Church,
As we roll into 2024 and the weather bites hard with fierce cold, the season of Epiphany orients us towards the hope and life of Christ. Days are getting longer, moment by moment, even if we can’t tell there’s more light as one day lurches to the next. So too our journey in Epiphany is one of Christ’s slow, if imperceptible, work. For sure, sometimes this work is bright and brilliant, but more often it’s slow and imperceptible.
I think of the many prayer requests offered weekly on our Group Me church chat. Many are answered immediately in obvious ways; some are answered in small, indecipherable increments; some seemingly not answered at all. What are we to make of our prayers in light of Epiphany?
I used to pray as though it was a human mechanism to control God. So the efficacy of my prayers was directly proportional to the fervency of my praying. Pray harder = better prayer.
But now I’m learning there’s more to it than that. Praying hard and fervently isn’t wrong or bad. Our church is carried along—and has been carried along—by saints praying in this way. And I’m also learning that prayer is communion. It’s an opening and surrender to God and Spirit and love so that we become more at home and a part of love.
Prayer is the portal into God in whom we live and move and have our being.
So then, we petition God for what we want, we lament to God for what makes us angry and sad, we thank God for what delights us, we praise God for who God is, we confess to God for those things that need truthing. We pray as a way of life. As Anglicans have always confessed: lex orandi, lex credendi (as we pray, so we believe).
We have silence, our prayers of the people, our GroupMe prayers, our prayer book. Prayer is the ground of our being, the atmosphere we inhale and exhale in this life we call Christian.
So in this season of Epiphany, let us give ourselves over once again to prayers in the darkness: for healing, for pain, for truth, for justice, for joy, for appreciation. And let us endure in prayer even when we can’t see the light winning, telling the truth about that fear and hope too.
Praying with and for you as your Priest—
Fr. Matt
