Catholic Eve Tushnet posts on why she finds traditional pre-written prayers helpful. Very good points I think.

A sample:

Traditions remind us of the things we wouldn’t say of our own accord. Most times, when I pray the Hail Mary or the Angelus or what have you, I find that the words of the prayer act like prisms refracting my own concerns and shedding unexpected light. … Part of the point of traditions is that they break us out of our obvious concerns, the worries and beliefs we know we carry, by offering a different and initially alien perspective.

Another part of the point of traditions is that they tell us what to do when we’re shaky and unsure. … And traditional prayers help us praise God and give thanks and ask for help without worrying about whether we’re saying the right thing, or sounding stupid, or forgetting something.

Lutherans are perhaps more comfortable with such “vain repititions” (as some of our evangelical brothers and sisters might call them) than some other Protestants. Our liturgy is imbued throughout with traditional prayers, collects, hymns of praise, petitions and confessions. Though one thing we have all but abandoned is the tradition of praying the office, a traditional way of praying that goes back to the earliest days of the Church (and finds its roots in Judaism). This is still practiced regularly in the Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican traditions.

Coincidentally, one of my Christmas gifts was a book on recovering the practice of structured daily prayer, The Rhythm of God’s Grace by Arthur Paul Boers. I haven’t read it yet, but Boers, a mennonite pastor, wants to recover the practice of fixed-hour prayer (“the hours” a.k.a. the daily office).

As Boers put it in this piece for Christianity Today:

As a pastor and Christian, I have been especially concerned about the inadequacy of most Christian prayer for a culture in which many are formed by a weekly average of 28 hours of television.

Too often, people who pray do so only briefly, without discipline or organization. They pray “on the fly,” winging phrases toward God while commuting, or squeezing in an occasional devotional. Such prayers are ad hoc and self-directed: made up along the way, according to mood, and not paying attention to the Christian year.

Rather than having help, support, or direction from others with maturity or experience, many Christians decide on their own what to do. As a result, they find themselves increasingly disconnected and isolated from other believers. They are subjective; guided by their feelings of the moment, they freely abandon prayer modes (confession, praise, intercession). In the end, these Christians find themselves increasingly disconnected from God.

The various forms of the office usually consist of collects, psalms, scripture readings and canticles. Such “formal” prayer, says Boers, can direct us from a focus on our own subjective feelings and needs to a more God-centered form of prayer.

I’d be interested in hearing about the experience of anyone who has made praying the office part of their regular discipline.