"SAY this prayer three times each day." This, the earliest known
mention of the Lord's Prayer outside the New Testament, is found in
the Didache. This short manual of Christian instruction is
probably Syrian in origin, dating from the late first or early
second century and addressing a fledgling church.
The Didache devotes a few sentences to the practice of
prayer, urging Christians to pray differently from their Jewish
neighbours. Pray the Lord's Prayer "as the Lord commanded in his
Gospel", it begins. The text of the Our Father follows, and the
instruction concludes with the arresting imperative about saying
the prayer three times a day.
This marks a seminal moment in the development of Christian
prayer. In embryonic form, here is the practice of daily prayer,
which was to evolve and be hugely influential in the development of
Christianity - in the cloister, the cathedral, the parish church,
and a wide range of domestic contexts.
Most Christians in the Western world now find themselves caught
between ideals (of which daily prayer is one) and relentless
harassment by a way of life that is complex and hungry for our
time. Perhaps never before were so many people juggling daily
commitments that stretch human capacity to manage so many things
simultaneously.
Technological advance, heralded as a time-saver, has become one
of the chief accelerators of daily life. The email, while enhancing
ease of contact, has also raised our expectations of the speed at
which business can be done. Smartphones allow us to access the web,
thereby becoming a portable means by which we can receive and send
messages anywhere and any time.
The simplicity and directness of the Didache's
instruction takes on the character of ancient remedial wisdom for
our time. In commending the Lord's Prayer, it offers a strategy
for a spiritual navigation of the day with a single prayer. Once
the prayer is learnt, we have only to decide when we might pause to
pray.
The pattern of thrice each day resonates with the natural
rhythms of morning, afternoon, and evening. Many mark the
transitions between these periods with eating, revealing our bodily
dependence on physical nourishment. This corresponds with the
advice of nutritionists that a healthy diet will consist of a meal
once every four to five hours. Turning to prayer at such times is
a way of harnessing our natural body-clock to the service of
spirituality.
Praying the Lord's Prayer, we reassert our most fundamental
relationship with God, our Father, and make it a rhythmic
recalibration of our experience of time.
Marking time with prayer can also be linked with daily journeys
and their rhythms of departure and expectation. These "in-between"
times bring to focus our thoughts about what has passed, and the
events that lie ahead of us. They may be times dominated by a
celebration of achievement, or an awareness of the precariousness
of our grip on events.
The request at the heart of the Lord's Prayer, "Give us today
our daily bread," converts anxiety about our lack of readiness for
daily challenges into receptivity and trust, and a confidence in
what lies to hand, by God's gift.
A quick web search for help in frenetic times reveals a business
guru championing "six steps for when you are doing too many things
at once". The Didache gives us one step, three times a
day. We could do worse than to try it.
The Revd Dr James Steven is Director of Liturgy and Worship
at Sarum College.