I read with them some of the works of Henri de Lubac. Lubac’s work pointed to the unity of Christian teaching (the subject matter of dogmatic theology), contemplation of God (the goal of theology), and the interpretation of scripture (the material of theology). Lubac gave me the words to describe what I long desired – the connection between discourse about, and transformative union with God.

This influenced my heart but has taken many years to influence my creativity. Trained in academic discourse, combined with my own character flaws, my tone in academic writing became polemical. I knew this tone to be antithetical to what I loved. When I attempted a more contemplative tone, I was told my writing was “too pious.”

Several years ago when a trusted colleague pointed out that the tone of my academic writing was a bit polemical, I stopped writing. I found that my journey had landed me up against the wall of writer’s block. I no longer wanted to write polemically. But I could not write with piety or devotion. I knew no other way to write. I stopped writing. I concentrated on teaching and administrative duties at the seminary I served.

Like many graduate students drawn to dogmatic theology, I dreamed of writing my own dogmatics. I would show wonderful things about God, make new connections for people, solve many contemporary controversies, and, of course, make myself look brilliant. Smart people would appreciate me, and I would finally contribute something valuable.

Every time I began this project, I would get bogged down in details, overwhelmed with its scope, feel inferior compared to the greats, to my teachers and peers. I would spiral into shame, fall into fear of rejection, and defend my ego.

Despite all the above feelings, I remembered one thing. I teach well. That was sure to solve my writer’s block! I would write on the church’s teaching as a teacher.

This approach did relieve some writer’s block, for a time. Some passages felt insightful, infusing wisdom from teaching theology and liturgy. Other passages felt stuck, artificial, didactic. I found myself getting bored, and the block would return.

Some say we write the books we wish we could read. I found myself tiring of some of the books I read as part of my morning office. I wanted a book of prayers focused on the contemplation of God and the paradoxes of Christian teaching.

I would have to write the book I wanted. Then I realized this is “my” dogmatics. What if my audience were neither scholarly peers nor students? What if my audience were God? The very thing I was most committed to, the unity of contemplation and Christian discourse, implied one clear thing: prayer. With God as my audience, I could write a dogmatics as small manual of devotion.

The purpose of Christian teaching is not to get our opinions straight or to test other’s fitness for faith. The point is to direct us charitably, ascetically, pastorally towards ever greater love of and union with God. I could take as my aim to enact, through prayer, the unity of contemplation and church teaching.

I took it up as a manuscript. This is the first time I have written a book by hand. Every morning office I would take out a small journal and wrote one prayer to God engaging a central Christian teaching. The manuscript became the result of my morning prayers. The writer’s block rolled away.

I followed the ancient shape of doctrinal summaries. Two parts in two sections each. The two parts: Theology, and Economy. Within Theology two sections each: theology proper, or Doctrine of God, and then the theology of the Cosmos as God’s creation. Within the Divine Economy two sections: Incarnation and Salvation, or theosis.

The format would and make a month of reflections, 31 days each section. This bound me to a form in which to pour the content of my prayers. How did I want to divide up the core doctrines of the faith? What would I include? What would I leave out? How much would I assume another reader would already understand? In making a series of 124 prayers, each on a page of a small page, forced me to be concise. The selection, ordering, and assumptions were, themselves, “my” dogmatics.

I am joyful to share that I completed the draft manuscript – success in the face of writer’s block.

The following selection is from the first part, first section, day one. It begins my prayers engaging the doctrine of God, grounded in the way of negation, the attribute of invisibility:

INVISIBLE

O, God, you are invisible.
You are no object of vision.
If I see it, it is not you.
For you are not sensible.
You are not an object of sensation.
If I sense it, it is not you.
O, God, I am sensible, I can be seen and perceived.
I am not God.
O, God, you are our chief desire.
If I can see it, it is not my chief desire.
What I chiefly desire I can neither see nor sense.
O, God, give to me my chief desire.
Give my sensible nature union with your invisible nature.
O, God. You are invisible.

