Prayer is difficult work. At least, that’s my experience more often than not. And almost everything else feels more pressing. Whether it’s writing a sermon, preparing for a Bible studying, or clearing out an inbox, it’s so much easier than kneeling down in a quiet room to pray. Or, as the great philosopher Blaise Pascal has said, “All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Now we are all forced to stay at home alone.
Don’t get me wrong, there have been moments in my life where prayer is unveiled to be what it really is: Deeply essential, life-giving communion with God – Father, Son, and, Holy Spirit. I’m thankful for these moments, but they prove the exception rather than the rule.
Prayer is usually dull, and it does not feel as productive as many other tasks I can find to do.
Since this onset of COVID-19, many of the excuses that obstruct us from prayer have suddenly vanished. We no longer waste time commuting. Meetings have disappeared, opportunities for pastoral visits dry up, and instead we huddle around computers from home offices to jerry rig some kind of recorded worship. For pastors especially, the one thing that was always elusive now awaits us in plenty: Time.
We have time to pray, more time than we might ever have again. More than this, we have the work of prayer to do when we can do so precious little.
In the Anglican tradition, a priest vows to continue in daily prayer – morning and evening – each day of his or her life unless prevented by sickness or some other serious obstacle. We call this the daily office. It’s something like a cross between the monastic hours of prayer and a daily devotional time. It is the slow, difficult, and Scripture-saturated process that draws us ever deeper into the love of Christ.
I have found that during this time of global pandemic, or “The Time of the Virus” as Ephraim Radner has written, that the office of daily prayer feels all the more weighty. As a pastor, this is not just a time for personal spiritual refreshment, but rather a priestly lifting up of the world to God on behalf of the priestly people of God. Morning and evening prayer have become a way in which the common prayer of each congregation, now scattered in quarantine, is carried forward by those called to the pastoral vocation. I trust that those in my charge are praying, reading Scripture, following our Lord, but this daily practice continues somehow as an anchor for us all, a daily offering. “My prayer be set before you like incense,” I ask.
We are told repeatedly about the importance of “social distancing” and the increasingly heroic value of “self-isolation.” We carve out spaces for ourselves to live without the possibility of infecting our neighbours. These are right measures, no doubt, but they take their toll. In the daily office, then, though we are physically scattered, as a priest I have a significant sense that I am bearing up my people, offering my prayer with theirs, despite the separation.
Moreover, I do this in the company of all of the saints, “surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses” that surpasses all temporal and spatial bounds. In the daily office, I lift my voice with and on behalf of my scattered congregation, with the prayers of the saints, and in this mingling, we find we are still one body, though we are not physically present with one another. We are united in this daily offering of praise and thanksgiving, of hearing the words Jesus Christ and the God who raised him from the dead.
Prayer is difficult work. And as pastors, we’ll find ways to fill our time as the new normal sets in. Let us not forget our priestly vocation amidst a priestly people. Let us continue with the difficult work of daily prayer.
Cole Hartin is an Assistant Curate at St. Luke’s Anglican Church in Saint John, New Brunswick. He earned his PhD from Wycliffe College/University of Toronto. Cole is a member of the 5th Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians.
