Holy Is This Time - #3

Saying one's morning prayers and evening prayers is one way of expressing a wholesome Catholic and Christian instinct. The instinct is one of gratitude. The awakening that comes with morning is a gift of God. Gratitude for new breadth and new life rises up from the deaths as each person awakens, washes, breaks the fast of night time, and begins the affairs of the day. Even before the Christian community goes about its formal ritual prayer for morning, the individual Christian has been expressing gratitude for life and a consciousness that the breadth of life comes from God. Similarly, after many of the affairs of the day have been concluded and as the sun slips under the horizon, the Christian community stops its individual works. It then gathers to give thanks for the blessings of the day and to ask God to forgive anything that fell short of the Christian vocation in the world of commerce and work.

The instinct of gratitude for life is the basis for a pro-life ethic in the church. It grew organically out of the experience of the local Christian Churches and eventually began to take on a specific structure or shape as the church lived out its existence in the Roman empire and in various other cultures in time. In general, two ritual styles developed. The first was an urban ritual style. Since the church was initially centered in the major cities of the Roman empire, Christians would gather with their bishop for a the ritual prayer of morning prayer and evening prayer. This ritual format tended to be ceremonial with the use of lights and incense, singing and ritual action. The psalms that were prayed tended to fit the time. Psalms related to the morning (As morning breaks, I sing to you...) tended to be used in the morning. Psalms related to the evening (My prayers rise like incense; my hands like the evening offering) tended to be used in the evening. Some of the sacred writings would be proclaimed and a short homily might be preached.

Both morning and evening prayer in the urban Cathedral or parochial tradition would include petitions. Christians instinctively trusted that the God who gave life and gave protection in sleep also gave blessing to work and the events of the day. Thus morning prayer took on the character of asking the Lord to bless the work of the day, to allow that work to be a form of praise and glory to God. In short, prayers of petition helped the Christian to consecrate the day to God and to see one's work as a way of giving glory to God. Work became a holy action, just as ritual prayer was a holy action. Both were done in the public arena. Both contributed to the well being of society.

However it is that we engage God in the morning and the evening, what is important is that our lives do depend upon God for our very existence. God gives the breath of life. God gives us skills for work and the affairs of the marketplace. How do we acknowledge and celebrate this important dimension of our lives? How do we find strength and sustenance for these tasks? How do we connect the spiritual and the mundane aspects of our lives into a meaningful whole?