The Hours

a devotional for summer

Photo by dariusz piosik on Unsplash

Teach me to go to this country beyond words and beyond names.
Teach me to pray on this side of the frontier, here where these woods are. 

I need to be led by you. 
I need my heart to be moved by you. 
I need my soul to be made clean by your prayer. 
I need my will to be made strong by you. 
I need the world to be saved and changed by you. 
I need you for all those who suffer, who are in prison, in danger, in sorrow. 
I need you for all the crazy people. 
I need your healing hand to work always in my life. 
I need you to make me, as you made your Son, a healer, a comforter, a savior. 
I need you to name the dead. 
I need you to help the dying cross their particular rivers.
I need you for myself whether I live or die. 
It is necessary. Amen. 

Thomas Merton
(litany from A Book of Hours)

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I have eight alarms set on my phone. They are a version of the canonical hours: lauds, matins, terce, sext, none, vespers, compline, and vigil.

Long ago—and in some traditions, even today—these hours would be when the faithful would pause and pray, and there were different prayers and liturgies meant for the different times. In an age before clocks, the church bells would form the rhythm of the day, and the hours would construct a backbone of devotion.

There are all kinds of varying traditions about when these hours are “supposed” to happen during the course of a day, but I just bypass all that by making them evenly spaced three hours apart: matins at 6am, terce at 9am, sext at noon, and so on. As you might imagine, the alarms for vigil (midnight) and lauds (3am) are silenced. But they are still present and symbolic in my list of alarms, there as reminders.

And no, candidly, I don’t faithfully pray every time the alarm goes off. I try to. But as I’m still trying to train my body and mind to recognize each hour, the alarms help me to form a sense-memory, sound and name and time all together. Walking in step to a different way of measuring minutes.

The passage from Thomas Merton included above is from one of my favorite breviaries, a book of hours compiled from Merton’s writings. And I think that this particular litany captures so much of what makes a faithful praying—or simple acknowledgement—of the Hours so impactful. It is a reminder of our need.

I am a human, and I am not strong. I wish I was. Sometimes I feel like I am. But ultimately, I am vulnerable. I fall prey to emotions, temptations, anxieties, and illnesses. I stub my toe, I spill my coffee. I swear (a lot). I throw tantrums, even if they are internal. I hurt the feelings of people I love. I forget. I fail in tasks I know are important. And like Adam and Eve in the garden, I spend a lot of time trying to hide my face from the Father who looks for me. My pride—a false strength—often stands between me and wisdom.

But the Hours remind me of time passing. Of my temporariness. Of my weakness. And filling those hours with prayer is a message of hope: that even though each human hour is fragile, it can be filled to the brim with God. With grace. With surprising blessing. With incarnation.

I may not have church bells to listen for, these days, but a little electronic chime every three hours does the trick just as well.

After all, I’m only human. I do what I can.

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