I've been mentioning that I am praying in every church I visit. On one hand this shouldn’t come as a surprise; I am a Christian priest. But I have too many times looked round a church – peering into piscinas, marvelling at mullions, ogling ogees – only to realise once I’ve left that I’ve failed to pray in the place. Occasionally you still see the following words framed near the entrance to Anglo-Catholic churches, which could easily have been written for me:
Whosoever thou art that enterest this Church, know that the Lord Christ is here in his Holy Sacrament reserved: Kneel then and adore him: and pray for thyself, for those who minister and worship here: nor forget the Souls of the faithful departed.
I knew before I embarked on these walks that I needed to be quite intentional about this, which, for me, means having printed prayers that I can carry around on a (now very battered) piece of card. I am someone who finds written prayers very helpful. That is not to say I can’t or don’t pray in other ways; I very much can, do, and am. (Indeed, there is a whole other blog post to be written about praying while walking.) But these prayers that I'm carrying around with me are becoming an important way of grounding my walks in prayer, enabling each walk to be a mini-pilgrimage.
Because they are helpful to me, I thought I would share them. They might be helpful for others.
On entering every church – active, redundant or ruined – I am praying the first verse of Psalm 84:
How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
My soul has a desire and longing to enter the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.
Inside the church I have some different prayers according to the status of the building. In churches which are in regular use for public worship I pray either:
Father of all, you sent your Son for the salvation of the world,
and have entrusted to your Church,
by the working of your Holy Spirit,
the ministry of Word and Sacrament.
Bless those who worship and minister here today;
have mercy on the souls of those whose voices have hallowed these walls in years past;
and, at the last, gather all your children in that house not made with hands,
eternal in the heavens.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
(c.f. 2 Corinthians 5.1)
Or I pray this prayer for the parish, written by Willam John Butler (1818-94), Dean of Lincoln and founder the Community of St Mary the Virgin in Wantage:
Almighty and everlasting God,
who dost govern all things in heaven and earth:
Mercifully hear our prayers
and grant to this parish all things needful for its spiritual welfare.
Give grace to those who minister thy holy Word and sacraments;
strengthen and increase the faithful;
protect and guide the children;
comfort and relieve the sick;
arouse the careless, recover the fallen, restore the penitent.
Remove all hindrances to the advancement of thy truth,
and bring us all to be of one heart and mind
in the fellowship of thy holy Church;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
In a redundant church, I am using a couple of verses the wonderful hymn In our day of thanksgiving, by William Draper (1855-1933). Written ‘In Remembrance of Past Worshippers’, it is often used in churches on their Feast of Dedication.
These stones that have echoed their praises are holy,
and dear is the ground where their feet have once trod;
yet here they confessed they were strangers and pilgrims,
and still they were seeking the city of God.
Sing praise, then, for all who here sought and here found him,
whose journey is ended, whose perils are past;
they believed in the light; and its glory is round them,
where the clouds of earth’s sorrows are lifted at last.
Norfolk has around 100 ruined churches, and there are even more churches of which there are now no remains at all. I have written about the poignancy of offering prayer in these places where the sound of worship long ago fell silent. Here I am praying one of two prayers:
God of our ancestors,
who of old didst move thy servants in this place
to build an house of prayer
for the offering of eternal praises to thy glorious majesty:
We praise thee for those living stones
who herein called upon thy holy name.
By thy mercy receive them into the perfect house of prayer in the heavens,
to worship with the company of thy saints,
for ever and ever.
(Adapted from Frank Colquhoun’s Parish Prayers)
God, not of the dead but of the living,
in this place living stones have praised your name.
As they proclaimed the mighty acts
of you who called them out of darkness into glorious light,
so receive them into the radiance of that brightness.
And grant to your Church today the fullness of faith,
and grace to usher in your kingdom of love, joy and peace.
Through Christ our Lord.
(c.f. Luke 20.38, 1 Peter 2.4,9)
And, finally, there is this prayer which can be used in any church:
O God of unchangeable power and eternal light,
look favourably on your whole Church,
that wonderful and sacred mystery,
and by the tranquil operation of your perpetual providence
carry out the work of our salvation:
and let the whole world feel and see
that things which were cast down are being raised up
and things which had grown old are being made new
and that all things are returning to perfection
through him from whom they took their origin,
even Jesus Christ our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
This prayer is from the Gelasian Sacramentary, one of the oldest surviving sets of liturgical texts. I think, after the Lord’s Prayer, it is my favourite prayer. In Common Worship, the Church of England’s contemporary liturgical resources, it is the final collect of the Solemn Intercessions of Good Friday. (It’s one of a number of occasions in that liturgy when I have to overcome a lump in my throat.) I think this translation comes from the hand of William Bright (1824-1901), one of unsung heroes of the Catholic revival in the Church of England. He also wrote my favourite hymn.
I included this prayer because I knew that, over the course of these walks, I would inevitably encounter signs of decline and discouragement. When I corresponded with the Bishop of Norwich about this project last year, he specifically asked me to pray in those places where the lamp of faith now burns only very dimly.
I find this prayer deeply encouraging when I am feeling despondent about the Church of England. It reminds me that the Church is divinely instituted, a ‘wonderful and sacred mystery’, not at the mercy of fallible human management, but governed by God’s ‘perpetual providence’. And, rather than allowing me to be drawn into that cycle of cynicism which all too easily permeates our thinking and prayer around decline, it enjoins me to have confidence in God’s will and purpose: ‘Things which were cast down are being raised up and things which had grown old are being made new and... all things are returning to perfection.’ I guess that’s why it’s used on Good Friday, at the heart of the ultimate story of things cast down being raised up.
There are those who will tell you that we don’t need church buildings, either because they do not believe the Christian faith has any credence in today’s world, or, conversely, because they believe it absolutely has credence, but that its proclamation requires us to meet in buildings which don’t smell of musty hassocks and furniture polish, surrounded by bygone relics of a Christian past.
Even if in some of the rural communities I am visiting there are churches which are seldom used, and, when they are, attract only a few souls on a Sunday, I thank God that they are there. They are houses of prayer, punctuating the landscape with an invitation to us to pray. They are reminders that ‘the voice of prayer is never silent’. ‘A church should pray of itself with its architecture,’ said the architect Ninian Comper, according to Betjeman. ‘It is its own prayer and should bring you to your knees when you come in.’
Next time you visit a church, I encourage you to pray in it. Use these prayers if they are helpful. And, in St Augustine's words, ‘What we here see accomplished materially in these walls, let that be carried out spiritually in our minds; and what we see perfected in stones and timber, let that be brought to completion in our bodies, with the help of God’s grace as the builder.’ (Sermon 336)
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