Tag Archives: Tradition

Lip Sync and Sanctity

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I’ve been making an effort to say the Divine Office.  It’s not the easiest thing I’ve ever done.  There’s a lot of page flipping and ignorance on my part.  But I humbly applaud my efforts.  My “cloud of witnesses,” I’m sure, agree.

Recently, an absolute marvel of a website, DivineOffice.org gave my prayer time a boost.  With  iPod and  prayer book,  I now sit before the Blessed Sacrament, lips moving in sync with Morning Prayer.  No sound escapes my lips to disturb the silence of the Adoration Chapel, but heavenly voices do sound in my ears.  My prayer wings its way to the throne of God.  I don’t think I’m pushing a spiritual envelope here, but it proves to me technology can be a friend.  The limits I am pushing are those that limit me to me, myself and I.  As I pray, the accompaniment of gifted voices reminds me that the Divine Office is meant to be a communal prayer.  God, Who is outside Time and Space and yet fills it,  hears all of His children making a joyful noise as He inclines His ear.  Some might feel that it’s somehow holier to read than to listen but the Book of Revelation does bless “those that hear,” so I don’t think I’m breaking new holy ground.

Speaking from the Fourth Century

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Hate for you to miss this.   The writer says that we are  led invisibly in our hearts by grace.  That’s comforting to me because when I feel now one way and then soon the other, I feel tossed about and ungrounded as though I’ve lost my spiritual moorings.

From a homily by a spiritual writer of the fourth century:

At times they are like men who mourn and lament over their fellow men, and pouring forth prayers for the whole human race, they plunge into tears and lamentation, on fire with spiritual love for mankind.

At other times they are enkindled by the Spirit with such love and exultation that, were it possible, they would clasp in their embrace all mankind, without discrimination, good and bad alike.

Sometimes they are cast down below all mankind in lowliness of spirit, so that they reckon theirs to be the lowest and most abject of conditions.

And sometimes they are held by the Spirit in ineffable joy.

At one time they are like a brave man who puts on the king’s full armor and goes down into battle. He fights bravely against the enemy and defeats them. In like manner, the spiritual man takes up the heavenly arms of the Spirit and marches against the enemy and engaging in battle tramples the foe beneath his feet.

At another time the soul is at rest in deepest silence, tranquility and peace, existing in sheer spiritual pleasure and in ineffable repose and a perfect state.  Again, the soul is instructed by grace in a certain understanding in the ineffable wisdom and the inscrutable knowledge of the Spirit on matters which neither tongue nor lips can utter.

Then again, the soul becomes like any ordinary man.

In such varied ways does grace work within them and many are the means by which it leads the soul, renewing it according to God’s will and training it in different ways so that it may be set before the heavenly Father pure and whole and blameless.

We, too, therefore must make our prayer to God and entreat in love and in great hope that he may bestow upon us the heavenly grace of the gift of the Spirit.

From the Office of Readings

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From the treatise On Spiritual Perfection by Diadochus of Photice

“Therefore, we must maintain great stillness of mind when in the midst of our struggles.  We shall then be able to distinguish between the different types of thoughts that come to us: those that are good, those sent by God, we will treasure in our memory; those that are evil and inspires by the devil we will reject.  A comparison with the sea may help us.  A tranquil sea allows the fisherman to gaze right to its depths.  No fish can hide there and escape his sight.  The stormy sea, however, becomes murky when it is agitated by the winds.  The very depths that it revealed in its placidness, the sea now hides.  The skills of the fisherman are useless.”

Imitation of Christ

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Thomas a’ Kempis:

On asking for God’s help and believing you will regain His grace

The voice of the Lord: “My son, I am the Lord, a stronghold in the day of trouble.  Come to Me when things are hard for you.  The greatest obstacle to heavenly comfort is your slowness in turning to prayer.  Before you start praying to me in earnest, you look for comfort of every kind and try to find relief for your soul in external things and so you find little help in any of them.  In the end you have to realize that I am the One that saves men when they put their trust in Me and that outside of me there is no effective aid, no reliable counsel, no lasting remedy.  But when your spirit revives after the storm, you shall grow strong again beneath the clear sky of My mercies.  I am near, says the Lord, to restore all things.  Not merely to their former state but adding heaped up, overflowing, riches.  Is any task too difficult for Me?  Shall I be like a man who promises and does not keep his word?  Where is your faith?  Take a firm stand and persevere.  Show patience and courage.  Comfort will come to you in due time.  Wait for Me.  Wait.  I will come and heal you.