Lenten Discipline
Reposted from Boolah
In the season on Lent, Christians are called upon to focus themselves on Christ’s sacrifice for us in the upcoming Passion, by engaging in some form of spiritual discipline. We’re all familiar with the traditional avenues this usually takes, such as picking something to give up for Lent, and the traditional Catholic discipline of no-meat on Fridays. However, many times we miss the point when we simple “give something up”, that it’s not supposed to be just about our ability to overcome our desires, but our discipline is meant to bring us into closer communion with God. That means that our discipline doesn’t have to be about letting go, but could also mean adding on. Because of everything that has happened in my life this past year, I’ve decided that simply giving something up is not what I need to do this Lent. I’ve had to give up a lot this year already, and I feel I need to add something to my spiritual life instead.
So for this Lent, I’ve decided to commit to praying the Liturgy of the Hours. This is an ancient discipline that centers around praying at certain times of the day. It’s a practice that is very, very ancient and it meant to help focus your daily life around prayer with God. In ancient times, monks would gather and pray together every three hours. In modern times, most people who pray the LoH commit to praying the three main hours of Morning (Lauds), Evening (Vespers) and Night (Compline). Each prayer time consists of some Scripture and prayers that are appropriate for the season, and if combined with the Office of Readings (a set of readings that have no set ‘time’) you can get a large dose of Scripture and meditations. So for this discipline I’ll be committing to praying when I wake in the morning, after I get home from work, and then right before bed.
Committing to this for the entirety of Lent is going to be a big challenge for me. However, with the advent of technology, I have a lot of things that will be able to help me. Instead of purchasing the large (and expensive) 4-volume set of the Liturgy of the Hours, I will be using a site called Universalis, which publishes the complete set of daily prayers for each day. You simply go to the site each day and click on the prayer time you’re looking for and you get that day’s reading. However, I still want to be able to read the LoH even if I’m not near a computer, so I’m also purchasing theUniversalis iPod version. For a fraction of the cost of the printed edition, I will have the complete LoH on my iPod Touch that I can reference at any time. It’s laid out with an easy to use calendar that allows you to browse through any day of the year, in a nice easy to read format.
I’ll be honest, this is going to be a very hard discipline to keep. It’s not easy to take something on brand new for an extended period of time that requires work and commitment. It’s going to mean that I commit time each day, three times a day, to stopping what I’m doing and reciting the prayers and readings for that day. It means taking my focus off whatever is distracting me at the time and refocusing on God. But after all, that’s the point of all this anyway isn’t it?
