Electric Prayer

Happy July – and for the Northern Hemisphere at least, happy holidays!

No Internet needed

The Universalis apps do not need an Internet connection. They contain everything within themselves. So wherever you are – bus, plane, beach, mountaintop – your spiritual refreshment will continue.

If you have long journey times to fill, or simply want to pray with your eyes shut, the spoken audio in Universalis is just the thing. And it will work on holiday too. When you first listen to it, the app will download everything you will ever want to hear. Obviously you need to be connected while that happens, but after that, it is all on your device and no Internet is needed.

Compline and conscience

The Liturgy of the Hours is not just for professionals but for the whole people of God. All the same, now and then a little professionalism does creep in. I have noticed it recently in that short rubric for Compline which says ‘Here an examination of conscience is commended.’

Now if you are a monk or a nun, you will probably be doing Compline all together in choir. After Compline you will return to your cells and to various activities until it is time to go to bed. If you examined your conscience at Compline and something bad did come up, you will have plenty of time to confront it and deal with it; or place it respectfully and regretfully in the Lord’s hands.

But we laymen often do Compline last thing at night, possibly even in bed and almost certainly on our own. Any real confrontation of something we did wrong (or didn’t do right enough) is going to nag, and nag, and nag all night. The middle of the night is not a time when one has the resources to do anything about anything, so the being nagged at is pointless but unstoppable. All in all, few less constructive exercises can be imagined.

So let me suggest, for the untrained laity, the opposite exercise. Do not dig out the day’s mistakes and imperfections. Dig out its joys and delights. Give thanks for them by rejoicing in them all over again. After all, joy is the reason God made the world in the first place.

I mean joys and delights rather than pleasures. The difference is this. A pleasure is something you have caused to happen. You have rung that friend or gone to see that film or picked out that pastry from the bakery shelf. Pleasures are good; they are from God; and (as C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape complains) the devil can’t make them. But you chose what pleasure to get and you knew more or less what you were getting. The thing about joy and delight is that they are not something you do, plan, take, choose: they are something that God gives to you, does to you – unplanned, unexpected, uncontrolled. A joy comes without us having any right to it. And into every day, even the greyest, a joy almost certainly does come. You woke up at four in the morning: yes, but a blackbird was singing outside. Your carer was in a foul temper today: yes, but she had a beautiful ribbon in her hair. At Compline, try to look back and find the day’s joys. Rejoice in them all over again and give thanks for them – or rather, your rejoicing is your way of giving thanks.

If you try this exercise for a while you will find yourself getting your eye in. You will start spotting more and more joys at times and places where you wouldn’t have expected them. You will start to look out for those joys and gather them together, to have more to delight in and give thanks for when Compline comes.

A subtle and accurate theologian might well tell you that this ‘not an examination of conscience’ is still really an examination of conscience, just of a different kind. And I think he could be right. Whatever the truth of it, it’s an exercise worth trying.

Universalis on Instagram

Having told you all the things you can do with Universalis without the Internet, here is one thing you do need to be connected for. If you are on Instagram, find Universalis and follow it. The handle is universalis_com and a picture gets posted every day, with a short explanation. People often reply. Although the community is small (about 2,000 people) it is welcoming and friendly.

Thank you all for using Universalis. If you have trouble or questions, or suggestions, do write to us at universalis@universalis.com or use the Contact Us button in one of the apps.

Let us all keep one another in our prayers, as always.