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.
Today marks the three hundred and thirtieth birthday of the Frenchman François-Marie Arouet, better known by his nom de plume, Voltaire (1694-1778).
Born into a bourgeois family during the reign of Louis XIV, the “Sun King” (r. 1643-1715), Voltaire suffered tragedy at a young age when his mother died. Never close with his father or brother, Voltaire exhibited a rebellious attitude toward authority from his youth. His brilliant mind was fostered in the care of the Society of Jesus, who introduced him to the joys of literature and theater. Despite his later criticisms against the Church, Voltaire, throughout his life, fondly recalled his dedicated Jesuit teachers.
Although he spent time as a civil servant in the French embassy to the Hague, Voltaire’s main love was writing—an endeavor where he excelled in various genres, including poetry, which led to his appointment as the royal court poet for King Louis XV. Widely recognized as one of the greatest French writers, and even hyperbolically referred to by ...
Padre - Tom Miller invites you to a Coffee Talk, Speakeasies, Schmoozes, Tea Times, Afterhours and other gatherings.
https://teams.live.com/meet/93792382189049?p=DiBHsYfuECPgDrG7vO
2026 Coffee Talk with the ADD Irregulars
Thursday, January 1, 2026
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Occurs every day starting 1/1 until 12/31/2027
Coffee Talk - Daily beginning at 6:00 AM Central Time Zone - USA
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Afternoon Chats - Most Tuesday, Friday & Sundays 2:00 PM Central
Other chats as posted in the community.
XIII
The Proud Minister
One day there came into the Garden a man in torn clothes badly bruised and cut, who said to the Lover, “In the name of the Beloved I demand your help.”
So the Lover and the Disciple let him in and dressed his wounds and prepared the best of the vegetables from the Garden for him to eat. When his wounds had been dressed and he had eaten and rested the Lover asked him how he had fallen into this plight, to which the man replied, “I was Minister of the Beloved in a city near this place, where I preached His gospel and expounded His doctrine to the people. I pointed out to them how their sins had made them wholly hateful to the Beloved and how therefore they were utterly beyond the range of His love and He would condemn them to eternal torments, whereon some fell into despair and wept bitterly but many were angry. One day the magistrates called me before them and begged me to leave the city and preach elsewhere for they said I had made many people so angry and desperate that they feared there might be a riot and they might not be able to protect me but that I might suffer some injury. I, however, very zealous for the Beloved and believing that the magistrates only feared that their own sins might be proclaimed, preached the more vehemently, denounced the magistrates and made it abundantly clear that the whole wicked city was foredoomed to eternal punishment by the just provision of the Beloved. Whereon a mob, stirred up no doubt by the corrupt and venal magistrates, fell upon me with sticks and stones, nearly killing me and driving me out of the city in the state in which I came to you.”
“My friend,” said the Lover, “this was not a good deed of yours, for besides denying the unfathomable compassion of the Beloved, you have by your obstinacy caused these people to commit a grievous sin, and this cannot be pleasing to the Beloved, that through you who profess to be His minister the people should become worse. Surely you remember that He Himself said, ‘If they persecute you in one city flee to another.’”
Therefore the man was very angry, and cursing the Lover, said, “I see that I have had a very false report of you and I do not believe that you are a servant of the Beloved at all. When I came to you so injured for the Beloved’s sake you set before me only herbs and fruits although the garden is full of birds which you could have killed to make me a worthy meal. I shall proclaim everywhere that you are no true servant of the Beloved but a mere falterer who dares not suffer in the cause of the Beloved. Be sure that you are foreordained to eternal torments who suffer nothing here.”
For the man was so blinded by his own pride that he could not perceive the scars on the hands and feet and the brows of the Lover nor how the cloth beneath the armpits of his tunic was dyed with a red dye. So he went out of the Garden cursing and shouting.
But the Lover looked sad and said, “A man like this does much harm to the cause of the Beloved, for by thus speaking falsely about the Beloved he may bring men to fear Him but none to love Him, and by love alone can any man approach the Beloved.”
