Repetitive Prayer

REPETITIVE PRAYER

The Roman Catholic Church in East Fremantle was known throughout the Archdiocese of Perth in Western Australia as having the fastest Mass in the West!! The elderly Irish Parish Priest was capable of rattling off the Mass in 15 minutes flat. Needless to say, people flocked to the church, Sunday by Sunday, since it caused the minimum inconvenience to their sunbathing and surfing.

I was reminded of this when I read of the observation of a visitor to a Greek Orthodox Service who noted that: "Psalms, hymns, readings unfolded upon the newcomer at the rate of the Orient Express”. Before his eyes had been able to grasp one or two notes of the text, the expert was already five lines further on. "The Greeks", he says, "find it all natural and I think they find it beautiful. They are anyway convinced that the angels themselves must fall asleep in heaven listening to the psalmody of the Latin monks.”

I suspect visitors to our Anglican worship may often feel like that, where the words of the service appear to come tumbling out of our mouths, with little apparent thought by the participants. Parts of the service such as the Lord's Prayer, the Confession, Prayer of Humble Access and the Creed appear to flow effortlessly from our lips as a result of reciting them Sunday by Sunday. To the casual observer we too may appear to be travelling on the Orient Express of worship. The visitor must often want to pull the communication cord - to stop the service in order to ponder over the words being said or sung.

Often people accuse us of being insincere and hypocritical. Jesus certainly condemned the vain repetition of prayers. On the other hand, he also encouraged us to be persistent and repetitive in our prayers as illustrated by the parables of the woman pleading with the unjust judge, and the man who pestered his neighbour at midnight for a loaf of bread.

The repetition of familiar prayers raises the question as to their validity and purpose in the worship of Almighty God.

In his book A Company of Voices – Daily Prayer and the People of God, George Guiver distinguishes between what he calls "The Prayer of Careful Consideration" and "Stream Prayer". This I think may be helpful in understanding the place and value of repetitive prayer in our corporate worship.

First of all, then, what is the "Prayer of Careful Consideration"?

One of the principles that lay behind the Reformation of the fifteenth Century was that worship in the church should be clearly understood by its participants. This led to the abolition of services in Latin and their replacement by the native tongue of the people. There can be no doubt that, throughout the centuries, this has enabled people to enter more fully into the worship in the Church rather than just remain spectators. This has certainly enabled people not only to understand what they are saying, but has also provided the opportunity for people to ponder the richness of the meaning of the words they use.

For instance, we could spend a good five minutes very profitably praying each clause of the Lord's Prayer, pausing to concentrate upon the image of God as Father, the meaning of hallowing God's name in today's world, the nature of forgiveness and the Biblical concept of Kingdom. Such an exercise would indeed be beneficial. In fact, I could preach a whole course of sermons on each of the clauses.

However, such an approach in the context of public worship has certain limitations and is therefore inappropriate. It is essentially individualistic since no two people would travel at the same speed or would wish to concentrate upon the same words. Furthermore, it is dependent upon how an individual feels at the time - or their absence of feelings. For instance, this Sunday the word "Father" may capture your attention, but next week it may be "forgiveness". Others may not be in the mood for concentrating on anything except the return to work the following day. In short, such an approach to prayer, whilst beneficial for private prayer, is not conducive to corporate prayer. This is where Guiver’s “Stream Prayer” comes into play.

What then is “Stream Prayer”? By Stream Prayer he means prayer which, like a mountain stream, starts at the beginning of the service and flows through to the end. As it flows, it passes over the words of the psalms, the scriptures, the Canticles and special prayers, in the same way as a stream flows over the rocks and stones until it reaches its destination, without stopping to pause for concentrated thought.

Whereas the focus of the Prayer of Careful Consideration is upon individual words, the focus of the Stream Prayer is the broader vision through the use of a web of words. It is rather like looking at a photograph in a newspaper. The Prayer of Careful Consideration looks at each individual dot which makes up the total picture, whereas Stream Prayer looks at the picture as a whole.

The effect of Stream Prayer is not instant, as with the Prayer of Careful Consideration. Rather, it is cumulative. Just as a stream flowing over rocks will slowly mould and reshape them over a period of years, so the individual Christian is moulded and shaped by repetitive prayer over the years. As the stream of prayer flows over us in worship, it leaves minute deposits which pile up in the unconscious and ferment away, working quietly and unknowingly at our transformation.

Yet when the occasion arises, the words come automatically to mind to sustain us in our spiritual lives.

For instance, when our Lord was dying upon the Cross, he quite spontaneously recalled the opening words of Psalm 22, which he had obviously learned over the years through regular synagogue worship. The words spontaneously articulated his innermost feelings of rejection by God. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Or read the book, Letters & Papers from Prison by Deitrich Bonhoeffer. There you will see how his spiritual life was sustained in the isolation of the prison cell by the spontaneous recollection of the words of psalms and hymns which he had recited and sung regularly throughout his life in the Lutheran Church.

I suspect this is one reason why people like the Book of Common Prayer services. Whereas the prayers in contemporary services tend to fall into the category of Prayers of Careful Consideration - we must understand fully what we are saying and they are therefore quite exhausting physically and emotionally to lead - the Book of Common Prayer has become a vehicle of Stream Prayer whereby the words come automatically to mind.

To sum up then, whilst repetitive prayer always runs the risk of being considered insincere, its value lies, not so much in the private consideration of individual details, but rather in its corporate cumulative effect over the years whereby individual Christians are moulded and shaped by the stream of prayer offered in worship. This is particularly true of the canticles, psalms, prayers and hymns used regularly in the worship in the Anglican Church.