Let me ask you, how do you insure that you will be ready for the arrival of the Bridegroom? What is your routine for checking on your stock of oil and wicks?
For me, part of my routine is prayer. Yes, prayer is only part of my practice. Studying and continuing “in the apostles' teaching and fellowship, and the breaking of bread” are other parts. Prosper of Aquitaine (c. 390—c. 455), a Christian writer and disciple of Saint Augustine of Hippo, is credited with originating a phrase with which some of you might be familiar: Lex orandi, lex credendi. Often translated to mean “the law of praying is the law of believing,” or “as you pray, so you believe.” I have seen it expanded in some places to be, Lex orandi, lex credendi, lex vivendi, or “as we pray/worship, so we believe, so we live.”
I’ve learned that I need to change up my ways of praying so that I don’t get too comfortable and fall into a prayer rut. Doing the same routine at the gym day after day doesn’t lead to a well balanced and toned body, and only saying the same prayers day after day doesn’t tone my spirit. If I am to more fully see God’s “hand at work in the world around” me, and if I am to be ready for the cry, “Behold, the bridegroom cometh,” then daily I need to feast on Word and Sacrament. I need “to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest [the holy Scriptures],” pray the Scriptures, and be so soaked in prayer that my oil reserves are overflowing and wicks are well trimmed.
Or rather than worry about oil and wicks, perhaps as Abba Joseph said to Abba Lot in The Sayings of the Desert Fathers - "Apophthegmata Patrum", (p. xxi), I need to become fire!
“Watch therefore, for ye know neither the day nor the hour wherein the Son of man cometh.”
The readings for Thursday of Advent III (17 Dec 2015) are:
Psalm 50
Zech. 4:1-14
Rev. 4:9-5:5
Matt. 25:1-13
and can be found at http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/2Advent3.htm.
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