Lent 3

Almighty God, you know that we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

This is yet another collect that begins with things that I think are hard for modern people to believe...and may have been hard for anyone at any time. The first statement of this collect puts us right in the thick of it. We acknowledge that we have no power to help ourselves. It amounts to a complete realization of our own utter powerlessness. This is something that I think either people just don't believe, as we tend to ascribe all of our accomplishments to our own abilities and worth, forgetting that these abilities come from God in the first place. Or we pay lip service to humility, but really believe that we are the source of all the things that come to us. Our work produces our money...it buys our food...our housing...our possessions.

And this materialism isn't just about material goods. When we help someone else, we feel good about it because WE helped. We imagine the glory goes to us. We even imagine when prayer is answered that somehow it's answered because WE deserve it. Through our efforts in prayer, or the righteousness of our lives we have compelled God to reward us. Even if we intellectually accept the idea that nothing happens without God's gift of grace, secretly we know that we've earned that Grace through our own efforts. This sort of Pelagianism is insidious. It's actually rewarded by our culture and enshrined in the Puritan work ethic, which, though the Puritans certainly believed in Grace, in practice could really make people believe in their innate right to God's reward.

But our collect reminds us that we have absolutely no power...none whatsoever, outside of God to really effect change in our lives. We may want to reform ourselves...change some element of our lives. Without the help of God we will perhaps start out alright, but within a short span of time will already begin sliding back into our old habits and ways of thinking. Left unchecked we may even find ourselves reversing our intentions and quite soon living out a life opposite of the one we resolved on living. As we are we haven't got the energy to break out of our false self on our own. The habits of a lifetime rewind on themselves continually.

The second part of the collect is particularly interesting to me. We ask God to defend us physically from adversity. But then we also ask him to defend our souls from evil thoughts. Again, this part of the collect can sound hopelessly old fashioned to modern people. After all, we are aware that our thoughts are constantly running from one thing to another, and that an angry thought about the person who is blocking the entrance of the subway, or not moving fast enough on an elevator can hardly do us real harm.

The collect reminds us that thoughts do actually matter. The things we think in a sense shape our life...and not just the big things, but especially the little thoughts. You may be the most peaceful person in the world, yet inside your mind you are constantly seething with hostile and angry thoughts about others. It's only a small step to letting out the poison in your brain. You might be as chaste as a nun and yet inside be a mass of lustful thoughts. While idle lustful thoughts are pretty natural, they can lead you to objectify people, which can change the way you react to your fellow creatures. Jesus even alludes to this idea in the famous "lust in your heart" passage. He reminds us that our righteousness must exceed that of the Pharisees...a pretty tall order really. Jesus reminds us that it is what is inside that counts, that thoughts really do matter.

Indeed, our personality is shaped by in large by how we think and by the little thought tapes that loop around in our minds over and over again. Thoughts assail our self-image, creating either inflated egoism or poor self-esteem. Depression can be connected to the negative thoughts that run around our heads all the time. Our habits of mind are powerful, and shape our destinies in powerful ways...and the negative habits can indeed truly hurt us.

The problem is how to fight against thoughts. Trying to block them with our wills doesn't work. Modern psychology has shown the negative effects of repression, which hurts the soul as much as the negative thoughts do. It is like trying to hold a lid on the boiling stew of our thoughts...you can only hold it down for so long and then all those thoughts will explode out with renewed vengence. All the "efforts" that we can make with regard to these thoughts will come to naught if we rely on ourselves. This is where God comes in.

One of the joys to me of contemplative prayer is that it is a primer for dealing with afflictive thoughts and emotions. In Centering Prayer we are taught how to deal with thoughts in a way that gives them over quite literally to God. During the period of prayer, we are instructed to resist no thought, retain no thought, react emotionally to no thought and to return to the Sacred word as the symbol of our consent to the presence and action of God in our lives. This to me is the most effective way I've found to break the grip that my negative thoughts can have on me. When I find myself thinking about anything, but especially when I'm thinking about some particularly negative thought, if I can recognize that I'm in the grip of it, not try to block it but at the same time not think about it or let it loop around, detach myself from it emotionally, and then send it away to God through the repeating of my sacred word, the thought loses all it's power and reveals itself to be nothing more than a little blip on the radar screen. Any thought is this in the time of prayer, but even in daily life this is a practice I can do. I find that when I remember to do it, it has tremendous power. It is literally a daily, moment by moment surrendering of my will to God's will.

The Feast of the Annunciation

Pour your grace into our hearts, O Lord, that we who have known the incarnation of your Son Jesus Christ, announced by an angel to the Virgin Mary, may by his cross and passion be brought to the glory of his resurrection; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

I'll get to this one soon.