Liturgical scholar Paul F. Bradshaw’s Two Ways of Praying argues for a reconnection between liturgy and spirituality which he contends have been separated in the Christian West. One of the reasons for this, he thinks, is that Christians have often been unclear about what exactly they’re doing when they pray. This is partly because there have been two “models” of liturgical prayer – the “cathedral” model which emphasizes communal praise and petition, and the “monastic” model which focuses on individual spiritual formation through prolonged meditation on biblical texts – which have not always been clearly distinguished and which call for different practices appropriate to their respective understandings of what prayer is for.
Bradshaw’s point is not to argue for one form over the other, though he does seem to think that communal “cathedral” style praise has been neglected in favor of a more “monastic” understanding. But a balanced spiritual diet contains elements of both ways of praying. Meditative prayer such as lectio divina or praying the Rosary can and should co-exist with communal praise and petitionary prayer.
The problem, Bradshaw thinks, is that the structure of various forms of liturgical prayer are often best suited for one form but are used for the other. For instance, the Daily Office in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer is geared toward the recitation of the entire psalter and a more or less continuous reading of scripture. This makes it more suitable for a “monastic” approach to prayer emphasizing spritual formation through exposure to and meditation upon scripture over time. But the same form may be less well suited to the function of a service of congregational worship, which may be better served by the frequent use of particular psalms or the repetition of key passages of Scripture.
One concept that Bradshaw introduces which I found enligtening is that of prayer as anamnesis, or remembering. He traces this to two distinct forms of biblical prayer, the berakah and the hodayah. Both of these prayer forms include a recounting and acknowledgement of God’s mighty acts which takes the form of praise. An example of the former comes from Exodus 18:10-11: “Blessed be the LORD, who has delivered you from the Egyptians and from Pharaoh. Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods, because he delivered the people from the Egyptians, when they dealt arrogantly with them.” The hodayah, which comes from the Hebrew word hodah, meaning “thank” or “to acknowledge” or “to confess”. An example from Daniel, Chapter 2 runs “…To you, O God of my ancestors, I give thanks and praise, for you have given me wisdom and power, and have now revealed to me what we asked of you, for you have revealed to us what the king ordered.” The Berakah blesses God for what he has done and the Hodayah thanks God, but both are forms of praise rooted in the remembrance of what God has done.
These prayers of remembrance function, according to Bradshaw, as ways by which worshippers interpret their experience in religious terms, or we might say, place themselves within God’s story. The also act as confession or acknowledgement of God, proclamation, and consecration of our lives to God. Petition then becomes a natural outgrowth of the acknowledgement and confession of God’s character. “[A]ny intercessions that are added to this nucleus are merely the explicit articulation of what is already implicit in the act of remembrance itself–the desire that God will continue the salvific activity that has been recalled, and hence sanctify those for whom prayer is made and draw all things back into a right relationship with God” (p. 50). This form of prayer continues in the New Testament, primarily in the prayers of Jesus and Paul.
In Bradshaw’s view, this form of praying serves as an antidote to egocentric forms of prayer that consist primarily of our own needs and wants:
A recovery of the richness of the biblical heritage of our prayer tradition, therefore, can rescure us from such a subjective and potentially egocentric perception and enable us to see that much more than expressing gratitude is involved in a eucharistic pattern of prayer. Recalling to mind what God has done, we are interpreting our human experience in religious terms; we are making our credal confession of faith; we are proclaiming our gospel to the world; we are restoring ourselves and all creation to a relationship of holiness to God; and all this not for ourselves but so that God may be glorified. (p. 55)
Liturgical prayer is ideally suited for this precisely because it puts our own prayers in the broader context of the prayers and confession of the entire church. For instance, both the Anglican daily office and Luther’s Small Catechism incorporate the creed as a part of daily prayer. “Praying” the creed may seem counterintuitive at first, but when prayer is understood as remembrance of God’s salvific actions it makes a lot more sense. Likewise, the meditation on scripture familiarizes us with God’s story and helps us to interpret our own experience as part of that story. In fact, this is a helpful way to think about the liturgical year: we call to mind and recount what God has done for us, seek to be incorporated into that story, and anticipate its consummation.
This understanding of prayer is why Bradshaw sees the need for a recovery of “cathedral” prayer. Praise and intercession are at the heart of cathedral prayer, as a response to “God’s gracious actions in the world” (p. 120). In contrast to “monastic” forms of prayer, he thinks this might require a more selective use of psalmody and scripture reading and a greater attention to the seasons of the liturgical year. Ultimately, though, he thinks that “monastic” and “cathedral” elements are necessary for a balanced Christian spirituality.
A Thinking Reed 