The Veteran’s Administration might be trying to ban Jesus from its facilities, but God, being omnipresent, there’s no way to keep him out. However, even though God doesn’t need our help, it is our duty as Christians to help him.
The best—and most effective—way for us to help the patients undergoing treatment in VA hospitals, medical centers, and clinics is to pray for them.
Doubtless the notion that prayer is the “best and most effective” way to help the veterans—or anybody else, for that matter—sounds odd in this day and age. After all, people are apt to say, “All I can do is pray for you,” as though prayer is somehow a last hopeless resort,
Truth to be told, however, it is quite amazing what prayer can accomplish when we try it. Of course, God doesn’t always answer our prayers in exactly the way we think he should. But, then, he knows our needs better than we do.
As the prayer composed by St John Chrysostom so elegantly puts it, he answers our prayers in the way that is “most expedient” for us. And Chrysostom points out, the most expedient answer of all is knowledge of his truth while we are in this world and life everlasting in the next.
You will find St John Chrysostom’s prayer in the Book of Common Prayer in the Morning Prayer section on Page 20, and in the Evening Prayer section on Page 34.
Meanwhile, as far was the VA’s patients are concerned, you will find two eloquent prayers for recovery in the BCP’s Family Prayer sections on Page 597. They are entitled: “For the Recovery of a Sick Person” and “For One about to Undergo an Operation.” Another useful prayer is “The Birthday Prayer” at the bottom of the page. It is a prayer appropriate for much more than birthdays.
There is also a splendid prayer for people suffering from psychological problems, such as Post Traumatic Stress. It is on Page 598 and is entitled “For Those in Mental Darkness.”
While I’m delving around at the back of the BCP, another prayer is located there (at the bottom of Page 594) that strikes a particular chord in people’s hearts—the collect entitled “At Night,” the prayer with which we often end services at St Stephen’s.
The author of this wonderful prayer is John Henry Cardinal Newman, who wrote it while he was a profoundly unhappy Anglican. Sometime later he swam the Tiber (Romans who convert to Anglicanism are said to “swim the Thames”) and became a profoundly unhappy Roman Catholic.
While we are on the subject of veterans, it is always important to remember those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom. You will find the collect for “Memorial Days” on Page 42. It reads:
Almighty God, our heavenly Father, in whose hands are the living and the dead; We give thee thanks for all those thy servants who have laid down their lives in the service of our country. Grant to them thy mercy and the light of thy presence, that the good work which thou hast begun in them may be perfected; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord. Amen.
The Memorial Day Collect is a model of classical Anglican liturgical prose. It is a splendidly composed prayer—one that conveys a heartfelt expression of gratitude to God, yet exquisitely balanced in terms dignity and restraint.
In view of its great merit, it somewhat surprising that the identity of the author is unknown. It appears to have been based on a similar one in a slim volume entitled “Hymns and Prayers for Use of The Army and Navy” that was published in 1917, shortly after the U.S. entered the First World War.
The collect was included in the 1928 Book of Common Prayer because the revisers considered earlier editions of the BCP deficient in the realm of prayers for the departed.
This had become increasingly apparent in the wake of the War between the States, with the institution of the practice of publicly memorializing servicemen who had died in battle.
The Memorial Day prayer is both a thanksgiving for the self-sacrifice of those who have laid down their lives and the traditional petition for God’s mercy upon them. It is a particularly thoughtful prayer in as much as it tacitly recognizes that there are other ways of laying down one’s life for one’s fellow citizens than dying on the field of battle.
This great collect, for example, would serve admirably to memorialize the pioneers of radiography, many of whom died of radiation sickness caused by their primitive X-Ray machines. Its sentiments similarly apply to public servants, such as policemen and firefighters, who die in the line of duty.
What makes the prayer especially memorable is its expression of hope that the dead will continue to grow in God’s service; that “the good work which thou hast begun in them may be perfected …”
In making this petition, the author is echoing St Paul in his Epistle to the Philippians (1:6), in which he says: “Being confident of this very thing that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.”
This petition makes the collect particularly appropriate for those who lay down their lives while expanding the frontiers of knowledge whether it be here on earth or in the far reaches of outer space.
And nothing could better describe the crews of the Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia, who were engaged in the beginning of a very good work of immense importance for the future of all mankind.
For all those who have laid down their lives for us, we could do far worse than echo the sentiments of the prayer of blessing found on in the Burial Office on Page 332.
Unto God’ s gracious mercy and protection we commit them. May the Lord bless them and keep them. May the Lord make his face to shine upon them and be gracious unto them. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon them and give them peace, both now and evermore. Amen.
This is one of the most ancient of all the Judeo-Christian blessings. The oldest recorded version of this blessing, I believe, was found among the graffiti scrawled on the wall of an ancient Egyptian copper mine in the Sinai presumably by a Hebrew slave. GUY HAWTIN✠
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