Prayer

Prayer is a foundation of our Christian faith. It is through prayer with God that we develop our understanding and foster our transformation. From the earliest moments of our journeys of faith, we encounter prayer. It is a gift to be able to turn to prayer in bad times, and in good times. We can pray with God in exceptional times, and in the mundane.

Being purposefully in God’s tender and loving presence where thoughts, emotions, and words can move in both directions.

The most foundational prayer is the one that Jesus taught us. The Lord’s Prayer is often recited aloud back towards God. Yet, not all prayer follows this same pattern. There will forever be more to learn and experience in prayer.

The majority of monastic practices are types of prayer. Some may be practices you do with regularity. Some may be familiar, but not something you have previously done. There may be other practices that will be new to you.

One of our prayers for you is that you will experience an ever-deepening prayer life. This may happen by focusing on a specific practice, or by venturing across the fields of prayer. There is fruit and God’s presence to be found in each pursuit.

As a monastic group, we will highlight and focus our attention regularly on praying the Divine Office. This is not from a belief that it will be the most meaningful for you. The discipline of fixed-hour prayer has cultivated abundant fruit in monastic lives for millennia. Regularly praying the Divine Office is a foundational prayer. It is a discipline and rhythm for monastics everywhere.

A life of prayer is central to the life of Urban Monastics. In general this prayer life follows a liturgical style of daily prayer. This is sometimes called the divine office, daily prayer, or praying the hours.

This approach to a life of prayer dates back to the intertestamental period. It was an active part of the life of Jesus and his disciples. It has continued over the following two millennia. When you read about the apostles healing a man at the temple as they went to pray, they were going to pray the hours. When Peter went up to the roof to pray and received the vision of inclusion for the church, he was praying the divine office.

One of our major works is developing our own office. The purpose of this is to reflect the realities, challenges, and hopes we have for a life present with God, and present with others. In the meantime, we encourage you to use one of the many existing offices.

Above everything else, this is our divine work. It is a sacred time of communion with our divine God. Our God who lives within us, around us, since before time began and until time ends.

The hours of prayer traditionally occur every 3 hours, starting at 6 a.m. Since we are all also working, we need to be gracious with the timing. These hours started by following the Roman bells, which marked time for businesses and markets. These bells became guiding points that life structured itself around.

Not all the hours are the same in terms of importance. The hours are broken into Major and Minor hours. The hours are listed below, with the emboldened terms being the ones Urban Monastics uses:

• Night Vigils or Night Watch (0h – Minor)
• Night Vigils or Night Watch (3h – Minor)
• Matins/Lauds, Prime, or Morning Prayer (6h – Major)
• Terce or Midmorning Prayer (9h – Minor)
• Sext or Midday Prayer (12h – Minor)
• None or Midafternoon Prayer (15h – Minor)
• Vespers or Evening Prayer (18h – Major)
• Compline or Night Prayer (21h – Minor)

We are starting with a focus on Matins/Lauds, Vespers, and Compline. The intention is that we would pray Lauds within an hour of waking. We would pray Vespers in the evening at least an hour before going to bed, and pray Compline before you go to sleep.

The divine office is a work in progress. We are drawing heavily from many different traditions in this work.

Prayer is a global idea. There are aspects of other religious and cultural approaches to prayer that are out of step with Christianity. We can also see much of ourselves in our particular understanding of God. The invitation into prayer is the same as the invitation to humility, meekness, graciousness, love, and tenderness. Let us be aware of these fallacies as we come to God in prayer. May we pursue the depths of understanding and transformation. A partial list of these fallacies is included here.

Prayer will not:

• Force God to act against God’s will, work, or character.
• Absolve us of our responsibilities (especially when it comes to making amends for our sins).
• Fail if our words, formulas, and incantations are imperfect.
• Work better if we are better.
• Increase God’s love for us
  • It can, however, increase our love for God.

We pray that each time you go to God in prayer, you receive an abundance of love, grace, and tenderness from our God.