Prayer, Religion and Life
A sermon given by Gabriel Hopkins to the congregation of Trinity Church in Halifax, at evening prayer on Sunday June 23, 2024.
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What are we but servants of God? St Anthony of the desert from the third and fourth centuries says, “servants do not say, ‘I will not work today because I worked yesterday’” (25). Further, St Anthony says this means we need to hold strong to the religious life and die daily, meaning: live each day as if it is our last (26). This means many things. Firstly, we must try to not do anything that we would regret because if we were to die today, the same day, we could not fix those mistakes. If we do, we must apologize and repent as quick as we can while still being honest. Secondly, we must pray every day. Fortunately, we are prayer book Anglicans and in our prayer book there are prescribed morning, mid-day, and evening prayers. The creators of our prayer book did not include these services for no reason. This is how we must die daily.
I was recently speaking with Fr Ranall Ingalls, and he said a failing of the Church is to just think we are another brand of a Sunday morning. This is true. We are not just another thing to do on Sunday. We are servants of God, and we shall not say we have prayed Sunday, and therefore we do not need to pray until the next Sunday, or until the mid-week, or some other time frame. There are no days off in the work of praising God. Fr Ranall Ingalls went further and said that Anglicanism is a way of life. This is true. We do not glorify God just on Sunday. We exist to glorify God every day and every hour. The Prayer book is our unique, Anglican way of doing this everyday. It is our way of life. St Anthony tells us to remember that, “Judas in one night destroyed all his toil” (26). In our daily lives, we do not, obviously, have the same chance to betray our Lord, but the point still stands. In a certain sense, any betrayal of God is the same as Judas’s betrayal. Dwell on what St John Chrysostom says about those who steal: “which is worse? The man who steals gold or the man who steals silver? In reality, they are the same. The real sin is to be found in the inclination or attitude of the heart that leads to theft, to sin. The results may be different, but the reality of the heart is the same.” Let us not be as Judas. Let us instead die daily.
Now, this may sound horrifying. We are human, we know we will slip up. I will not lie and say I haven’t slipped up myself. I have failed in my glorification of God many times and will almost certainly continue to. It is, unfortunately, in our fallen human nature. Fortunately, our Lord Jesus Christ is infinitely forgiving as long as we repent. This is, of course, exemplified in His death on the cross. But we must, of course, repent; we must change our ways, or at least try our best to. Again, this is why we have our prayer book. Can a person repent easily without the prayer book? Of course, they can! But too often we fail to find the right words, we get stuck on the details and fail in the action. That is why every prayer book communion service, morning prayer, and evening prayer there is a general confession followed by an absolution. The makers of the BCP did not include these daily offices to have a laugh or something; they are meant to be used. Every day includes four biblical lessons, two for the morning and two for the evening. This is not a book of made-up junk, it actively uses the scripture. Of course, you say, “this is all good, but I am too busy for this, or I can’t make the times Trinity does these services at.” That is completely fine, we do, unfortunately, need to work to survive. We cannot be always present. But there are still options. For example, there is an app for the BCP which works fine and Trinity has plenty of BCPs, if you ask I am sure you could get a loan of one. There are even PDFs online. You can do these prayers just as easily at home as you can in Church. Of course, if you can make it, I would advocate for attending Church. There is a reason, after all, that Christ makes the Church. Even still, we will fail, but we must press on. You have a great opportunity here at Trinity with the daily morning and evening prayers. Not everyone has these, unfortunately. For example, my local parish does one morning prayer service a week that only runs about half the time.
The whole point about the second lesson today from the Book of John, is that the only way to the Father, to God, is through Jesus, because He is also God. Christ also tells us to ask Him anything, and it will be done, so it can be a way of glorifying God. Prayer, of course, is the way we talk to God and ask God things. When we say collects and prayers in the daily office, they are often ended with, “through Jesus Christ our Lord,” or “this we beg for Jesus Christ’s sake.” We should always be praying so we give God more times to glorify Himself.[Note:this lesson is for evening prayer on this day in year two, not this year]
I’ve talked a lot in these sweeping terms, let's get personal. Now a bit about myself and the daily offices. My first experience getting back into the Church was the daily offices. It was Labour Day 2023, just last year, and I was bored, and a bit lonely. I stumbled into the King's Chapel because we were given a little schedule for orientation to the University. It was an evening prayer service that was scheduled, and I hadn’t been in a Church for at least five years. Fr Ingalls the Chaplin sat next to me and showed me how to pray the daily office, and it just spoke to me. After that, I was back every day. Literally every day. To me, the daily offices helped to give structure to my newly adult life and the lessons gave me something to think about deeply. There is no distinction between our religion and our life. We are fallen. When somebody has fallen, do others not stretch their hand out to help them up? We are like a man who has fallen to the ground, and Christ, through grace, reaches His hand out to lift us up and set us on our feet. We simply have to believe that Christ is there and that the hand is real.
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