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Lord Jesus, Stay with Us

This prayer was new to the 1979 Book of Common Prayer. I find it especially beautiful and recommend memorizing it, not only for its beauty, but for its rich meditation on Scripture. It’s one of the collects that may be said at the end of daily Evening Prayer (see BCP page 70 or 124):

Lord Jesus, stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know thee as thou art revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of thy love. Amen.

This prayer puts us in the place of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus on the afternoon of the day of Jesus’ resurrection (see Luke 24:13-35, last Sunday’s Gospel). They are filled with sadness, disappointment, perplexity. Jesus comes up beside them, but they do not recognize him. As they go on walking for what might have been more than two hours (the journey was seven miles), Jesus explains to them the Scriptures about himself. When they get to Emmaus, they invite Jesus to come in and stay with them. He does so, and at supper he breaks bread, blesses it, gives it to them. At this moment they recognize him.

Those two disciples are Christians like you and me, continuing our lives after Jesus’ resurrection and sometimes filled with confusion and sadness. At the end of the day—at the end of any day whatsoever—we can ask Jesus to stay with us, for evening is at hand and the day is past. We can ask him to be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope. We can ask that he give us knowledge of himself, knowledge that is revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. And we can have confidence that Jesus will answer this prayer for the sake of his love for us.

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This prayer, new to the 1979 Book, came from the Roman Catholic Church’s Liturgy of the Hours, as revised following Vatican II. As far as I know, it was new to that revision (first in English in 1974), where it is said at Vespers (evening prayer) on Monday of Week 4. So the Episcopal Church’s picking it up was quick work—and a blessed gift of ecumenical appreciation!

This year the prayer was said on Monday, January 30. There are, I gather, various official English translations; for my Roman Catholic readers, I offer this one that I was able to find online:

Stay with us, Lord Jesus, for evening draws near, and be our companion on our way to set our hearts on fire with new hope. Help us to recognize your presence among us in the Scriptures we read, and in the breaking of bread, for you live and reign with the Father and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

In whatever version, I commend it to memorization and frequent meditation.

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Out & About. The next Good Books & Good Talk seminar will be on Sunday, May 21, at 5pm, on War in Heaven by Charles Williams. Williams was an Inkling—part of that group that included C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. His novels are literally out of this world.


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The Woundedness of Things

It’s taken several decades, but finally I think I see why it is significant that Saint Thomas demands to see Jesus’ wounds in order to have faith: the wounds in Jesus’ body are evidence that the resurrected Jesus is the same Jesus as the one who died on the cross. There must be material continuity between our earthly body and the resurrection body, because (among other reasons) our souls are not the whole story about us. We are soul-and-body unities, not just in this life but for ever.

The wounds in Jesus’ body are also, I think, his receptiveness to the woundedness of the whole human situation. On the cross, Jesus takes on the whole mess that we humans have made. Despising one another, lying, killing, betraying, abandoning—he takes it all on himself. His wounds are the effects of sin in the world, inflicted upon his innocent body.

In the resurrection, his wounds are transformed into his glory. In Charles Wesley’s hymn (“Lo, he comes with clouds descending”) they are “glorious scars” that we will get to look upon with rapture. We can hope also that our own wounds will be transformed into glorious things.

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I have been told of a therapist, some of whose patients have had almost unimaginably awful experiences. This therapist then meditates on a print (that she keeps at hand) of Caravaggio’s “The Incredulity of Saint Thomas.” In this painting, Thomas is putting a finger into the wound in Jesus’ side, as other disciples look upon the scene with awe. The therapist feels that her patients can, in a way, become Jesus. When they allow their wounds to be seen, they are like Jesus. And there is of course a profound holiness in such a moment, and a hope of transformation.

Sometimes even in this life, wounds can become scars with their own measure of glory.

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Out & About. The next Good Books & Good Talk seminar will be on Sunday, May 21, at 5pm, on War in Heaven by Charles Williams.

On the Web. I noted one of these a few months ago, but it seems The New Atlantis now has put all three outside the paywall. “Phoneless, Carless, Friendless” are three intriguingly offbeat essays on “living under lonelytech when you can’t beat the system”: https://www.thenewatlantis.com/collections/phoneless-carless-friendless


Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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