Shaping a soul

Now that Lent is over it seems odd to be thinking about confession, but I am. Using the Book of Common Prayer for Morning Prayer every morning (well almost every), I am confronted by this pesky practice daily. Now the popular opinion about using the same text over and over again, each day, is that all the words become rote and meaningless. I am suspicious that those who think this are those who have never tried the repetitive rote route. I reminds me of Chesterton's characteristically pithy quote: "The Christian ideal has not been tired and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

My experience of regular, familiar liturgical prayer the opposite of the "rote and meaningless" assumption. The words, on the contrary, sometimes jump off the page at me, screaming in their well-worn familiarity. Which brings me back to the thoughts about confession. The confession, which is at the outset of the Morning Prayer service, starts like this:

Almighty and most merciful Father, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against thy holy law, we have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done.

Now this is a full and robust prayer of confession. It sensibly covers all the bases: our thoughtless, careless sins (erring like lost sheep) as well as our focused and calculated sins (following too much the devices and desires of our own hearts). It covers the stuff we've done, which is where we usually stop, and our apathy, sloth and cowardice in the things we have failed to do. I tend to think that this latter category is the more significant problem in most of our lives. The confession also underlines that it is God's law that we have broken by all of the above, lest we think our actions are infractions against lesser law givers, such as Emily Post.

I am struck also in this prayer today, that it is intended to be said each day. Under this is an assumption well worth understanding - that we offend his holy law every day, thoughtlessly and intentionally, by acting and failing to act. The daily remembrance of this might do us well.

And this comes to my last thought on this, which is not about confession, but about the Book of Common Prayer. Understood correctly, it is not a resource primarily for facilitating a church service, but rather for shaping a soul.