Prayers for Peace

 There are collects (special prayers) for peace in both Morning and Evening Prayer. In the older Prayer Books, these were “fixed” collects, meaning they were said daily whenever Morning or Evening Prayer were said. Now there are other options, yet there is no prohibition to saying them daily. Indeed, in light of recent world events, it might be good to make a daily practice of saying these collects. (For reference, you can find them on pages 57 and 69 of the Prayer Book.) 

    In the morning, we begin the day remembering that peace is something that God authors. All peace anywhere is ultimately of his making. He authors it because he is the “lover of concord”; peace is what he wants. We then turn to the human side and remember that in knowledge of God stands eternal life: the life that matters, that endures, that has its ultimate grounding in God himself. Furthermore, to serve God is perfect freedom.

    All this sets the stage for asking for peace. We ask God to defend us, his “humble servants,” whenever we are assaulted by our enemies. We state our intention to trust in his defense, and we ask that we “may not fear the power of any adversaries.”

    This simple prayer is profound in its teaching. It applies broadly to all manner of assault; I will mention two implications. (1) It asks God to defend us as the church from assaults that are waged against the proclamation of the Gospel and the living out of the same. But (2) it extends also to a prayer that we as a people be defended in time of enemy assault.

    The evening prayer takes up the subject of peace from a differing, yet complementary, angle. It professes God to be the source of “all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works.” The things that move us to action (our desires), the things we deliberate about doing (our counsels with one another), and the things we actually do (our actual works): if these are holy and good and just, they all come from God. The focus here is on us as moral agents, not only individually but as a society (which again could be either a church or a civil society). To be in society is to have desires, reasoned plans, and actual things done. If these are good, we acknowledge that God is their source.

    But in the evening, when the petition arrives it pivots away from “the world”: “Give unto thy servants that peace which the world cannot give.” The peace we want is something beyond all our moral action, and nowhere in the world can it be given. Why? Because it is God’s peace. Why do we desire this peace? First, so that “our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments.” We need God to give us the desire to live by his word, even at the cost of enemy opposition. But there is something more, something beyond our action. We also want God to defend us “from the fear of all enemies,” the fear that not only might turn our hearts away from God, but would make life, in the end, not worth living. Give us thy peace, we ask God, so that, being defended from our enemies, we “may pass our time in rest and quietness.”

    It is perhaps no surprise that an evening prayer takes us to “rest and quietness.” The evening of the day is when we naturally think also of the evening of our life. Rest and quietness characterize life lived with God, and so provide a foretaste of the life that awaits us in the resurrection.

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    There are multiple ways these rich, old collects can be understood, and what I have offered are but a few scratches on the surface. But however we parse these prayers, it seems fitting that in the morning we seek peace in our active life with attention to the conflicts in the world, while our attention in the evening turns toward that ultimate peace which God intends eschatologically, in which, even now, by his gift, we may rest.

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    Out & About: Sunday, October 19, I am to preach at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas, at 9 and 11:15 a.m., and at 10:20 or so, I will speak about Books I & II of Augustine’s Confessions (see below).

    At 5 p.m. (also on Oct. 19) the Good Books & Good Talk seminar meets to discuss Anthony Trollope’s Dr. Wortle’s School. This is a late treasure from 1891, a short book with a secret (revealed very early in the book) about possible bigamy, the cruelty of society, and the importance of matrimony. It also has many small delights of wit and ironic observation. One thinks that Trollope is the sort of author that only a culture thick with the Prayer Book could produce. Give yourself the pleasure of relishing Trollope.

    The next seminar will be Sun., Nov. 9, on T. S. Eliot’s play, “Murder in the Cathedral”: St. Matthew’s, 5 to 6:30 p.m.

