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.
—
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.
—
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).