O Heavenly King …

  • Jim N. was right. I did miss this prayer. I must not have remem­bered in years past that you leave “O Heav­enly King” out of per­sonal prayers and litur­gi­cal prayers until Pentecost.

    So am I such a brick of holi­ness that I actu­ally felt the loss of the prayer to the Holy Spirit, or did it just bother me because I start my prayers on auto pilot and I had to actu­ally think to remem­ber how to begin? Let’s be kind to me and act like it’s a hard ques­tion. :-)

    In any case, I had one of those moments of small won­der­ful­ness that the Church brings your way. I was help­ing chant the Orthros ser­vice this week, and it felt like an inti­mate affair. As some­times hap­pens with Orthros, we have some reg­u­lars that come, but many that for some strange rea­son would rather sleep in a lit­tle more than hear me try to do Tone 4 for 20 min­utes. And if the Orthros reg­u­lars are out, it can really be “two or three called together in My name.” (Or eight, in this case)

    Hey, it hap­pens. I’ve been the slu­gabed too many times myself to make a thing out of it. And besides, I’ve got an ulte­rior motive: I secretly love those ser­vices. In my per­fect Ortho­dox world, every­one would have at least one chance to chant an entire ves­pers, orthros or molieban ser­vice with­out the self-consciousness you feel with a siz­able audi­ence. Because you feel this absolute con­nec­tion with the words, and just want to do what­ever it takes and be what­ever you need to be for the words to be spoken.

    The Holy Spirit hath ever been, is and ever shall be; for he is wholly with­out begin­ning and with­out end. Yet he is in covenant with the Father and the Son, counted as Life and Life-giver, Light and Light-giver, good by nature and a Foun­tain of good­ness, through whom the Father is known and the Son glo­ri­fied. And by all it is under­stood that one power, one rank, one wor­ship are of the Holy Trinity.

    So I was read­ing some­times, lis­ten­ing some­times, doing responses, wait­ing for cues and keep­ing my place on the page. I was chant­ing antiphonally with our sub­dea­con — which is a kind of church dia­logue that is inde­scrib­able in how much you feel like you’ve some­how reached back through cen­turies — and when I turned the page for my next chant, there it was:

    O Heav­enly King, O Com­forter, Spirit of Truth, Who art in all places and fillest all things, trea­sury of good things, and giver of life, come, and abide in us, and cleanse us from every stain; and save our souls, O Good One.

    I got to chant that prayer for the first time since Holy Week, and it was like see­ing an old friend again. There was that sur­prise of recog­ni­tion, and then that moment when the chant­ing duties become not so much about get­ting words right as about con­nect­ing the words that you knew were there all along with the part of your heart that is usu­ally too pri­vate for any­one else to see. And hop­ing — hop­ing! – that what­ever you’ve done wrong all week won’t keep it all from find­ing the right kind of expression.

    The best part of being choir direc­tor is that you have the best seat in the house to wit­ness the magic that some­times hap­pens when hearts and minds and bod­ies — plus an unnam­able force — come together. When you chant some­thing that you know Ortho­dox Chris­tians all over the world through­out all the Church Age have been chant­ing, all that mini-maelstrom of force hap­pens inside of you.

    As I said, it was won­der­ful. So now Pascha has hap­pened and Pen­te­cost has hap­pened. Now the church year gets under­way, and chanters and choirs can relax a lit­tle and not fear “Spe­cial Music.” (Per­haps the con­gre­ga­tion will also be able to relax a lit­tle. Some­times “Spe­cial Music” isn’t so spe­cial.) But it was good to have a lit­tle some­thing to take with me. After all, aren’t we all long­ing for that place that is — in the words of the prayer — “a place of bright­ness, a place of ver­dure, where all sick­ness, sor­row and sigh­ing have fled away, and where the voice of fes­ti­val is unceasing”?


    Related posts:

    1. Bright Week do’s & don’ts
    2. Prayer request
    3. The scary Mary prayer
    4. Two thoughts about time
    5. Other quotes

    June 13th, 2006 | Grace | 6 Comments |

6 Responses and Counting...

  • Deb 06.13.2006

    so very beau­ti­ful. I have missed the O Heav­enly King as well and it seemed quite strange to not say it with the rest of my prayers.

    Thanks for shar­ing your lit­tle slice of heaven.

    D

  • Mimi

    Beau­ti­ful, Grace! I can indeed say how much I missed “Oh Heav­enly King” — it seemed so long this year.

  • Jim N.

    I missed it too. And the pros­tra­tions! Our prayer book has us doing lots of them dur­ing the gen­eral inter­ces­sions.… man, it felt good to stick my face on the ground again, over and over!

  • Grace

    (chor­tle)

    Being Ortho­dox is so weird sometimes.

  • Edith M. Humphrey

    Thank you for this dis­cus­sion. I found it by acci­dent when search­ing Google for the his­tory of the O Heav­enly King prayer. I am cur­rently at an Angli­can con­fer­ence that is con­cen­trat­ing upon the Great Tra­di­tion, and wanted to com­mend that won­der­ful prayer to the folks here. I did not know that it was omit­ted in the sea­son lead­ing up to Pentecost–rather sim­i­lar to the Angli­can cus­tom of refrain­ing from Alleluia dur­ing Lent. Please remem­ber me in prayer–I am, God will­ing, to be chris­mated on Sun­day, and join­ing the Ortho­dox Church.

  • Grace

    Well, now I get one of those unique occa­sions in which I can say “thank good­ness for Google.” :-)

    Con­grat­u­la­tions and many years on the occa­sion of your chris­ma­tion. Chris­mated on Pen­te­cost — what a blessing!

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