The Lord’s Prayer is one of the most well-known features of Christian worship. Many Christian denominations, even ones that don’t use pre-written prayers in their worship services, still teach children this prayer in Sunday school. However, to many Christians, Anglicans included, it can easily lose its meaning through rote repetition. So why do we pray…
The General Thanksgiving: A Rookie Anglican Guide
The General Thanksgiving is an extended prayer of thanks to God and one of the riches of our Anglican tradition.
Review: Eighth Day Prayers (Volume 1)
Eighth Day Prayers: Daily Hope for Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany, takes the focus on Christ’s incarnation deep into the heart, inviting us to a place of deep spiritual reflection in God’s presence as we enter the darkest yet most hopeful time of the year.
Why Do Anglicans Pray for the Dead?
For those new to the Anglican tradition, it may surprise you that the Book of Common Prayer, in all of its major editions, offers prayers for those who have died in the Christian faith. We don’t just pray for those who mourn but for the departed themselves. We see these prayers for the dead in…
Praying for the Persecuted: The Anglican Persecuted Church Network
As Anglicans, we have been taught about the power of prayer in the Kingdom of God. But do we realize such prayer should focus on fellow Christians, and especially on those who are persecuted for their faith? It’s sobering, but also joyful, to learn about the persecuted church around the world. At the Anglican Persecuted…
46 Theses on Lectio Divina
There are many excellent books on Lectio Divina, the sacred reading of Scripture. The problem with these books is that they are books—long and easily divorced from the actual contemplative practice. Instead, I offer a list of 46 “theses” or “chapters” on Lectio Divina. Each thesis is short, distilling thoughts and quotations into a single…
What is Lectio Divina?
How do we read Scripture? What happens when we sit down with our Bibles and begin to pore over the wisdom God has given us through its ancient authors? In our rationalistic world, we often find it easy to study the Bible but not as easy to meditate upon and absorb it. We’re tempted to…
What is the Anglican Rosary?
For over a thousand years, people of faith have used various methods to keep track of their prayers. The Rosary actually finds its roots in the British Isles. The first Christians to use beads with their prayers were in the Irish community of St. Colomba in the ninth century. Though the practice of using stones…
Stepping into Silence
Stepping into a rhythm of silence is counterintuitive to everything we practice in our society, but it has many gifts to impart.
A Rule of Life: What It Is and How to Make One
What is a Rule of Life? Monks living in community live by a common Rule. Benedictine monks, for instance, live by the Rule of St. Benedict. The Rule governs every element of a monk’s life: when they sleep, work, pray, and eat, as well as how they work out community issues, etc. Oblates of monasteries—lay…
