Quantum Leap

4:15 AM is a Quantum Leap.  It doesn't get much earlier than this.
I'll let you know how it goes.
One thing is to focus on the 6:00 AM start for Lauds.
That's all for now.

Saint Aloysius Gonzaga

"Saint Aloysius Assists Victims of the Plague" 

We're moving in the right direction.

Getting more practice.  One benchmark has been to begin Prime at 7:00 AM.  This has been successful now for going on two weeks.

I like this idea of "lavishing minutes" on the Lord's work.  Confer the first and second versions of the third verse of "America the Beautiful."  The third version conveys it in different words, but also nicely.

Saint John tells it best in Revelation: "Love for life did not deter them from death."  It's this idea of cherishing more intensely the things that should be more intensely cherished.  In Revelation it refers to gaining the victory in the angelic warfare over satan by the Blood of the Lamb.  In my recitation of the Divine Office, it refers to gaining the victory over my laziness, my lack of diligence and my desire to cheat God by the Blood of the same Lamb for the sake of the faithful.

So, even if my own "free time" (whether there should even be such a thing is a different story) is something I cherish, how about cherishing the Lord's work more and not deterring myself from it for any lesser good.

One goal that has begun to emerge has been Matins at 5:00 AM, Lauds at 6:00 AM, Prime at 7:00 AM, Mass at 8:00 AM, Terce at 9:00 AM.

For this, Reveille will really probably need to be at 4:15 AM.  If it's at 4:30 AM, 5:00 AM won't happen.  Not the end of the world.  But I do want to get Lauds situated at 6:00 AM just like I've been managing to do with Prime at 7:00 AM.  This will allow the 30 Minutes of mental prayer to lead up to Prime after Lauds.  It will free up the time leading up to Mass, perhaps for confessions.

It will allow the Lord's Work time to breathe, instead of piling it up one hour upon the next non-stop. The whole thing, if I'm not careful—Matins through Terce (including Mass)—can all happen in pretty much one  uninterrupted stream of recited prayers.  Which  means, about 120 minutes of non-stop recitation.  That's a lot.  And if I'm hurrying at all, it's gross and not at all pleasing to the Lord. Putting a "scourge" into the hand of the Divine Master, a la Tra le Sollecitudine.

Lavishing the minutes so that the Lord's Work is spread out more, gives it a chance to breathe.  Makes it real nice.  Something you can invite folks to pray.

4:30 AM

The thought has occurred to me to give this a try, soon

This morning

Matins started at 6:05 AM.

"The Presentation of Christ" (From the Altar of Phillip
the Bold), Melchior Broederlam, 1399

I took my time, "lavishing" precious minutes on the Lord's work—without looking at the clock until it was done.
I finished at 6:59 AM.
I started Prime at 7:00 AM.
After Prime, about 7:11 AM, I set up for Mass including prepping the linens for Jane and started 30 Minutes of Mental Prayer.  This took my right up to 8:00 AM Mass.
I should say, I bumped up the Martyology reading up one minute, and tomorrow I'll bump it up another minute, this, so I can begin Mass punctually at 8:00 AM instead of 8:02 AM.

I'm keeping  in my back pocket the ideas of sliding the whole thing 15 minutes earlier again, but what will this gain?

This morning it would've gained 15 minutes before the start of 7:00 AM Matins.  But what for?  Coffee?  That doesn't sound right.  A "head call?" That could actually be reasonable some mornings.  Longer Matins?  That will be the case on greater feasts.   A prompt 6:00 AM start could help there, too.

Let's finish this week, including Sunday with the current plan.  And let's try the 5:00 AM reveille next week and compare.  Note, this also means 8:30 PM Compline, as opposed to 8:45 PM which it's been this week.  This'll also mean being strict regarding ending it all at the end of the day.  I foresee, for instance, Sunday evenings having to be dome with dinner with the guys and walking out the door at 8:15 PM.  That's way (by almost 30 mins) earlier than usual.  It could be good though.  One of the guys does it already to make it back for his 8:00 PM TV show he likes (lame, but at least he makes it out to begin with).

Keep in mind, this is about doing the Lord's work, the "Divine Office."

Canonical Hours

"Christ and the Adulteress" Lorenzo Lotto, 1528

I love it.  It's been hard getting the exact schedule that works.
Wouldn't you know, what's been working lately has been 6,7,9,12,3,6,9—more or less.

Going public with it in the parish will add an extra dimension of accountability.

So far, I've also needed to get used to the Latin, too.  That's taken some time.

Looking ahead, a daily posted announcement of when which hours will be recited publicly could be very useful for me and them.

Now it's the end of May

"Madonna and Child in a landscape" Giorgione, 1504

6:15 AM.  How hard is that?  Do what you need to do.  Get to bed at whatever time you need to get to bed.  Wake up at whatever time you need to wake up.  But get your self in the church, ready to pray at 6:15 AM.  Not rocket science.

Now It's May

"Madonna" Correggio, 1516

And time we get it back in gear.

