Good Morning Digitial Neighbors! Happy Wednesday ADD Irregulars, WSN Diffusers, Friends & Refugees, Early Birds & Later Dayers, Conversants and Lurkers, Phamily & Misfits and all the rest of you Seekers & Wanderers at Locals.

Part of the personal prayer life of priest is the Liturgy of the Hours. The name is derived from praying at different times during the course of the day. It has its roots in ancient monasticism and even more ancient prayers of our Jewish ancestors in praying the Psalms and has spread through the life of the church over the course of the centuries. Depending on your community, some prayer all the hours, others prayer less.

As a Diocesan priest we make a promise at ordination to pray for and with the church. If we are not striving to be people of prayer, and people transformed by prayer, why bother with a calling to serve? Anyone can pray the Liturgy of the Hours and it was hopped that it would spread among the laity of the church, but that has as yet to be the case. It is not everyone's path to contemplation, unity and conversion. I do think one of the things a Seeker ought to ask themselves is how their prayer, contemplation, or mediation is leading to some sort of personal transformation as fruit of their searching, not so much the goal. The goal for all those who worship the God of Abraham is communion and union with the Divine, imperfect in this life because of our personal struggles, weaknesses and distractions on the path, and hopeful perfected communion in the next life.

Communion with any type of person, Divine or Human, I would even venture to say some animals, should change us. The purer the love, the more organic the change. The Lover wants to become more like the Beloved, the Lover wants to mirror in various aspects the Beloved without necessarily losing him or herself in the mystery and myth of the Beloved. I think there is always the danger of losing oneself in the myth of the Beloved and not ever discovering the reality of the Beloved but rather the idealized projection of what one is searching for in the Beloved. Infatuation gives us a brush with that experience, wonderful drug, poor preparation for a lifetime with the Beloved, but still a sweet memory.

Back to the Liturgy of the Hours - for fellow diocesan priest it breaks down this way:

Office of Readings - Psalms, sequential reading of scripture, ancient authors. This tends to be longest hour in terms of content. Mediation can make any hour longer if you find something to rest with in your prayers. The goal of prayer should never be its completion, if you are in a hurry to punch-card it as a check mark of "I did it" its efficacy is questionable. Punch-carding may be an infrequent & exceptional reality of your prayer, not a reoccurring reality if you are in an active relationship with the Luminous.

The rest of the hours follow a series of psalms, shorter readings & prayers

Morning Prayers - Lauds
Midday Prayer - There options here depending on the time of day
Evening Prayer - Vespers
Night Prayer - Compline

There are many apps to help fellow Seekers explore this form of prayer and meditation. Here is a link for the on-line prayer.

https://divineoffice.org/