Morning Prayer — The Venite (BCP p.9)
O COME, let us sing unto the LORD; * let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving; * and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.
For the LORD is a great God; * and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are all the corners of the earth; * and the strength of the hills is his also.
The sea is his, and he made it; * and his hands prepared the dry land.
O come, let us worship and fall down, * and kneel before the LORD our Maker.
For he is the Lord our God; * and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.
O worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness; * let the whole earth stand in awe of him.
For he cometh, for he cometh to judge the earth; * and with righteousness to judge the world, and the peoples with his truth.
What a way to begin every day, through good times and bad, in times of blessedness or trial: O come, let us sing unto the Lord! We are taught daily, throughout all the vicissitudes of our mortal existence, to give thanks to God.
Having confessed our sin before Almighty God in "A General Confession" (p. 6), we are then assured of God's pardon and absolution to all those "who truly repent and unfeignedly believe his holy Gospel (the good news of the remission of sin in Jesus Christ our Lord). We are reminded of God's favor and goodness to those who have been forgiven by addressing God as "Our Father" in the Lord's prayer. Now God opens our lips to show forth his praise, first in the Gloria Patri, and then in the Venite's jubilant summons to worship God with joy and thanksgiving. The Venite is well suited for worship because the worship of God consists primarily of praise and thanksgiving.
"O come, let us sing" reminds us that MP is not just an act of individual devotion ... we raise our voices with the Church throughout the world.
We come into God's presence– literally, to come before God's face – with songs of praise and thanksgiving, in the beauty and awe of holiness.
With consummate art the Venite takes us up in the principal themes of worship: the majesty and glory of God manifest in creation; the providential and tender care of God, the good Shepherd, for His people; the just demands of righteousness and truth.
"O come, let us worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker" ... worship is not simply a matter of the heart, of inward devotion; we worship God in body and soul, by an outward as well as inward profession of godliness. Bishop Royal Grote once told me that worship should begin with, "assume the position," that is, prostrate oneself before Lord. "Now," Bishop Grote noted, "we are ready to worship."
In today's Living Lent:
Remorse for our sins... "is part of our spiritual growth as witnessed by many of the saints who saw this as instrumental in their growing awareness and closeness to God." ... This is particularly evident in the life of St Paul. In drawing closer to God, he apprehended with greater clarity the holiness of God, and his own sinfulness. Accordingly, the progression in his spiritual growth was marked by: I am the least of the Apostles (I Cor. 15:9), to I am the least of the saints (Eph 3:8), to I am the chief of all sinners (I Tim 1:15).
"However it is a feature of our Christian life, if it grows out of proportion to other aspects, it makes us gloomy and morbid Christians." How true this is! The Church does talk about acknowledging our guilt and shame before God not so that we may wallow in it, but that we might deal with it and move beyond it. Too often many have placed too much emphasis on guilt and shame before God rather than Christian forgiveness, grace, joy and boldness in Jesus Christ. Jesus came to end man's guilt and shame before God by reconciliation through Jesus' sacrifice. Jesus came to give deliverance, to the captives, to proclaim the favorable year of the Lord (Luke 4): "I am come that they may have life, and they might have it more abundantly (John 10:10). We are not masochists in search of self-atonement; we are those set at liberty in Jesus Christ; we are those who rejoice in the Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world. In a sense, every confession and absolution is a kind of resurrection.
As a reminder ... in the Sacrament of Penance we are to be mindful that true confession consists of:
Contrition: true sorrow for our sins; by careful examination, we know what our sins are and the extent to which we have offended God’s love and goodness.
Confession: we own up to our sins, simply, honestly, and completely. We make our confession to a Priest as a minister of God and Christ’s representative to you of His Holy Church.
Absolution: God washes away the stain of our sin from our souls and gives us strength to resist sin in the future.
Amendment: we commit ourselves, by God’s grace, to fight manfully against those sins we have committed, striving to be faithful to God’s holy will and resolving not to sin again.
And at the end of every confession we hear: The Lord has put away all thy sins ... Go in peace
JSH+