We've cleared First Communion, Confirmation, May Procession, Sodality Union, and Holy Week liturgies.  Things are settling down.  Which means time to hit that stride again.

I've been off the wagon, that is the M/L-before-Mass Wagon for over a week.  Let's correct that.

Now it is April

Nearly a month since the last update.

Some reporting is due.

Wakeup time needs to be 5:00 AM.  M/L total time is down while also not feeling so rushed.  This has to do with familiarity with the Latin.  It's natural.  M/L is really now around 45 mins (this morning it was 38 minutes).  This gets me safely to school for the 7:40 AM prayer.

A 5:15 AM wake up would give away the edge gained by the increased-familiarity with the Latin.  I'm not getting better at the Latin so I can sleep more, I'm getting better at the Latin so I can pray more.

"Lamentation of Christ" van der Weyden, 1460-1463

There's a two-hour penance I like to practice—I can tell you more about that another time—which in order to get 2 good hours, that needs to have begun before 5:30 AM, since I'm on the road by about 7:30 AM for school.  So this means I've at least showered and gotten started by say 5:20 AM or so.  Hence a 5:15 AM wakeup cuts that too close.

The start-time for M/L is what has wobbled these last four weeks.  There is much ground to gain by way of consistently beginning M/L by a set time.  I'd set that broadly between 5:45 AM and 6:00 AM.

A 5:45 AM church-unlock should give time for coffee but no internet.  I'm totally fine with that.  This would reliably start M/L by 5:50 AM.  M/L would then end by 6:35 AM and the half-hour of meditation would then end by 7:05 AM.  Prime would then be done by 7:15 AM.  This would give me about 15 minutes—to do what with?  I don't know.  I have used that time in the past to blog.  I won't use that time to excuse a 5:15 AM wake up.  I have used that time, in part to set up for Mass, which is completely reasonable.  I could then—get ready for it—plan my day.  That would be astonishing.  Let's work on that.

That's been another development these last weeks is a significant though not yet at all total weening from the internet time-suck.

I've now also begun working on a study chunk of time as well as recovering the swim time which I've completely lost.

I"m zeroing in on a workable time to get things started.

Le Sueur, "St. Gervaise" 1652

The 5:00 AM wakeup is working.  It's the start-time for Matins and Lauds that's in flux.  If I start at 5:50 AM  I'd be done, on average by 6:50 AM.  Prime then would start at 7:20 AM and I'd be on time to make it to school for the 7:40 AM prayer.  Right?  No.  Why?  I'm rushing the recitation of the hours.  Literally saying the words about as fast as I can, intelligibly.  This is death, as I've noted earlier.  I need more time.  Would five minutes help?  Let's start with that and see.  Even if it's not a full five minutes.  What if I open the Church at 5:45 AM?  How does that sound?  Still not a ton of time.  And for longer offices, not much difference.

Right now I've been starting M/L 55 minutes after wakeup.  This has got to shrink.  I've been getting into the kitchen more than 30 minutes and sometimes more than 35 minutes after wakeup.  That's gotta shrink.  Coffee and headlines have taken more than ten minutes and sometimes almost twenty.  Not much to shrink there, except that I can improve the mindset that it's a brief cup of coffee and a quick glance at headlines.  I could skip it altogether.  But for now I'd rather not.  I could also front-load the coffee/headlines to right at wakeup.  That may make it take longer, but it may make showering and such go quicker.  I'm intrigued there.

I'd like to aim for opening the church at 5:40 AM.  Of course a sure-fire way of nailing this would be to publish it in the bulletin or to announce it on Sundays.  That's not just the nuclear option.  It's also a goal.  To publish the times when the church is regularly opened for prayer.  That's not unreasonable.

Another resolution:

A not hot shower in the morning.  This, I expect could have a two-fold benefit of saving time and waking up the body.  I'll try it on Day One of Lent, tomorrow.  Let's see if this puts me in the kitchen with the coffee before 5:30 AM.

I Love Preaching

Lately, I'm discovering the responsibility of preaching to be an increasingly humbling obligation.  The better I preach, the more effective the homily, the more awesome the responsibility.  My sense of the enormity of the obligation is accelerating as my improvements merely sputter along sometimes good sometimes meh.

This should cause me to double-down on prep.  I admire a friend who seems so committed to improving the preaching constantly, week in and week out.

Nothing to report on the resolution for 1 whole week.

"St. Nick"
Gozzoli

Let's let it be, in terms of reporting here on it.

For one thing it plays fast-and-loose with the border between "useful writing exercise" and "too much information."  Out of respect for that border.  That'll be all for now until at least 3/1 on the resolution.

I'll have to find something else to get wordy about in the meantime.  Wish me luck figuring out what that might be.

Blogging about the struggle to get up on time...it's what I know

"Madonna" Campin

The struggle is what I know.