    The Confessions of Saint Augustine. I keep hearing from people who recently read this book and are grateful for it, sometimes wondering why they took so long! As is commonly said, after the Bible the Confessions is likely the most-read book in the Christian West in the past sixteen centuries. I am teaching a series of classes on it, and you are welcome to come whether or not you have read it. The first session will be at St. Matthew’s Cathedral this Sun., Oct. 19, at 10:20 (on Books I & II), followed next week (Oct. 26) on Book III. If you can, drop in and get a taste of real theology (not mine, Augustine’s).

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

The Suffrages End

    V.    Create in us clean hearts, O God;

    R.    And sustain us with thy Holy Spirit.

    The concluding suffrage draws from Psalm 51, the famous psalm understood to be David’s response after the prophet Nathan confronted him with his sin of adultery with Bathsheba and his subsequent arrangement of the death of Bathsheba’s husband, so that he could marry her. That psalm is known by its first word in Latin, “Miserere,” meaning, “Have mercy.” It is appropriately recited on Ash Wednesday and other penitential situations, when we look into our hearts and lay before God the whole mess of sin within us, while at the same time trusting in God to save us and restore us.

    Verses 10 and 11 of Psalm 51, in the antique translation, read as follows. “Make me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy holy Spirit from me.” The final suffrage takes the first and last phrases of these verses, and puts them together as a concise, fitting conclusion to all our suffrages—all our beseechings of God. Although our prayers turn back to ourselves, in the context of sinful unworthiness evoked by David in his remorse, yet we do so with trust in God—and in God alone—that he can fix our hearts and “create” them again, make them clean, and do so by the work of his Holy Spirit.

    In the 1979 Prayer Book translation, this suffrage draws a slightly broader stretch of Psalm 51, namely verses 11 through 13. (The verse numbers differ in the psalms, since they are laid out for reading.) These three verses are as follows: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your holy Spirit from me. Give me the joy of your saving help again and sustain me with your bountiful Spirit.” As you see above, the contemporary suffrage opens with the word “create” (a more powerful synonym of “make”) and draws from the end of verse 13 (with “sustain”) while keeping “holy” from verse 12. All three verses together make the point that we seek restoration with God, a newly created clean heart, to dwell in God’s presence, to be “sustained” by his holy Spirit which, thank God, he is not taking away from us!

— 

    Over several of these posts this year, I have written about the seven suffrages which are in Morning and Evening Prayer, prayers that are waiting to be said as much as twice daily by any of us. They begin with acknowledged dependence upon God: “O Lord, show thy mercy upon us; And grant us thy salvation.” And so they end with begging God to “create” anew in us “clean hearts” as he sustains us every day of our life with his Holy Spirit. In the context of this, we pray for everything else: the church, the world, our nation, the advancement of God’s “way” through the earth, and the needs of all people. We do not deserve any of this; we do not deserve that he listen to us; we are bold enough to pray because, first and last, we beseech his mercy. 

    It is the best news in the world that he will stick with, and not take his holy Spirit away from, those who turn to him.

— 

    Out & About: On Sunday, October 19, I am to preach at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas, at 9 and 11:15 a.m., and at 10:20 or so, I will speak about Books I & II of Augustine’s Confessions (see below).

    At 5 p.m. (also on Oct. 19) the Good Books & Good Talk seminar meets to discuss Anthony Trollope’s Dr. Wortle’s School. This is a late treasure from 1891, a short book with a secret (revealed very early in the book) about possible bigamy, the cruelty of society, and the importance of matrimony. It also has many small delights of wit and ironic observation. One thinks that Trollope is the sort of author that only a culture thick with the Prayer Book could produce. Give yourself the pleasure of relishing Trollope.

    The Confessions of Saint Augustine. I keep hearing from people who recently read this book and are grateful for it, sometimes wondering why they took so long! As is commonly said, after the Bible the Confessions is likely the most-read book in the Christian West in the past sixteen centuries. I am teaching a series of classes on it, and you are welcome to come whether or not you have read it. The first session will be at St. Matthew’s Cathedral, Sun., Oct. 19, at 10:20 (on Books I & II). If you can, drop in and get a taste of real theology (not mine, Augustine’s).

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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