This prayer prepares the reader for the surprising mystery found in the paradox of the incarnation. This next selection is from the second part, first section, the doctrine of Christ. Here, the foundational assumptions of the way of negation are shaken with the paradox of God made visible:

ASCENDS

O, Father, by your Spirit, and on the wings of the Angels, you have lifted up your Son, our Savior, Jesus Christ to be seated at your right hand on your own throne in the heavenly places.

The sensible has been enthroned within the intelligible.
The visible clothed in invisible.
Humanity elevated to divinity and glorified.
There he joins your holy Prophets, Enoch and Elijah, who go before him.
May I lift up my heart and its meditations to where your Messiah is, and at the last, come to dwell with him there and he in me.
O, Father, you elevated your Son to your own right hand.

I have given the document to my research assistant who has turned it into a word processor document. It is meaningful to me that I still have the original manuscript prayer journals.

I hope to publish these prayers as a short devotional book. I hope, someday, to add a commentary about my decisions in terms of selection, focus, ordering, and wording of my prayers. Then God would have given me a great gift: the dogmatic theology I had always dreamed of writing, but as free as possible of shame, fear, and the desire for human approval. God is my audience. God does not need my dogmatic ruminations. But he loves me through them and gives me the power to love him in return. I hope that others may find these prayers helpful and add their own, “Amen.”

The Twelve Days correspond, among other things, to the months of the year, and in the Middle Ages were sometimes used as intercalary days — days to make up for the fact that months and solar years do not perfectly match. This correspondence was even expressed in superstitions. Folks would study the weather for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas to predict the climates of the next year. God has set the lights in the heavens for signs and seasons, and the 12 months correspond to the 12 signs the Sun passes through each year. The 12 tribes of Israel are one of the many ways that God designs things to be on Earth, as it is in the Heavens — 12 houses of Heaven and 12 houses of Israel. Jesus chooses 12 disciples to restore Israel and its 12 tribes, and thus, to restore the unity of Heaven and Earth — as he taught us to pray.

I delight in the way the liturgy we inherit is cosmic in expression and ramification. But my family struggles joyfully to walk through the Twelve Days in our consumer culture, our late capitalist economy. After all of Advent, having carefully avoided the American cultural “Holiday Season,” that builds up to and suddenly ends with Christmas Day, while also avoiding falling into cynicism or self-righteousness, by the time I get to the Twelve Days, I feel exhausted — spiritually exhausted from these efforts, and emotionally exhausted by the constant bombardment of consumer heartstrings to boost sales. As a seminary professor, I often also am aware of the pressure on my students taking General Ordination Examinations at this time, often right on the Principal Feast of the Epiphany — a strange day to administer a test, it has always seemed to me.

What if, instead of succumbing to Christmas fatigue, we were able to observe Advent in a way that prepares for the joy that is the Twelve Days of Christmas? Already, it is a season of preparation (historically, preparation for baptisms at the Epiphany; theologically, preparation for the second coming of Christ to judge the living and the dead; practically, preparation for the festivities and gift-giving of Christmas). Keeping Christmas throughout the whole Christmas season requires stamina. Such joy is hard to endure. Perhaps Advent could also serve to build us up to that necessary endurance.

In past years, I have entertained waiting until Christmas Eve to put up and decorate our Christmas tree, so that it can last all 12 days. I have had to give up on this, as there are no Christmas tree deliveries after the second week of Advent. We keep it up through Twelfth Night anyway. It is rather crispy and flammable by the time we put it on the side of the road for pickup. We have become rather strict about listening to Christmas music only on the Sundays of Advent so that, by the time Christmas and its 12 days come, we are not already sick to death of it.

This year, we hope to hold on to the mystery, all the way through Epiphany. This year we hope to be free of cynicism, or judgmentalism. Let everyone keep Christmas their own way, so long as we keep it. Praise God for blow-up Santa Clauses! We will decorate slowly, bringing the Christmas tree in on Gaudete Sunday. This year, we hope to celebrate the resurrection of the cosmos in the birth of our infant God. And let each of the Twelve Days bring Earth a little closer to Heaven, and us a little closer to God.

By Nathan Jennings

Bishop Curry’s Way of Love provides the church with “practices for a Jesus-centered life.” Many of these practices are traditional Christian disciplines presented in accessible language for an internet age. So, with this resource, Curry is modelling evangelism. The key practices are, Turn, Learn, Pray, Worship, Bless, Go, and Rest.

