Using Your Prayer Book to Survive CoronaVirus
As restrictions on attending church continue to rise, the faithful will be increasingly reliant on their own prayer at home. Having limited or no access to Holy Communion is a huge blow to suffer, but there is a precedent to which we can look to gain inspiration as to how we should proceed from here.
It is a little early, yet, to be speaking of St. Mary of Egypt; her Sunday of Lent is still three weeks away. However, her life is commonly read at Vigil the preceding night, and thus, many of us are well-acquainted with her story.
In particular, we should notice how the two saints mentioned in the life, St. Mary herself and Abba Zosimas, both had "restrictions" on their access to Holy Communion, too. St. Mary's was quite extreme, for having gone off into the desert, she lived forty-seven years outside of all communion any another person—excepting the persons of angels and the person of Christ himself. Abba Zosimas and the monks of his monastery are probably a better example.
Their practice each Lent was to leave the monastery at the beginning of Lent, taking what they might need to sustain themselves, and go off in separate directions into the desert for the whole of Lent. They would return for Holy Week. I, of course, am not suggesting we wander off in the desert. I am simply making the point that there is much spiritual benefit to be had even when isolated from Holy Communion and the communion of common prayer with our fellow parishioners.
As for me and my family, we have been trying to increase our "church attendance". Meaning, our family is keeping our normal prayer rule of morning and evening prayers together, but for all those times we would have gone to church, we pray something at home. The new Orthodox Christian Prayers prayer book has some very helpful prayers and services that don't get the everyday usage of the Morning and Evening prayers, or the pre-Communion prayers.
To substitute Vespers, Small Compline is an excellent choice, itself also being a nighttime service. And there are several great additions which can be inserted into Small Compline (or read on their own) in the back: all the akathists and canons. "Glory to God for All Things" is wonderful, and appropriate in this season of trial, especially if we are feeling lonely and isolated—it is very healthy and positive to praise God for all things, good and bad. The Small Supplicatory Canon to the Theotokos is always appropriate, but certainly when times are tough.
The oldest stand-by of the old stand-bys is the Psalter. Many a saint has had this one "prayer book": the Psalms. There is nothing wrong with just praying them out loud, straight from whatever Bible you have on hand, but I find it very helpful to have a Psalter which is broken into the kathismas used for appointed Psalter readings in the services. Those are 10-15 minute sections, and following the three-a-day reading schedule of the Church, you will read through the Psalter in a week. It is incredibly edifying. For home use, I would suggest the poet Donald Sheehan's The Psalms of David. (If you want a hardcover, here is a link to a cheaper hardcover version, which I mention because it is strangely-bound, and would be a let-down if you paid twice the paperback price for it.)
It can be lonely, to be sure. In this isolation, let us cry out to the Lord. Let us call on his name, for he is very near.
It is a little early, yet, to be speaking of St. Mary of Egypt; her Sunday of Lent is still three weeks away. However, her life is commonly read at Vigil the preceding night, and thus, many of us are well-acquainted with her story.
In particular, we should notice how the two saints mentioned in the life, St. Mary herself and Abba Zosimas, both had "restrictions" on their access to Holy Communion, too. St. Mary's was quite extreme, for having gone off into the desert, she lived forty-seven years outside of all communion any another person—excepting the persons of angels and the person of Christ himself. Abba Zosimas and the monks of his monastery are probably a better example.
Their practice each Lent was to leave the monastery at the beginning of Lent, taking what they might need to sustain themselves, and go off in separate directions into the desert for the whole of Lent. They would return for Holy Week. I, of course, am not suggesting we wander off in the desert. I am simply making the point that there is much spiritual benefit to be had even when isolated from Holy Communion and the communion of common prayer with our fellow parishioners.
As for me and my family, we have been trying to increase our "church attendance". Meaning, our family is keeping our normal prayer rule of morning and evening prayers together, but for all those times we would have gone to church, we pray something at home. The new Orthodox Christian Prayers prayer book has some very helpful prayers and services that don't get the everyday usage of the Morning and Evening prayers, or the pre-Communion prayers.
To substitute Vespers, Small Compline is an excellent choice, itself also being a nighttime service. And there are several great additions which can be inserted into Small Compline (or read on their own) in the back: all the akathists and canons. "Glory to God for All Things" is wonderful, and appropriate in this season of trial, especially if we are feeling lonely and isolated—it is very healthy and positive to praise God for all things, good and bad. The Small Supplicatory Canon to the Theotokos is always appropriate, but certainly when times are tough.
The oldest stand-by of the old stand-bys is the Psalter. Many a saint has had this one "prayer book": the Psalms. There is nothing wrong with just praying them out loud, straight from whatever Bible you have on hand, but I find it very helpful to have a Psalter which is broken into the kathismas used for appointed Psalter readings in the services. Those are 10-15 minute sections, and following the three-a-day reading schedule of the Church, you will read through the Psalter in a week. It is incredibly edifying. For home use, I would suggest the poet Donald Sheehan's The Psalms of David. (If you want a hardcover, here is a link to a cheaper hardcover version, which I mention because it is strangely-bound, and would be a let-down if you paid twice the paperback price for it.)
It can be lonely, to be sure. In this isolation, let us cry out to the Lord. Let us call on his name, for he is very near.
Everything I said above is based on only having a prayer book and a Bible. I just saw a Tweet from the OCA with a page full of resources, including reader's services that we could print out and use. Doing a reader's service can be difficult if you try to do everything, but it can also be read straight through without the complicated moving parts, if you wish. It is still prayer!
ReplyDeletehttps://www.oca.org/resources-coronavirus
Here is a similar message in Metropolitan Tikhon's message today:
ReplyDelete"The life we 'laying down' now is our normal life, because these are extraordinary times. We are making a sacrificial effort, which is in keeping with the present season of repentance and ascetical striving. Like the ascetics of old who would depart from their monasteries for the forty days of Lent in preparation for Holy Week, we should take this opportunity to prayerfully reflect on our life in Christ and increase our desire to be with Him."
And yet another, in an e-mail from Fr. Anthony Karbo in Colorado Springs:
ReplyDelete"There are other ways to receive God’s grace. Mother Macrina and her monastery sisterhood were not always able to have a priest in order to have Divine Liturgy. One Sunday Mother and the sisters very much desired the Divine Liturgy and Holy Communion, and it was not available to them. They all fervently prayed and reported that they received the grace of the Divine Liturgy given to them even without its celebration. When their celebrant priest was able to return at a later date, he entered the Holy Altar to venerate, and came out and asked Mother Macrina, ‘who celebrated Divine Liturgy for you in my absence, because I can smell the fragrance of the Holy Gifts and the Divine Liturgy?' Mother Macrina told him no one had celebrated, but because of their fervent desire and prayer, God had given them the grace of the Divine Liturgy anyway."