Liturgy

The nameless Samaritan in Luke’s gospel becomes the Good Samaritan when he crosses both the road and the social barrier between Samaritans and Jews in that time period to help the man who had been beset by robbers (Luke 10:25-37). Why did he do it?

A lot of the challenge of being good is not in knowing the right thing to do (intellect), but in noticing (attention) and wanting (desire) the right opportunity to help. Do we even see the battered man at the side of the road? If we do, do we want to help him?

For millennia, religious people have recognized the importance of regular practice to cultivate our understanding of what is good, our desire to do good, and our ability to recognize the moment when there is some good to do. During Jesus’ life as a Second Temple Jew, prayer at fixed hours of the day was one of the regular practices. Our historical evidence is scattered, but we know that this prayer would have included the regular use of psalms. We can see this even in the Gospels, as Jesus and his disciples sing a hymn (perhaps part or all of the Passover Hallel) at the end of the supper in Matthew and Mark. Jesus also recites parts of psalms on the cross, another hint that he is accustomed to using them in regular observance.

Early Christians (most of them Jewish) retained the idea of prayer at fixed hours, fasting and resting on fixed days of the week, and a yearly cycle of celebrations connected with the history of God’s great deeds for Israel (including Passover and Pentecost). Although the contemporary Christian cycles have accumulated through history, we still have this fundamental set of three cycles: the hours in the day, the days in the week, the seasons and feasts in the year.

Praying at particular hours of the day both sanctifies time and reveals something already sacred about time. We can think about this action sanctifying time for a community that gathers to mark certain days of the week, setting aside the time for special devotion to God. Setting this time aside, though, reveals how all of time is intrinsically blessed because it belongs to God. The principle is that of the scriptural “first fruits.” Offering a gift to God reminds us that it is God who has first offered to us everything there is.