Ninth Thursday after Pentecost
Thanks to Jerry for her comment. I'm happy to add open mind and humble heart to common sense in number 7 of our principles of Biblical interpretation in the last blog. Glenn, I will get to questions, but not today.
Thursday is Prayer and Spirituality Day on the Blog. A couple of weeks ago, I had a quiz question for you. I asked whether anyone had noticed any change in the headings of the blog. A change came about 8 weeks after the blog began. No one responded to the question.
The change came at the very end of the big heading--the white print on dark yellow. It used to end J. Christian Wilson, Ph.D., but every since about the beginning of May it has read, J. Christian Wilson, Ph.D., O.S.L. I think everybody knows what Ph.D. stands for. Some of you know what O.S.L stands for, but most of you don't.
O.S.L. stands for Order of St Luke. No I am not a crypto-Catholic. The Order of St. Luke is the only United Methodist Holy Order. Catholics and Eastern Orthodox have hundreds of Holy Order. Anglicans/Episcopalians have dozens of them. United Methodists have one.
What does O.S.L. do? I should probably first say what we are not and do not do. We are not a monastic order. We're not monks. We have no monasteries. We do not take vows of obedience, chastity, and poverty, as many Catholic orders do. We are not celibates. We are not and never have been single sex. In fact our present Abbot, Sister Elizabeth Moore is a woman. We are not all clergy. I think about a fourth of the members are laypeople. We are not all Methodists. I don't know the percentage, but many of the members come from other denominations, mostly from denominations which have no Holy Orders. We have no restrictions regarding LGBT_ people. All Christians are welcome. We do not, however, recruit people or advertise our order.
So, back to the original question. What does O.S.L. do? We take two vows. One is to pray the Daily Office. The second is to uphold the sacraments.
I have mentioned here and there the Daily Office. It is a set of liturgies and prayers for different times of the day and different days of the week. St. Benedict is the person who designed the Daily Office back in the sixth century, when he founded his Holy Order, the Order of St. Benedict it later came to be called. Perhaps you have seen the abbreviation O.S.B. after some writers' names.
St. Benedict had the prayers of the office spread out throughout the day. We have only two that are prescribed every day and vary from day to day, Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. O.S.L. has published a set of books of the Daily Office, arranged by the seasons of the church year. There are separate Morning Prayers and Evening Prayers for every day of the year. O.S.L. also publishes a three year Daily Lectionary with scripture readings for every day of a three year cycle. The Sunday readings correspond to those of the Revised Common Lectionary, which is used in all the mainline Protestant denominations.
There are other versions of the Daily Office. The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer contains one.There is a brief Order for Morning Prayer in the United Methodist Hymnal (pp. 876-877). The United Methodist Book of Worship contains services of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer (pp. 568-580), but these are single services, not different services for every day of the year. Recently the book Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals has become very popular among Christian Spirituality folk. It contains Daily Services for every day of the year. All these services can be done either with a congregation, a group, or individually.
Next week we will deal with the second vow to "uphold the sacraments." This vow is now taking on different and difficult issues in the wake of Coronavirus epidemic.
O.S.L. has a yearly meeting. This year it became a cyber meeting. We have a website, a logo, publish a quarterly journal and a monthly email newsletter. We have a lively presence on Facebook. We do refer to each other in the order with the traditional titles Brother (Br.) and Sister (Sr.)
Faithfully,
Br. Christian
2 comments:
I know there was a previous blog post that was more specifically focused on St. Benedict and the Daily Office (Divine Office, Liturgy of the Hours), but I'm too lazy to go find that one for my comment. In it, you mentioned the book, St. Benedict's Toolbox by Jane Tomaine. I read that with a small group about 2 or so years ago. It is probably the most useful book on practising spiritual disciplines that I have ever read (not that I am an expert on such books) and I highly recommend it. I don't keep a lot of books after I read them, but this is definitely a keeper. It so happened that it was my turn to facilitate the discussion on the chapter of the Daily Office and so to experience it more fully, I did one 24-hour period that included all the times for the full Daily Office. Midnight, 3 AM and 6 AM were the ones I had to make sure and set my alarm for. It was a fulfilling experience and something I would likely benefit from doing on an infrequent, but regular basis. There are tons of web sites and apps that will guide you through the prayers and responses for the variety of times of day. I recommend you try some of them.
It so happened that on one of my drives to central Illinois, I took a path through Indiana and made a short stop (including a midday mass) at St. Meinrad Archabbey (a Benedictine monastery). I hope to return there someday for a longer visit. https://www.saintmeinrad.org/
I guess I should add that part of what I like about the Daily Office is the concept that you leave the work in which you are involved to stop and pray. Prayer becomes your work of the moment and the fact that you stop your other work is indicative of the priority of that work over other works.
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