In this brief essay, I will reflect on “Pray.” I hope to provide some theological reflection on prayer. I will also provide a couple of examples of prayer that you can try.

The 1979 prayer book catechism describes prayer as “responding to God, by thought and by deeds, with or without words.” This broad definition is meant to allow for many aspects of Christian life to be swept up into prayer. It is important to notice that, for a tradition and a scriptural canon that tends to emphasize prayer as words directed to God, prayer actually encompasses aspects of our relationship with God that go beyond verbal exchange. Prayer is at least verbal, but not solely so. Our relationships with one another inherently involve conversation. But our embodied relationship with one another is not merely verbal. We have body language, hugs, kisses, and sexual union as a part of the human expression of love. We have more subtle forms of presence, such as even sitting together in silence. The variety and subtlety of human encounter, in many cases, translates over into our relationship with God — a relationship defined by God’s willingness to relate to us in our humanity — and that ultimately expressed in his Incarnation as Jesus Christ.

Perhaps we could define prayer as deliberate acts and disciplines that open us to connect to, and communicate with, God. This would include listening deeply to God and prayerful meditation on Scripture. This kind of meditation is the foundation of the Christian monastic tradition. We can also include contemplation of the divine nature. This kind of contemplation is the foundation of both Christian philosophical theology and Christian mysticism. Of course, prayer is also words. But it is not simply petition or intercession. Prayer is thanksgiving and praise. We give God thanks for what he has done. We also praise and adore God simply for who God is, in God’s very nature, independent of God’s relationship with creation. Prayer is also lament, invocation, penitence, oblation, etc.

Although we can certainly include non-verbal actions as prayers — actions speak louder than words — nevertheless, as a religion of the Logos, we need to understand such action-prayers as existing within the context of some kind of intelligible intercourse or conversation with our divine dialogue partner. Fasting is prayer. But going without food only becomes fasting when we dedicate that discipline to God in prayer. Such prayer most often ought to take the form of words. In this case, words of oblation: “Lord, please accept this fast.”

The main thing to hold on to for a Christian understanding of and approach to prayer is that God is always waiting to meet with us, greet us, and welcome us into his presence. All we have to do is spend some time, every day, in prayer, and we are promised that God will be there — whether we always feel that presence or not. So, as with any relationship, regular interaction is key. But it does not need to be overwhelming. How about the Lord’s Prayer once in the morning, and once before bed? Such seemingly tiny habits quickly build into significant and long-lasting transformation of our lives.

I have heard people contrast the way of prayer with the way of action in the world — often to the detriment of prayer. Why pray when there are so many neighbors to love? This assumes that praying for our neighbor is somehow not “real,” or somehow does “nothing.” But this fails to achieve full faith in God, God’s presence, and the real action of God in our lives. Praying for our neighbor is both love of God, simply by turning to God in prayer, and also genuine love of neighbor.

Many readers may already be familiar with core, verbal prayers. I would like to conclude this brief post with a suggestion for meditation as a way to engage prayer. Meditation is a form of non-verbal prayer where we simply become still and know that Jesus is our God. We dwell intentionally with God. It is also an opportunity to pray with our imaginations — freed from discursive content. And we can build this into our regular prayer practice. Planting such little seeds can grow, over time, a transformative Rule of Life for ourselves.

Settle into place and get still. Invoke the presence of God. Take a few deep breaths and relax. It may help to close your eyes. Breathe in and imagine that you are taking away any anxiety or fear you may have and giving it to Christ. Then exhale and imagine you are giving yourself the deep peace of Christ. Envision yourself and watch yourself slowly resting in Christ’s presence. After you have established this, let it go.

Next, imagine someone in your life you truly love and shift the focus to him or her. Breathe in all of that person’s tension, fear, anxiety, and pain. Lift this up to Jesus to carry away. Breathe out to them all you hope for them in Christ. Envision them relaxing into Christ’s presence and being filled with genuine joy. Once you have established this, let it go.

