Morning Prayer

“But as for me, O LORD, I cry to you for help;

in the morning my prayer comes before you.” —Psalm 88:14.

A spiritual discipline that many people use is beginning and sometimes ending the day reading and meditating on Holy Scripture. Many denominations follow a daily lectionary of Scripture readings so that over a certain period of time the reader has studied major parts of the whole Bible. In the Episcopal tradition, the Book of Common Prayer lists a two-year cycle of daily Lessons taken from the Psalms, the Hebrew Scriptures, a New Testament letter, and one of the Gospels for each morning and evening. By the end of each seven-week period, the reader has digested the entire Book of Psalms. After the two-year cycle, the reader has been exposed twice to all of the books of the New Testament and once to pertinent portions of the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Scripture readings can also be done as part of a structured morning and evening prayer service read alone or with others. These Daily Offices provide a contemplative framework for regular use as well as offering a pattern for regular reading of the Bible. Some people use a book of daily meditations that also contains Scripture readings; others use publications such as the Methodist The Upper Room, the Episcopal Forward Day By Day, and Catholic resources The Catholic Moment, The Word Among Us, and Being Catholic. Some of these meditations are available online for reading or listening.

The Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer are also online at many sites. One of the most popular office sites is The Mission of St. Clare www.missionstclare.com. I use the Daily Office online from the Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis: dailyoffice.wordpress.com.

I hope to hear from many others about their use of other daily meditations and ways of structuring daily Scripture readings.

Joanna joannaseibert.com

catherine Marshall: The Helper

When we try it on our own, we are seeking to usurp the Helper’s place. The result of attempting in the flesh to convict another of sin is wreckage—defensiveness, anger, estrangement, loss of self-worth, defeatism, depression—whereas, when the Spirit does this corrective work, it is “good” hurt, the kind that leaves no damage, that never plunges us into despair or hopelessness but is always healing in the end.”

—Catherine Marshall in The Helper (Chosen Books, 1978), pp. 214-215.

More than forty-five years ago, when our medical practice at Children’s Hospital was just starting, my husband and I were not as busy and were able to go downtown for lunch—and then perhaps browse Cokesbury Bookstore before returning to the hospital. One day I saw a book by Catherine Marshall, The Helper, on the front sales table for two dollars. I had remembered that she had written A Man Called Peter about her husband, a Scottish immigrant who became the chaplain of the United States Senate, but died an early death. I particularly loved the movie, so I could not resist the bargain. I paid the two dollars, and it changed my life.

I had no concept of the Holy Spirit. Suddenly I was presented with a part of God that I could relate to who was always with me. I had had great difficulty relating to God the Father and Jesus. One was a kind old man with a beard in the sky and the other was some kind of television evangelist flipping through the Bible who wanted to save me.

For years, I held on to the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Helper who was always beside me, guiding me if I chose. This sustained me for a long time, until I was able to have a deeper relationship with the other two parts of the Trinity. I am constantly amazed how God, the Holy Spirit, works: a Presbyterian minister’s daughter I would never meet who was raised in Keyser, West Virginia, with my father, the son of the Methodist minister in the area; a slow time in our practice; a Methodist bookstore; a bargain table; a New York Times best seller; a movie; and two dollars.

My favorite quote by Catherine Marshall was about answered prayer. She prayed for patience, and God gave her the slowest possible housekeeper. I wept when I heard about Catherine Marshall’s death at age sixty-eight in 1983 just before Holy Week.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com

Merton: Spiritual Direction

“The only trouble is that in the spiritual life there are no tricks and no shortcuts. Those who imagine that they can discover spiritual gimmicks and put them to work for themselves usually ignore God’s will and his grace.” —Thomas Merton in Contemplative Prayers.

Thomas Merton’s concise book, Spiritual Direction and Meditation, is another excellent source for someone who wants to know what spiritual direction is all about. It is often recommended to spiritual friends before meeting about direction for the first time. It should also be a frequent reread for those giving spiritual direction. Merton reminds us that spiritual direction is not psychotherapy, and that directors should not become amateur therapists. He recommends that directors not concern themselves with unconscious drives and emotional problems. They should refer.

Merton’s sections on meditations are classic, straight forward, and practical. He uses the story of the Prodigal Son to serve as a model for meditation, as the son “entered into himself” and meditated on his condition, starving in a distant land, far from his father. Merton also suggests the Incarnation, the birth of God into human form, as focus for another meditation relating to birth events within our own spiritual life.

Merton emphasizes the importance of holy leisure, believing that meditation should not be work, remembering that it will take time. He reminds us of promising artists who have been ruined by a premature success, which drove them to overwork in order to renew again and again the image of themselves created in the public mind. An artist who is wise spends more time contemplating his work beforehand than he does putting paint to canvas; and a poet who respects her art burns more pages than she publishes.

In the interior life we must allow intervals of silent transitions in our prayer life. Merton reminds us of the words of St. Teresa: “God has no need of our works. God has need of our love.” The aim of our prayer life is to awaken the Holy Spirit within us, so that the Spirit will speak and pray through us. Merton believes that in contemplative prayer we learn about God more by love than by knowledge. Our awakening is brought on not by our actions, but by the work of the Holy Spirit.

Merton also cautions us about what he calls informal or colloquial “comic book spirituality,” which flourishes in popular religious literature: for example, when Mary becomes Mom and Joseph is Dad, and we “just tell them all about ourselves all day long.” This may be a helpful path to God for some, but it was not Merton’s path.

Joanna. Joannaseibert.com