 VENITE
This is from the preface to the prayer book that I made, a prayer book that reflected one pilgrim’s attempt to find a way to participate in the ancient prayer, a prayer book for us beginners.
This book was never really meant for you to hold in your hands. It began as a private book and later, much later, began to become something else, something that seemed to hold the possibility of its becoming and being a companion to others. And so I have let it go....
Some years ago, I found myself participating in a community of prayer whose practice it was to say the Office three times each day when we were together — morning, evening and night. For two years, we gathered once a quarter for a week at a time. For those twenty-four days each year, we lived our days framed by the rhythm of the ancient daily prayers of the Church. Participating in those rhythms — beginning the day with prayer that sanctified the day; ending the day’s work with Psalms and prayers and thanksgiving; committing ourselves to the darkness and silence of the night with confession and forgiveness and confidence — gave shape and a sense of completion and wholeness to the day that was altogether new and wondrous to me. I found that I wanted to participate in such prayer when I was away from the community as well.…
We no longer live in a time when the structure or the geography of our culture is very conducive to the observance of the daily Office. It is not offered at our churches, our work does not allow the time and freedom to do so anyway, and we have by and large not been taught anything at all about the necessity and importance of such prayer. The prayer that sanctifies the day, the prayer that Christ Himself prays through his Body, has been left to priests and monks and nuns. Is it any wonder that our days seem to be something less than holy, our churches seem to be something less than prayerful and our lives seem something less than sanctified?
But we also live in a time when the call to practice such prayer seems to be the clearly drawing more and more Christians to its practice. It is an ancient call, with its roots in the Jewish faith, and in the early Christian communities, and in the desert where our fathers and mothers kept the faith alive. It is a call that seems to be crying out for some new ways to think about this prayerful discipline, and so you hold this book in your hands.
The one who wrote this book is neither priest nor scholar nor monk. I am a pilgrim. I was drawn to pray to try to take my place alongside the faithful who have tried to answer the call to pray without ceasing, to pray the prayer of Christ Himself, to participate in the prayer that sanctifies the day.
I am neither a holy man nor a saint. I am not as faithful as I would like to be or as devout as this book implies. I am simply a man who wants to pray. And I have found these prayers helpful.
VENITE. It is an invitation given to us all. An invitation to pray the prayer of Christ. An invitation to pray the ancient prayer, until our lives become a prayer, that is prayed without ceasing.
Excerpted from Venite by Robert Benson
(Jeremy Tarcher/Putnam, copyright 2000, ISBN 1585420131)
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