Friday, September 13, 2019*

                                     _Philippians 3:12_______

              I press on… 

                 because 

                    Christ 

                    Jesus 

               has made 

            me his own.

* John Chrysostom , 

         354-407  

          Bishop of 

     Constantinople  

 This Prayer of St

     Chryssostom, 

  =“golden-tongued”

   is at the end of 

   Morning Prayer.

                                                                Almighty God, 

you have given us grace at this time with one accord 

to make our common  supplication to you; and you 

have promised through your well beloved Son that 

when two  or three are gathered together in his Name, 

you will be in the midst of them: fulfill now, O Lord, 

our desires and petitions as may be best for us; 

granting us in this world knowledge of your truth, 

and in the age to come life everlasting. Amen 

                                          Understanding the Word 

depends on hearing it aright and this is an interesting

 case, especially if you grew up with the 1929 Prayer 

Book.  In that era, weekly Eucharist was not the norm 

and  so we were familiar with Morning Prayer,  its 

cadence, its prayers and its canticles. and hence
with  this particular prayer.  It appeared for the first
time in the  first revision of the English Prayer Book,
 in 1554, and in translating it into English,  Cranmer
 unwittingly reproduced an error in the Latin prayer,
 whichmistakenly conflated two separate scriptural
 references.  And so for 425 years, from 1554 until
1979,   when we prayed this prayer, we claimed that
 “when two or three are gathered together you will
grant their request.”  * That’s really different  than
saying when we’re together you’ll BE THERE.
The latter  seems  more congruent with  Episcopal 
theology.  There’s a saying in the church which I love: 
“Lex orandi, lex credendi” which  loosely translates  
 “if you wnat to know what we believe, look at what 
we say in prayer.”  Wikipedia says: prayer and be-
lief are integral to eachother and  liturgy is not dis-
tinct from theology."

                                       *

*Poor Jesus. I can just magine hm shaking his head 
and saying “I didn’t say that!”  :-)   I suspect that he  

                                 says that a lot these days!