Finally, imagine someone who is your enemy. I know what you are thinking, perhaps: “I am a Christian! I don’t have enemies.” But is this true? Who was the last person who really bugged you? Whom do you avoid? Who frightens you? Before whom would you feel shame if you saw that person walking down the street toward you? Those are the people you can love through prayer. Choose one and focus on him or her.

Now make the same exchange for that person. Breathe in all their pain, fear, anxiety and woe. Give it to Jesus to carry away. Then breathe out to them, from the Holy Spirit within you, everything that person needs from Christ to be full of joy and freedom and peace. Once this is established, let it go. Conclude with a prayer for your enemy.

Try this for two weeks on one of your enemies. Let us know in the comments what changes. I promise that something will.

Blessings on your prayer life during this Lenten journey.

The Rev. Dr. Nathan Jennings is the J. Milton Richardson associate professor of liturgics and Anglican studies at Seminary of the Southwest.

By Nathan Jennings and Richelle Thompson

In this series, we offer prayers edited from the corpus of Jeremy Taylor as examples of alternative liturgical texts deriving from local liturgical communities in response to the sixth clause of Resolution A068. We offer this material in hopes that it can be helpful to others as well. Part one; Part two

Taylor’s communion office anticipates many developments to come in Anglo-Catholicism and Liturgical Renewal. It includes an anamnesis in the prayer of oblation. It restores the Benedictus to its traditional place. It provides the Beatitudes as an alternative to the Ten Commandments. It retains and develops the celestial remembrances lost after 1552.

In addition to editing Jeremy Taylor’s prayers in the interest of brevity, we reworked Taylor’s Eucharistic prayer in order to fit the structure with which we are familiar from Liturgical Renewal and our 1979 prayer book. Generally speaking, we overlaid Taylor’s text over Rite I, Prayer I and normalized some spelling, while retaining Taylor’s language.

For the Eucharistic Prayer:

The presider faces the people and sings or says

The Lord be with you.
People And with thy spirit.
Celebrant Lift up your hearts.
People We lift them up unto the Lord.
Celebrant Let us give thanks unto our Lord God.
People It is just[1] and right so to do.

Then, facing the Holy Table, the Celebrant proceeds

It is, indeed, truly just, righteous, and fitting, to praise and to glorify, to worship and adore, to give thanks and to magnify thee, the great Maker of all creatures, visible and invisible, the treasure of all good, temporal and eternal: the fountain of all life, mortal and immortal: the Lord and God of all things in Heaven and Earth, the great Father of his Servants, the great Master of his Children.

The Heavens and the Heaven of Heavens, and every power therein; the Sun and the Moon, and all the stars of the sky; the sea and the earth, the heights above and the depths below; Jerusalem that is from above, the Congregation celestial, the Church of the first-born written in the Heavens, the spirits of the Prophets and of just men made perfect, the souls of the Apostles and all holy Martyrs, Angels and Archangels, Thrones and Dominions, Principalities and Powers, the spirits of Understanding and the spirits of Love, with never-ceasing Hymns and perpetual Anthems cry out, Night and Day:

Celebrant and People

Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts:
Heaven and earth are full of thy Glory.
Glory be to thee, O Lord Most High.[2]
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.
Hosanna in the highest.

The presider continues:

Holy and blessed art thou, O King of Eternal ages, fountain and giver of all righteousness.
Holy art thou, the eternal and only-begotten Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, Redeemer of the World.
Holy art thou, O blessed Spirit, that searchest all things, even the depths and hidden things of God.
Thou, O God, art almighty: thou art good and gracious, dreadful and venerable, holy and merciful to the work of thine own hands.

Thou didst make man according to thine image; thou gavest him the riches and the rest of Paradise: when he fell and broke thy easy Commandment, thou didst not despise his Folly, nor leave him in his sin ; but didst chastise him with thy rod, and restrain him by thy Law, and instruct him by thy Prophets ; and, at last, didst send thy Holy Son into the World, that he might renew and repair thy broken image.  He, coming from heaven, and taking our flesh, by the power of the Holy Ghost, of the Virgin Mary, conversed with men, and taught us the way of God, and the dispensation of eternal life.

