circle of prayer 7. the day: evening and morning: morning

it is early in the morning. rosy-fingered dawn has yet to take off her evening gloves. but the birds know what is about to happen and, and they rejoice in it. around the world, as the eastern horizon begins to glow, comes the call and response:

v/ "o lord, open though our lips."
r/ "and our mouths shall show forth thy praise."

then swells the songs that begins our daily pilgrimage:

"come, let us sing unto the lord,
let us shout for joy to the rock of our salvation.
let us come before his presence with thanksgiving,
and raise a loud shout to him with psalms.
. . .
oh that today, we would harken to his voice." (from psalm 95, venite)

"oh that today, we would harken to his voice."

more psalms follow, his words given to us to be his voice, words that are prayers for us and the whole world, because we pray as the body of christ, carrying out our role as a royal priesthood.

pierre teilhard de chardin, the french jesuit and paleontologist, saw the role of the priesthood as "to divinize the new day." and so he prayed to the holy one, ". . . i shall offer you, i your priest, on the altar of the whole earth, the soil and sorrow of the world."

then there is a reading, a listening to the word of god, the mantra the holy one gives us to "harken to" today. we tend these days to read too much too silently. "to harken to" something means we hear it. and if what we hear is the voice of the beloved, each word is precious, each word full of many meanings.

we hear these words coming from

"the lord, the god of israel,
who has come to his people and set them free,
who has raised up for us a power of salvation." (emphasis added)

the evening canticle as the song of mary, the mother of the first-born of the new covenant. the morning canticle is the song of zecheriah, the father of john the baptist, the last-born of the old covenant. of john jesus would say, "of all the children born of women, there is none greater than john; yet the least of the kingcom of heaven is greater than he is." (luke 7:28)

as we sing the benedictus this very day takes its position in salvation history. the temptation is to say, "ho hum, a rainy thursday." but we sing ourselves to see this as the day the lord has made, in which his purposes are being worked out, in which we as the royal priesthood "form a process up to the horns of the altar." (psalm 118:27)