The Gloria

I have a series of books by Phyllis Tickle. The series is called The Divine Hours, and she has them for different seasons of the year. The idea of "the hours" is a familiar one to my Catholic readers, but for the rest of us, well...

The hours are set prayers. Ms. Tickle has taken prayers from the Psalms (mostly) but also from the Book of Common Prayer, from hymns, from other Scripture, and from early church fathers. The reader prays these prayers 4 times a day: morning, noon, around dinner time, and before bed. (She also have a book for night prayers...in the wee hours.) This takes about 5 minutes.

I've blogged about the book before. It is one of my best discovered gems, with me always. It has changed the way I think and the way I pray. When you are praying the Psalms 4 times a day every day for a year (well, almost a year...I bought the book last January), it changes your focus. I'm not necessarily the center of things. Imagine!

But I'm writing about this book today for a different reason. For the whole advent season, one prayer has been excluded. It's called The Gloria. Again, for you Catholics, this is familiar territory. But not for the rest of us. (Those of you who saw The Sound of Music at the Wharf in Monterey last summer...the nuns sangs it, but it was in Latin.)

On to my story. Usually two prayers are always included in every "hour," The Lord's Prayer and The Gloria. The Gloria is frequently prayed more than once in a session. Last night, Christmas Eve, the Compline (prayers before bed), included The Gloria again. It was in there twice. When I got to The Gloria, I thought, "oh yes, I love this, I'm glad it's back." But as I read aloud, on the eve of the day the world celebrates God becoming flesh, I can't even begin to explain how my heart just wanted to sing. The words are simple. From repetitive use, they are now mine. I had missed them. Here they are.

"Glory be to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, so it is now and so it shall ever be, world without end. Alleluia. Amen."

There is a reason I love the carol, Angels We Have Heard On High. Someday I will hear, with my own ears, and join the chorus,

"Gloria, in excelsis Deo!"