 

After some years of experience and consistent dedication, the Liturgy of the Hours begins to pervade every moment of the day. Gradually, the scriptures sink into the very bedrock of the mind. The avid disciple of this liturgy effortlessly memorizes the psalms. More importantly, the psalms no longer have to be consulted in a book; their phrases and feelings rise up out of the subconscious during everyday events and encounters. The psalter of the page is not merely a reservoir of sacred words; it is an instrument which transforms the reader into a living psalter.

I have found that the Liturgy of the Hours even yields visible fruit in habit-building and the ability to structure the day. Planning when to pray naturally results in planning when everything else happens–suddenly the Office of Readings is the pre-study prayer, Morning Prayer the pre-Mass habit, and so on. Praising God, let it be clear, is the prime and sufficient motive; nonetheless, it cannot be denied that truly good habits will always yield concomitant and perhaps unexpected blessings.

I suspect that I cannot sufficiently commend the Liturgy of the Hours to the reader, but it is nonetheless the most valuable piece of advice I can offer to anyone, anytime, anywhere, but especially to lay men and women. There is no binding vow upon us to pray it as there is upon the priest or the deacon. There is only the universal enjoinment on every Christian, which really amounts to the same thing—pray the prayer of the Church, every time and every place, especially in the Liturgy of the Hours and the Mass! That is not a suggestion, it is a necessity.

The complete form of the Liturgy of the Hours is a set of books called breviaries. Several can be found in the Gasson Hall library. There are four in the set; be sure to get the one for the current liturgical season, and read the instructions.. Failing that, find a copy of ‘Christian Prayer’ or ‘Shorter Christian Prayer.’ They are abridged but great for beginners. 

Begin with one or two Hours. Let them pass into your habits and weave the psalms into the fabric of your mind. They will work in ways seen and unseen. Like any good seed, they will bear much fruit given time, and they will eventually push you to even greater devotion—strength unto strength.