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Worship is at the heart of the corporate life of the parish. Worship will enable each parishioner to participate, to give thanks to God, and leave empowered to do God’s work in the Church and in the world.

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Special Prayers Are Being Offered Once a Month on Sunday Mornings in the Chapel after Daily Morning Prayer

The Pastoral Care Team at Grace and Holy Trinity has been exploring ways to offer prayers for healing and for other specific purposes at our church. Currently, at the mid-week Eucharist, prayers are offered along with the laying on of hands and anointing with oil. This service is offered at 5:15 PM on Wednesdays.

The Team has been exploring the possibility of offering such prayers on Sunday mornings. After much discussion and also a presentation as a part of adult Sunday School, the Team has decided that one Sunday a month, prayers will be offered after the late, morning service (10 AM in summer, 11 AM the rest of the year). This will be done on Sundays when Daily Morning Prayer is offered, which is usually the second Sunday of the month. Immediately following the service, either Bo Millner or Jason Roberts will go to the chapel. Anyone who wants special prayers may meet them there. You may request prayers for healing for yourself or for someone else. You might also simply ask for prayers of guidance or for some other purpose. After ascertaining your specific request, the clergy will have a brief prayer for you at the altar and with the laying on of hands.

These prayers are not meant to supplant the prayers the faithful offer as a part of corporate worship or to imply that if people do not avail themselves of this opportunity that their prayers are somehow lacking. Rather, some people desire to state their hopes to another person in a confidential relationship and to have their prayers acknowledged with the laying on of hands.

Marion Hatchett, in his Commentary on the American Prayer Book has this to say about the tradition of prayers for healing: “It was Jewish practice to offer prayer for the sick and to anoint them with oil…In the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus (c. 215 AD) are two notes concerning ministry to the sick…Many accounts also come from the pre-Nicene period which tell of clergy or laity with healing gifts who visit the sick, pray over the person, and then anoint.” With the passage of time, this service of healing was typically offered prior to death and was called, “Last Rites.” Our current prayer book reclaims the ancient Jewish and Christian tradition of anointing with prayers for healing. Because we are a sacramental people, it is appropriate that our prayers of healing be joined together with the outward and visible sign of laying on of hands and/or anointing with oil.

Prayers for healing do not take the place of medical treatment, but are used in conjunction with the ministry of physicians. God answers our prayers in a variety of ways. We seek relief from physical suffering and in the mystery of God’s grace, our prayers are directly answered sometimes. Our prayers are also answered in other ways.

It seems as great a man as St. Paul prayed for physical healing but his prayer was answered in a different way. In II Corinthians 2:7 Paul writes: “…to keep me from bring too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’” Paul is probably referring to a physical illness or disability and “having to deal with it and even understanding that God would not remove it by miraculous healing has taught Paul to know the divine strength that can be at work in human weakness when surrender comes.” (notes in The New Interpreter’s Study Bible, page 2075ff)

Revised Common Lectionary Adopted by General Convention

At General Convention in June 2006 a new Sunday Lectionary was adopted. This lectionary, called the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) will replace the one found in the Prayer Book on pages 887 through 1001. Trial use of the Revised Common Lectionary began in 1983 and it will become the official lectionary beginning with the first Sunday of Advent 2007.

As Andy Langford, a Methodist clergyman in Charlotte, NC writes: “A lectionary is a calendar of the Christian year and a table of scripture readings…a lectionary creates a pattern to structure a Christian life on a temporal calendar, and provides a sequence of Bible passages to flesh out the calendar. Lectionaries have existed from the first four centuries of the church…The Christian calendar came first. The earliest Christians first celebrated Easter, then Pentecost, then Epiphany, then Christmas, then Lent and Advent, and finally other special days that rounded out the Christian year. Obviously, each of these days had associated readings from the Bible, and thus the lectionary took shape. By the fourth century, the Western lectionary took the shape that most English-speaking Christians in the West would recognize…While all Roman Catholics. Lutherans, and Episcopalians use the lectionary each week, other denominations like United Methodists use it about 70% of the time, and most Southern Baptists would never consider using one.”

Langford continues: “There are in the United States two major lectionaries. The first was the Roman Lectionary…created in 1969…and then revised in 1981. This lectionary…is essentially the same lectionary one finds in the Episcopal and Lutheran books of worship. (This) lectionary is a three year calendar that essentially bases each Sunday on a particular Gospel lesson, and then chooses an Epistle reading, and Old Testament reading based on the Gospel reading….

The second major lectionary is The Revised Common Lectionary created by an ecumenical liturgical group called the Consultation of Common Texts. This was first published in 1983 and revised in 1992…. both lectionaries are:

intended for the weekly Lord’s Day celebration…
include three readings plus a psalm as a response to the Old Testament;
affirm the Western calendar of two Christological cycles: Easter and Christmas
(have a) three-year pattern: Year A, Matthew; Year B, Mark; Year C, Luke; with John used during the high holy days in all three years;

The Revised Common Lectionary believes that the Roman Lectionary (and thus the one in the Book of Common Prayer) does not treat the Old Testament as a significant document except through the lens of the Gospels. Instead the RCL reads the Old Testament in the Sundays of Ordinary Time (after Epiphany and after Pentecost) in semi-continuous ways…For example, in the first year of the lectionary, Year A, the RCL reads stories from the creation, to the patriarchs, to Moses and finally to Deborah. Many of these stories are simply never read in the (current) lectionary.

The Revised Common Lectionary also:

is based on the New Revised Standard Version for its versification;
keeps more (passages) together
includes significantly more passages that include women
has completely revised the psalms as responses to the Old Testament lesson.”

DAILY PRAYER

The ancient pattern of Christian worship is daily morning and evening prayers culminating in the weekly celebration of the Holy Eucharist. The Daily Offices ("office" is a Latin word meaning "service" or "duty") are found in the Book of Common Prayer, beginning on page 37. In addition to Daily Morning Prayer (Rites I and II) and Daily Evening Prayer (Rites I and II) you will find a Noonday Service (on page 103) and a service for the close of the day, Compline, on page 127. Also, beginning on page 136, there is a series of one page outlines for prayers to be used as daily devotions for individuals and families. Scripture readings are meant to accompany our prayers and the lectionary in the Prayer Book, which may be found on page 934, provides readings for every day of the year. If you need assistance with using the Offices from the Prayer Book in your daily prayers, please contact the rector, Bo Millner by e-mail: bmillner@ghtc.org.