The Daily Office Continues
His Name is hallowed.
Given that God belongs to all who seek,
Given that re-fathering by God in Jesus is always on offer,
Given that God reigns in the heavenly throne room
In the vastness of the created universe,
In the intimacy of the skies above and the air we breathe –
His Name is hallowed — it could not be otherwise.
Yet the Incarnate Logos bids us be bolder:
The creation and its creatures are not yet as they should be.
The ironically named homo sapiens languishes in the ruins of its own priesthood.
The Incarnate Logos has taken those priestly ruins
Into Himself.
And knowing at last the darkness of the estranged priest, cries out:
Eli, Eli lama sabach-thani?
And like Gandalf with the Balrog, carries the poisoned priesthood into death.
But this is no wizard of epic tales,
It is the Word behind all storytelling.
Death is dead.
The Word liberates its former prisoners, slaves of Mordor.
And on the third day…
The Kingdom earlier proclaimed is coming into focus.
The Kingdom prayer gains incarnate substance,
And therefore greater urgency.
Thy Kingdom come, he taught them,
Thy will be done – where?
In me, in her who shares her life with me,
In us – an entity created by our vows in Him.
In places like the community in which we live,
And like the city where we served for fifteen years.
In all those places – in all places – on earth as in heaven?
Which heaven? For this is singular.
Is it the Third – maybe from our perspective.
Or from the King’s – the first.
And this we pray as He taught us.And this we pray so often.
And this we pray sometimes carelessly.
And this we pray sometimes desperately.
And in praying this often or carelessly or desperately, We have volunteered to be part of the answer.
The Apprentice Priest 