I'll be honest, when I was a little kid I hated anything that smelled liturgical. The same automated responses, the dullness of just going through the motions, and the never ending prayers that repeat themselves ad infinitum (dear Rosary, I'm looking at you).It is kind of funny that I "ended up" here, getting all excited about prayer and the Divine Hour and stuff. Not only that, but now that I have given myself permission to explore and learn from different Christian traditions I'm totally geeking out with different liturgies.
So what the heck is wrong with me? How did this magical transformation took place? How did a self-described enthusiast and charismatic fell so madly in love with liturgy?
It's not like after my conversion all the sudden I enjoyed all this stuff. It was a slow process, one that took almost a decade after my decision to follow Jesus.
At first I was all into the charismatic movement, all dancing and crying and clapping and lifting my hands up kinda stuff. The music was loud and overtly emotional. I loved it.
Slowly, however, after having too many overwhelming emotions at services, your body and spirit needs a break. Yeah, I love Jesus, but I don't need to cry about it every Sunday to show it.
And then I took theology classes in a local Catholic church. They required all students to pray morning prayer before classes started.
I bought the Liturgy of the Hours prayer book and started praying every morning.
Slowly, its beauty started to reveal itself to me. I felt a sense of peace. The slow and contemplative rhythm of ancient prayer life started to take its effect on me.
Like many good things in life, liturgy is an acquired taste, but once your spiritual taste buds get used to it you will find deep wells of contemplation.
I see Liturgy as poetry. The rhythms required of it, the perfect balance of praying the psalms, antiphons and intercessions is an art in itself.
Poetry, unlike some prose, it's not something you can swallow like a burrito in one sitting, but it is something appreciated and savoured slowly, like a carefully crafted, multi-course meal. You ponder over each words (or bite) and begin to appreciate the intricacies and beauty of it.
Liturgy is prayer made art. It is our collective praise poem to God, where we gather to make something beautiful in honor of God.
Liturgy also connects us with the wider body of Christ. This is hard to describe, but after a while you start to feel connected with all the people praying the same prayers you are, in different tongues and on different parts of the world.
Liturgy is hugely helpful when words fails us. There are times in life where prayer doesn't come easy. Words won't just come out. Sometimes we need to ride an ancient wave and rest in its old wisdom.
Liturgy also brings us together in worship, where its prescribed nature levels the field among participants, and all, the shy and the exuberant, get to pray equally.
So if you feel that there is something missing in your prayer life I invite you to try it out! Thanks to the Internet, this is easier than ever. You no longer need to go to a book store, get intimidatingly big prayer books with 10 ribbon markers, and cry after 2 hours of figuring out how to pray like monks.
There are different liturgies available online, for free, where you can get your monk on.
Everything is set up for you in a linear way, so you don't have to figure out where the psalms for today are in the psalter, the appropriate antiphons for ordinary time vs. lent and a bunch of other stuff that monks and clergy learn to maneuver out of sheer necessity.
For heaven's sake there are even apps for it!
So here are my favorite liturgies you can get online and for free. Some of these websites have apps you can download, but not all of the apps are for free! I just access them through my web browser on my phone if the app is not free.
Divine Office: http://divineoffice.org/
Here you can get all the prayers for the liturgy of the hours that is used in the Catholic Church. There is an audio version of it, where you can follow along with the text.
Mission St. Clare: http://www.missionstclare.com/english/
This is more from the Episcopal/Anglican tradition, and it uses the Book of Common Prayer. They have hymns already recorded, which is a huge plus! The prayers are a little bit longer though, so only pray if you have the time for it. If not, then I recommend you make time for it!
Common Prayer: http://commonprayer.net/
This is my current favorite. It mixes different Christian traditions, and it has a slight social justice twist to it!
Northumbria Community: http://www.northumbriacommunity.org/offices/how-to-use-daily-office/
If you are more into the Celtic tradition, then this one might work for you!
That's it for now. Do you have other liturgies not listed here that you enjoy? What is your favorite way of praying?
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