One of the traditional Lenten disciplines is prayer (along with fasting and almsgiving). Prayer is a great privilege of communicating with God and yet, for such a sublime act, it doesn’t seemed to get used a whole lot by a great many people. I wish I had a dollar for everyone who said he didn’t have time for prayer or for those people who say their prayer lives are dry and boring. Communion with the Almighty may not always be exciting, but it should always be meaningful and plentiful.

I used to be a lousy pray-er myself. Growing up I always looked forward to praying and wanted to do it more often. However, I did poorly at the actual act of prayer. I always had in my mind the idea that prayer was supposed to be free and flowing, with no forms or structure. Although, this would seem like a great way to pray on the surface, often the spiritual juices wouldn’t flow and I would be stuck at what to say. And of course, not wanting to spend time feeling stuck before God, my prayer life suffered. I have countless prayer journals, all of which are full for about three months and gradually taper off to nothing. I didn’t really know how to pray, as odd as that may sound. At least I didn’t know how to pray in a manner that helped me really worship God and do so in a regular and meaningful way…that is until I discovered form prayer, the Hours, and the Church year.

Form prayer at first seemed foreign to me, like I was cheating. But there was also something beautiful and intriguing about it. The prayers, even though written by someone else, seemed to minister to me and say exactly what was on my mind. They were not rambling either, but said what I was trying to say concisely. I learned form prayers through the Anglican Book of Common Prayer. Along with form prayers I discovered the Office and the Church Year.

The structures of Morning and Evening Prayer and the changing seasons of the Church year provided me with a prayer structure and rhythm, something that was missing from my individualistic approach. In the Catholic Church, the Hours have been prayed for centuries and their structure is an ancient one. The prayers and readings of Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline give the whole day a sacred structure in the same way that Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and Ordinary time give the year a sacred structure. The best way to devote myself to prayer was to re-orient my spirituality from a secular schedule to a sacred one. In this way, prayer was not a footnote in my worldly day that I felt I had to do (but rarely did), but a primary focus. Although many will object that form prayer and the daily and yearly cycles are boring and repetitive, I can honestly say I’ve never had the same prayer time twice. There really is great freedom and variety in the form prayers and the keeping of sacred time.

This Lent, I highly recommend to those seeking to deepen or re-invigorate their prayer lives the praying the Hours and fully experiencing the seasons and fixed days within the Church year. You should find, like me, that it re-orients your life to God and is a perfect antidote for spiritual dryness.

Some good resources:

Liturgy of the Hours Online - has the current Liturgy of the Hours in booklet format for downloading
ChurchYear.Net - attempts to explain the Church year in easy to understand terms (N.B. run by yours truly)
Christian Prayer: The Liturgy of the Hours -the whole Hours in print (N.B. I get a small portion if you order it from here)
My Daily Psalm Book - includes the Psalms in traditional language for all the Hours. I bring this one to work since it’s pocket sized.

The Monastic Diurnal or the Day Hours of the Monastic Breviary - this Benedictine publication includes the hours of Prime, Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, in parallel columns of Latin and English. It’s a great book, but is expensive due to the weak US dollar.