Fr Peter Helman

Dear Friends in Christ,

I am always trying to remember what I read. Of late I’ve been unable to retain much at all of what I find in books, and that is a frustration. I read and then later re-read the same pages. The dog-ears tell me I’ve been there before. I tell myself, “Remember this, you dullard! Store this away!” But usually I forget.
 
Five or six years ago, I tried to memorize, in the course of twelve months, the Collect of the Day appointed for each Sunday and major feast of the Christian year. They’re single sentence prayers with several clauses—easy enough, I thought, for the determined heart. I can recall one or two in their entirely, if I try, plus a few phrases from several others. A steep climb, after all.
 
One thing I do remember reading recently—from Derek Olsen’s Inwardly Digest: The Prayer Book as Guide to a Spiritual Life—is about the Prayer Book collects.
 
If we were to pray Morning and Evening Prayer every day throughout the week—Sunday through Saturday—we would encounter the collect appointed for Sunday fifteen times. It is the only explicit connection of our corporate worship on Sundays to our weekday offices.
 
I had to go back and re-read the collect from yesterday.
 
O God, because without you we are not able to please you, mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
 
A stunning prayer, powerful in its brevity, isn’t it? The ribbon in my Prayer Book will be marked all week to page 233, where the collect is found (see Proper 19). If I forget the collect by tomorrow morning, I will pray, as I do this morning, that God will hear the voice of my supplication: O God, “mercifully grant that your Holy Spirit may in all things direct and rule” my heart; through Jesus Christ.
 
This morning I remember a story someone told me about a dear friend, an Anglican priest of many years, who in his later life could recite from memory the entirety of the psalms because he said Morning and Evening Prayer every day for decades. I’m unsure whether he set out from day one to memorize the psalms or simply to pray them and with his prayers to be saturated by the love and pleasure of God. I suspect the latter. The words of holy scripture, in time, became his own words, the fruit of faithfulness.
 
That story reminds me that we become the people God intends for us to be over time. We set our heart's on the pilgrim's way. This morning and throughout the week, I will pray—and invite you to pray too, following the collect—that God’s Holy Spirit will direct and rule my heart. I believe in time, as we pray, God will make our words God's own and fill us to overflowing with joy by the daily remembrance of his lovingkindness. 

Bless you today, beloved, and remember to be patient with your hearts. 


Yours in Christ,
Peter+