In her novel, Middlemarch, George Eliot had one of her delightful cast of characters and eccentrics, Mrs. Dollop, the redoubtable landlady of The Tankard, an hostelry in Slaughter Lane, exclaim, “There’s been more going on than the Prayer Book’s got a service for!”
It made me chuckle during a recent re-reading of the book, and it turned my thoughts to our own Prayer Books and the excellent services and prayers they provide for at least many, if not most, of the significant and important things that go on in our lives.
For example, I’d like to draw your attention again to that delightfully fulsome resource on page 37 of our Book of Common Prayer — PRAYERS AND THANKSGIVINGS Upon Several Occasions — of which there are 46 prayers and nine thanksgivings to cover a good selection of the goings on in our lives. Here are two of them:
- For General, Provincial or Diocesan Synods
Our next General Synod will be in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador in 2028. However, many, if not most of us, will also be having Diocesan Synods before that. This prayer number seven (page 42), is another excellent BCP Holy Ghost prayer for such gatherings:
Save its members from all error, ignorance, pride, and prejudice; and of thy great mercy vouchsafe so to direct, govern, and sanctify them in their deliberations by thy Holy Spirit, that through thy blessing the Gospel of Christ may be faithfully preached and obeyed, the order and discipline of thy Church maintained, and the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour enlarged and extended.
Amen!
As you pray this prayer, consider how and where the Holy Spirit always directs God’s people, whatever the occasion and whatever is going on in our lives, to the Truth that is found in Jesus (John 14:17, 15:26, 16:13, 17:17, and Eph. 4:21). The Holy Spirit never directs us away from Jesus, His teaching and example. Ask the Holy Spirit to direct synod members ever and only to Jesus and His teaching.
Pray that the Holy Spirit will “direct, govern and sanctify” all of us — the synod members in their deliberations and us in our behaviour and response to their decisions. Examples of the Holy Spirit’s governance are the commandments Jesus made through the Holy Spirit (Acts 1:2).
It’s also worth noting that, on occasion, St. Paul was prevented from doing certain things by the Holy Spirit. For example, he was forbidden to speak in Asia and not allowed to go to Bithynia (Acts 16:6-7), and he was “constrained by the Spirit” to go to Jerusalem even when he was anxious as to what might happen to him there (Acts 20:22-23).
The Holy Spirit guides and governs by saying go ahead, go here or go there, and by saying don’t go.
Pray also that the Holy Spirit will sanctify — set apart as holy — the synod members for their task. That their motives and decisions will be holy and pure and “sanctified in the truth” of God’s word (John 17:17), which is, of course, the work of “the Spirit of truth” (John 14:17, 15:26, 16:13) and that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we do not “ordain” in our “Rites or Ceremonies” any thing that is “contrary to God’s Word written” (Article XX. Of the Authority of the Church, BCP p706).
- For the Parish
Prayer Number 9, For the Parish, is also an evocative and beautifully crafted prayer to the Holy Ghost asking, among other things, that our parishes be sanctified by the Holy Spirit’s “abiding presence,” that “those who minister in holy things” would be blessed, the minds of the people enlightened, “erring souls” corrected, those “walking in the way of life” kept “steadfast to the end,” and those who are sick and afflicted given patience and renewed.
All excellent benefits and blessings about the occasions and goings-on in parish life of which to be reminded and to be earnestly sought in prayer.
It is also permissible to add petitions to those already in the Prayer Book prayers for other occasions and goings-on.