Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Psalm 12, 13, 14 (Teresa of Avila)

“How long shall I have perplexity in my mind,and grief in my heart, day after day?” (13:2)

The Psalms are the heart, or the backbone (or whatever other metaphor) of monastic prayer, and in turn, our the morning and evening prayer liturgies you find in the front of our Book of Common Prayer and The Book of Alternative Services. If you’ve ever visited a monastery and taken part in one of their periods of prayer you’ll know that a significant part of their time gathered together is in singing or saying the Psalms. If you’re not sure what to pray, or how to pray, you can never do wrong by picking up a Bible or a BCP or BAS and slowly reading through a few Psalms, perhaps out loud. They speak to the whole range of human experience and emotion, and whether or not the subject matter seems to speak to where you are at that moment, know that you are praying with and for others. 

Today we remember a great saint of the Church, Teresa of Avila, who lived in the tumultuous time of the 16th century. At this time the shortcomings of the Church were put under the microscope, and divisions were made formal, and is the human tendency, often quite nasty. But in Teresa we have a figure who witnesses to those reform movements that occurred within the institutional Roman Church. 

Teresa is known for her life of and writing on prayer. It is not so commonly known that she had a long period where she found prayer to be impossible. She had a great sense of her own sinfulness and unworthiness, and this may have been a stumbling block. She was also very sick with malaria, so a concern for her overall physical health would have trumped her interior life. But eventually a friend encouraged her to begin praying again, and she found herself with a great sense of peace and joy. Prayer wasn’t an object or a task or a chore; it was simply being herself in the presence of God. We could learn a lot from this approach. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Michael Ramsey viewed prayer in the same way. We should want to sit quietly with God. And if we don’t, then we should want to want to. And if we still don’t, then we should pray to want to want to want to! 

It is easy to find excuses to put prayer on the back burner. I am guilty of this, for sure. Yet we will always make time to eat, sleep, and wash up. But as Christians, we are called to a life of prayer. It is not just a ‘thing’ that we do; it is a part of our very identity as the Church, Christ’s bride. So let’s be conscious about taking some time to sit quietly with our Beloved each day. If you don’t know where to start, say a Psalm. And a few minutes afterward, you might find it helpful to repeat a verse that stood out for you. 

- Matthew Kieswetter