Friday's Prayer

Eternal God, and All-Wise Heavenly Father:
I thank you for the desire to pray, and for the continued desire to hear your voice, which only comes by the gift of your grace, given to me daily and some times moment by moment. May I never harden my heart.

I thank you for the desire to offer you my life, and for the continued desire to follow the ways of the Christ -- who is blessed forever, which only comes to me because of your faithful love and divine assistance. Help me to daily offer my body as a resource of righteousness.

I thank you for Jesus, who is the Christ, and who is eternally the Son, for his life-giving offering and his present-ness to his church, where he consistently speaks and leads and comforts. May his presence through the Holy Spirit -- the Divine Assistance -- grow to our awareness and to the awareness of the entire world, so that one day he may be understood to be just what he is, the consummation of all things.

I give you this day; I give you my heart, my intellect and my will. I give you my time and my talent. May you take what is usable for the advancement of your Kingdom, which is present and which is being birthed even now.

I offer this prayer in Jesus' name, Your Son and our Savior, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, One God, forever and ever, Amen

The Contemplative Heart

Several days ago I listened to a lecture by Fr. Thomas Dubay on Contemplative Prayer. His thoughts are worth passing on to those struggling for this kind of prayer practice:

1. To love God is the heart of Contemplation
2. You must have a desire for God
   
3. You do not get to God through technique
4. Living the Gospel generously is the key to prayer
5. Select a solitude (a quiet place)
6. Select a suitable position
7. Select a reading (to set the atmosphere)
8. Quiet yourself (Psalm 37)
9. Offer God your loving attention by abiding in this look toward Him
10. If God is not present -- if you are unaware of God's presence -- ponder your reading again
11. Remember: God takes the lead in prayer
    

Jesus is LORD, Ah Yes, That Is The Question

St. Ambrose (go here and here) writes:

"As there are many kinds of persecution,

so there are many kinds of martyrdom.

Everyday you are a witness to Christ...

Who can give a greater witness than the

one who acknowledges that the Lord

Jesus has come in the flesh and keeps

the commandments of the Gospel?"

(from a sermon on Psalm 118)

Perhaps the most difficult moment in the life of a follower of the Jesus-way is that moment when a choice must be made as to one's loyalty to the ancient creedal assertion, Jesus is LORD. This assertion is the final caveat for the Christian faith, for when this is bargained away the faith once delivered to the saints eventually bleeds out.

The ancient Saint here quoted is so right when he reminds us that in this world of people, to offer a final, blatant NO!, a final, this is where I stand, is nothing short of a social martyrdom.

That is, to assert in this day that Jesus is LORD is more than a social indelicacy; it is considered the ultimate state of social bigotry. It is to lose the ability to move within the circles of the polite and the socially graced. It is to become unenlightened and to have stepped over into obscurantist buffoonery. (But those of this persuasion should take heart, in St. Ambrose's day they did much worse things to you!)

And yet, what is the believer to do? If one has in fact met the living Christ within ones own personal space-time history, what else can one assert? One could say, well, "Jesus is my Lord, meaning you may have another," but this hardly does justice to the history of the case, and especially to one's own personal experiential history.

Here I'm reminded of a business man I know who felt pressure to send holiday cards to his customers instead of Christmas cards. In the end, he decided to send Christmas cards because, as I say, what is a believer to do?

Supernatural Supper?

How far are we to take the "supernatural" elements presented in the Christian faith? Some of us are more comfortable with portions of these truths-beyond-reason than with others. Of course, there are many directions this question could lead, but one such direction is what happens within the worship moment in general, and within Communion, specifically.

I have been thinking in this regard because of a statement written by the late, Robert Webber in his book, Ancient-Future Worship:

"I believe music-centered worship has indeed become a common

way of thinking about the presence of God. However, it is an

extremely limited understanding of God's presence...The church

has always believed that God is everywhere but also that he is

made intensely present to his church at worship. God is there in

the gathering of the assembly, in song, in Scripture reading, in

prayer, and especially at bread and wine. Jesus told his disciples

that there is a way to remember him (the force of anamnesis

is 'to make me [Christ] present'). He is right there at the broken

bread and the poured-out wine."

Of course, there are churches who practice those apparent supernatural sign-gifts (so called) in their worship, actions like glossolalia and the like, but Webber was not referencing those practices. Specifically, he is answering the question, just what occurs in our participation at the LORD'S Table -- the Eucharist,

and he is making the argument that with the rationalism of the Enlightenment many (read: evangelical) churches have lost the ancient understanding of Christ's presence in the bread and the cup, opting instead for only a memorial understanding: "do this in memory of me." He writes: "Far from being a mere memorial or empty symbol, the ancient fathers saw bread and wine as a disclosure of Jesus Christ..."

He goes on to say:

[This] "should not be interpreted as transubstantiation -- a view that

was not affirmed until the thirteenth century by the Roman Catholic

Church. Rather, it would be more appropriate to describe the ancient

view of God's presence at the bread and wine this way: an incarnational

and supernatural dimension is attributed to the bread and the wine.

When bread and wine are received in faith, we are transformed. Bread

and wine nourish our union with Jesus. It transforms us into his image

and likeness.

Communion, then, is something God does for us (transformation), and not something we do for God (remembering). If this is true, and I have found it to be so, then we of the low church tradition may have deprived our people of the primary fountain of faith and practice!