But when for the redemption of us sinners he would suffer death upon the Cross without sin, for us who were nothing but sin and misery, for in the night in which he was betrayed, he took bread, he looked up to Heaven, he gave thanks, he sanctified it, he brake it, and gave it to his apostles, saying, “Take, eat, This is my body which is broken for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

Likewise after Supper he took the Cup; and when he had given thanks and blessed it, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink ye all of this, for this is my Blood of the New Testament, which is shed for you and for many, for the remission of sins. Do this in remembrance of me.” For as often as ye shall eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye shall shew forth the Lord’s death till he come.

Celebrant Therefore: we believe, and we confess:

People We declare thy Death, and confess thy Resurrection.

Have mercy upon us, O heavenly Father, according to thy glorious mercies and promises, send thy Holy Ghost upon our hearts, and let him also descend upon these gifts, that by his good, his holy, his glorious presence, he may sanctify and enlighten our hearts, and he may bless and sanctify these gifts; that this Bread may become the Holy Body of Christ. And this Chalice may become the life-giving Blood of Christ. That it may become unto us all, that partake of it this day, a Blessed instrument of Union with Christ, of pardon and peace, of health and blessing, of holiness and life Eternal, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

We sinners, thy unworthy Servants, in remembrance of thy life-giving passion, thy cross and thy pains, thy death and thy burial, thy resurrection from the dead, and thy ascension into Heaven, thy sitting at the right hand of God, making intercession for us, and expecting, with fear and trembling, thy formidable and glorious return to judge the quick and dead, when thou shalt render to every man according to his works; do humbly present to thee, O Lord, this present Sacrifice of remembrance and thanksgiving, humbly and passionately praying thee not to deal with us according to our sins, nor recompense us after our transgressions; but according to thy abundant mercy, and infinite goodness, to blot out and take away the handwriting that is against us in the Book of Remembrances which thou hast written: and that thou wilt give unto us spiritual, celestial, and eternal gifts, which neither eye hath seen, nor ear hath heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man to understand, which God hath prepared for them that love him ; through Jesus Christ our Lord. By whom, and with whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honor and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end. Amen.

Concluding remarks

Our Jeremy Taylor-inspired eucharistic rite began as a liturgy class assignment at Seminary of the Southwest, to create a service following an Order for Celebrating Holy Eucharist (BCP pp. 400ff). It is often overlooked that the Order for Celebrating Holy Eucharist, or, colloquially, “Rite III,” can be used to design traditional language alternative services just as well as something more contemporary. We eventually adapted the results of this assignment for use in the Seminary of the Southwest’s Christ Chapel on April 13th, 2018, and we were happy to find it well received by the community.

Further Reading

Carroll, Thomas K. Jeremy Taylor: Selected Works, by Jeremy Taylor and Thomas K. Carroll, Paulist Press, 1990, pp. 15–84. Classics of Western Spirituality.

Taylor, Jeremy. “An Office for the Lord’s Supper.” Edited by Gary Carson, Jeremy Taylor’s Communion Office, The Book of Common Prayer – Charles Wohlers, 3 Oct. 2018, justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/Taylor_Communion.htm.

The Whole Works of Jeremy Taylor, Vol. 15 (1822) and Vol. 8 (“Revised and Corrected”, 1883); and Anglican Liturgies of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, by W Jardine Grisbrooke, SPCK, 1958.

Williamson, Hugh Ross. “Chapter XVI The Offices.” Jeremy Taylor, by Hugh Ross Williamson, Folcroft Library Editions, 1973, pp. 101–107.

The Rev. Richelle Thompson, a graduate of Seminary of the Southwest (MDiv, 18′), is rector of Resurrection, Rainbow City, AL.  Prior to ordination, she worked for arts organizations including the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.

[1] This could be replaced with the more familiar “meet.” If so, the word “just,” ought also to be changed with “meet” in the sentence immediately below.

[2] Or the more ancient “Hosanna in the highest,” could replace “glory be to thee, O Lord Most High.”

By Nathan Jennings and Richelle Thompson

In this series, we offer prayers edited from the corpus of Jeremy Taylor as examples of alternative liturgical texts deriving from local liturgical communities in response to the sixth clause of Resolution A068. Part one considered material for use in the Liturgy of the Word.

