Daily Prayer

Before this class I had little understanding of the liturgy of the hours. I had heard of vespers but associated it only with monasteries.  Learning about the hours was another glimpse into the breadth of what the Catholic Church has to offer.   I began the semester praying lauds and compline as those are the times that I am most used to praying and typically the quietest times of the day.  I used the Laudate app on my phone and tablet to quickly pull up the appropriate prayers. 

I  journaled the following:

1/21/2015  I have been saying the Liturgy of the hours twice a day since we began school 2 weeks ago.  It is difficult to get used to since it is a lot of reading.  I am used to praying in my own words.  Today was the first day that I felt “moved”.  Perhaps because I was sitting in the sunroom and it is easy to be in God’s presence there.  The sunlight filtering in, birds singing, squirrels running about.  Or maybe it was the Psalms of praise that spoke to me today. Psalm 62(63), the canticle of Daniel (3) all creatures bless the Lord, Psalm 149 (sing a new song to the Lord), Canticle Benedictus (The Messiah and his forerunner), the Responsory   The Lord will help her, His loving presence will be with her, He dwells in her, she will not falter (Having this in the feminine form did make it much more personal.) Anyway it left me uplifted and joyful.

I continued praying Lauds and Compline until the end of lent but beyond an occasional moment of connection, like the one mentioned above, I did not feel that this form of prayer spoke to me throughout the day.  On the advice of a friend I read Macrina Wiederkehr’s book Seven Sacred Pauses which is a book based on the theme of the hours.  I found the collections of more contemporary prayers, poetry and antiphons honoring the monastic tradition of the hours to be more moving and transferable to daily life.  In it she discusses the importance of pauses throughout the day.  “Breathe in the spirit of the hour; breathe in gratitude and compassion for yourself; breathe out love and encouragement for your co-workers, friends, family members….If you learn the art of pausing, your work will prosper and be blessed” (20).  It was this simple exercise that I found I could take into the day with and use while at work to honor the day, to bless and  be blessed.  At any moment during the day I could pause, turn my heart to God and  breathe without having to stop to look up the appropriate prayer.  I could bless the day, praise God and bless those in my day with this simple pause. 

I also reverted back to using Sacred Space in the morning,an Irish Jesuit site that uses Ignatian spirituality to guide you through the a prayerful reading of the daily gospel.    Having gone through the 19^th Annotation last year, I found this familiar framework to be a good way to start the day and it gave me food for thought and opportunity to take what I experienced through the reading into my day.