This reflection was written by Principal Jesse Zink for this week’s Wingèd Ox, a weekly news digest distributed to the college community. You will find reflections from previous weeks here.
Dear colleagues,
This week we move more fully into our schedule of corporate worship services as a college community. As last week, we will gather together on Wednesday at 11:40am for a community worship service and lunch. But this week we will also have Morning Prayer at 8am on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and Evening Prayer at 4:30pm on Tuesday and Wednesday. (There are no services on Friday this week because of this weekend’s retreat but starting on Friday, September 13 we’ll have our first Friday morning community worship service and breakfast at 8am.)
Someone once described a life of prayer as being something like a fence. There are some big vertical posts every so often that provide firm anchors. Interspersed with this are smaller vertical slats that aren’t as big as these posts but provide regular support. Running across all of this and connecting these posts and slats is horizontal wire that makes the fence. In this analogy, that horizontal wire is a person’s daily individual prayer life. The big vertical posts are Eucharists or communions celebrated in community. Connecting it all together are those vertical slats, which in this analogy is regular corporate prayer. A healthy prayer life relies on all of these working together.
We all come from different traditions in this college. Many of us have different relationships with the Eucharist (including what to call it). Some would prefer to celebrate it daily and for others once a month or less is just fine (and wouldn’t use the word “celebrate” to describe it). Likewise, many of us have developed our own patterns of individual prayer and you’ll have opportunity to learn more about this during your time at the college.
What is perhaps unusual to students new to a theological college is the tradition—long-established in both the Anglican and United Church traditions, as well as others—of regular corporate prayer in a non-Eucharistic fashion. In the Anglican tradition, these services are called offices, which comes from the Latin word for duties and indicates their importance in the tradition. In the chapel, we have both Anglican and United liturgies in both English and French to choose from. I find that there are many wonderful things about these services but let me highlight just three. First, we dwell at length in Scripture. Not only do we read a lot of Scripture in these services, the forms of prayer are themselves influenced by Scriptural passages. Second, by praying throughout the year we are helped to sanctify the passage of time. For instance, the Bible readings for these services guide us through parts of the Bible appropriate for that time of year. Third, by offering the gift of a space of prayer on a regular basis, we create a space wherein people can be wrapped in prayer even when they cannot find the words. Many times on a difficult day I have come to the chapel to receive the gift of someone else’s leadership of a prayer service. I need to do nothing but sit in God’s presence and remember that I am loved.
These services are not meant to be long (20 minutes) and are not as large as our Wednesday or Friday services. But we don’t measure their success by how many people attend. Rather, these services help remind us of the essential grounding of this community and orient us towards the one who sustains all our labour in this place.
The student handbook, which will be landing in your mailboxes this week, has more to say about our worship schedule and these services. There will be an opportunity soon for newcomers to this community to learn how to lead these services (see below in the announcements). For now, as we embark on a new school year together, I invite you to reflect on how prayer will be a part of your semester going forward and what individual, corporate, and Eucharistic practices will sustain you in this journey.
Faithfully yours in Christ,
Jesse Zink
Principal