[Insert Dropcap]Jeremy Taylor is important for our liturgical piety as his communion devotions remain, for example, one of the key reasons why the Anglican tradition retains a theology of eucharistic sacrifice. Taylor designed his own liturgy for use when living under the protectorate of Oliver Cromwell. The episcopacy and the prayer book were illegal during the Commonwealth. Taylor continued secretly to preside over the various services of the prayer book. The suspension of the prayer book afforded him a great deal of freedom of worship, although he remained decidedly liturgical. This is not unlike our current situation, where common practice and now an official resolution grant the Episcopal Church much latitude for liturgical experimentation.

In 1658 Taylor published his Collection of Offices, which included an alternative Communion Office. Taylor’s Collection of Offices led to his third imprisonment. Taylor’s offices were the culmination of his own knowledge and synthesis of the inherited prayer book tradition in England thus far, together with his study of the classics, the church Fathers, both Eastern and Roman liturgy, and, interestingly, the Spanish Mozarabic Rite. Taylor’s use of traditional prayer book material while reshaping it to match more ancient and Eastern rites form an interesting parallel to both our Scottish-American prayer book tradition and the Liturgical Movement. There are excellent ecumenical opportunities especially with Rome and the East by engaging these well planned and devotional liturgical options.

For the confession and absolution:

The Deacon or Celebrant says the following:

All ye who truly repent you of your sins, and are in love and charity with your neighbors, and intend to lead a holy life in all godliness, and sobriety, and honesty, draw near and take these holy mysteries to your comfort; first make your humble confession of sins to God, and meekly beg his pardon for what is past, and his grace for the time to come.

Minister and People

Almighty God, we miserable sinners do humbly confess, and are truly sorrowful for our many and great, our innumerable and intolerable crimes, of which our consciences do accuse us by night and by day, and by which we have provoked thy severest wrath and indignation against us. We have broken all thy righteous laws and commandments, by word or by deed, by vain thoughts or sinful desires; we have sinned against thee in all our relations, in all places and at all times: we can neither reckon their number, nor bear their burden, nor suffer thine anger which we have deserved. But thou, O Lord God, art merciful and gracious: have mercy upon us: Pardon us for all the evils we have done. Judge us not for all the good we have omitted: Take not thy favour from us, but delight thou to sanctify us and save us, and work in us to will and to do of thy good pleasure all our duty; that being sanctified by thy Spirit, and delivered from our sins, we may serve thee in a religious and a holy conversation; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Bishop when present, or the Priest, stands and says

Our Blessed Lord and Savior Jesus, the great Shepherd and Bishop of our Souls, that Lamb of God who taketh away the sins of the world, who promised Paradise to the repenting thief, and gave pardon to the woman taken in adultery, he pardon and forgive all your sins known and unknown. Amen. [/End Quote]

In place of the “Prayer of Humble Access.”

Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof; but as thou didst vouchsafe to lie in a Manger with Beasts, and to enter into the house of Simon the leper, nor didst despise the repenting sinner when she kissed thy Feet; so vouchsafe to lodge in my Soul, though it be a place of beastly affections and unreasonable passions; throw them out and dwell there for ever; purify my Soul, accept the Sinner, cleanse the Leper, so shall I be worthy to partake of this Divine Banquet. Amen.

As a post-communion prayer:

GLORY be to thee, O God our Father, we most heartily thank thee, who hast vouchsafed to make us at this time partakers of the Body and Blood of thy holy Son : we offer unto thee, O God, ourselves, our Souls and Bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living Sacrifice unto thee: keep us under the shadow of thy Wings, and defend us from all evil, and conduct us by thy Holy Spirit of Grace into all good ; for thou who hast given thy holy Son unto us, how shalt not thou with him give us all things else? Blessed be the name of our God for ever and ever. Amen.  

In the third and final part of this series, we will consider an alternative eucharistic prayer.

The Rev. Richelle Thompson, a graduate of Seminary of the Southwest (MDiv, 18′), is rector of Resurrection, Rainbow City, AL.  Prior to ordination, she worked for arts organizations including the Alabama Shakespeare Festival.