I won't call it a "snooze" because it was within the parameters of what I've been preparing.  Instead of 4:45 AM, got up—reset the alarm for 5:00 AM, went back to sleep and got up at 5:00 AM.  Successfully.

The tricky thing about getting up at 5:00 AM instead of 4:45 AM is that there is very little room for false steps.  I should've mentioned, today is a school day.  So I have to be standing inside the gym at the school when the bell rings at 7:40 AM.  If I'm late for the bell it may as well be a Saturday, for all intents and purposes.

This morning I was in the kitchen at 5:28 AM starting the coffee.  Those 28 minutes were key.  If I can make it in 25 minutes, even better, but that hasn't happened yet, ever—that I can remember.  Certainly not this year.  What I've done to this point is I've taken 30-45 minutes to do what I should only take 25-30 minutes to do.  This schlepping was to allow myself enough time, but it was also costing me 75 minutes of sleep lost per-week.  If I can get those 75 minutes back and convert that extra sleep into a 25-30 minute hustle, then I've made some real progress.  I will have gained an additional 75 minutes of free time per-week.

"Time is souls."

One thing I like about Campin's "Madonna" here is how small the Christ child is.  Much littler and younger than is typical elsewhere.  Also, Our Lady has got great hair.

"Be Children of your heavenly Father..."

Here's the upshot form last Sunday.

5:15 AM because no school today

This worked out, just in enough time.

5:15 AM wakeup.  I'm thinking that this is as late as it's going to get on days when I want to pray the canonical hours at their proper times as well as include the half-hour of mental prayer before Mass.

Anything later than 5:15 AM and stuff gets punted to after Mass.  And that's lame.  That's there if I need it.  But if I don't need it, it's lame.

So: 5:00 AM on Sundays; 4:45 AM Monday through Friday; and 5:15 AM on Saturdays and on non-school days.

Lets try this for a couple of weeks.

And, I can always fall back to 4:45 AM everyday if I need to.  And 4:30 AM is the early end of normal.  Both of which I may need on any given day.

And I'm leaving 5:00 AM everyday on the table as a goal.  But I'm not there yet.

5:00 AM This Sunday

5:00 AM wakeup worked today (Sunday).  I'll try it again next week.  5:15 would've meant too much of a rush for the hours which are already suffering from my bad habit of going too quickly.  4:45 AM may still be necessary, depending.  But I'll give the 5:00 AM another try next week.

By the way, the 8:00 AM version of the homily was an improvement over the night before.  And (I'm updating this after the 10:00 AM) the 10:00 AM was better still.

The transitions need to be sharper.  That's because the main points are not well defined.  So, here's what they are:

What's the Sermon on the Mount?
What's Divine Filiation?
How does Divine filiation help us love our enemies?

That's the flow of the homily.  Transitions, then, should be.

"Love your enemies" will be too hard if we've missed the whole point of the Sermon.  Let's take a step back and look at the Sermon on the Mount for a minute.

Jesus reveals a bombshell about God: he's our father.  "Luuuke, I am your faaahtherrr." "NOOO!!!"

Now that we see God is our Father, here's why "Love your enemies" makes sense.

Preaching this Sunday

"Meeting" Fra Angelico

I went big picture.  Divine Filiation.  And I pretty much stayed big picture.  I'd like to tweak it.  Bring it into a concert example.  Otherwise it's tough to relate to.

The Gospel is "Love your enemies." And "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect."  It's the middle of the Sermon on the Mount.

I gave a birdseye of the Sermon on the Mount.  It's the "teaching of Jesus Christ.  It's authority unlike anything anyone had ever heard before.  But this is especially true about God as Father and we a Children of God.

I ended up rather thinly referring to the exact content of the pericope itself.  That is, it was a theme of the homily only towards the end.

Letter

My Dear Spiritual Sons and Daughters in the Lord,

The Gospel reading at Mass this Sunday is taken from the portion of the Gospel of Matthew that is called “The Sermon on the Mount.” They are words which Jesus speaks to his followers to teach them how God wants them to live their lives.

Jesus’ teaching gives us the right mindset we need to approach all of the parts of our lives with the mindset of God himself. Jesus goes on at great length in The Sermon on the Mount. The portion which we hear this Sunday concerns how we should respond to those who make life difficult for us. Keep in mind how we make life difficult for God.

Tisi, "Virgin"

Some people make life hard for us. How should we deal with them? Should we respond by making life hard for them in return? That may seem only fair. But is their a still more excellent way? Indeed, there is a still more excellent way. And this is the way that Christ expects us to follow. And if we want to enjoy heaven, then we had better follow it. It is the way of Jesus Christ himself. It is the way which reflects the love of God.

In order, first, for any of Jesus’ encouragements to make sense it is important for us to remember that God in his great goodness wants to rescue us from being lost forever. And more than that, he wants to make all of us his sons and daughters. God doesn’t have to do this. God would have been perfectly justified allowing us to remain in our condition of having lost the blessed eternity forfeited by our first parents. But God is so good. He shows us how we can regain that happiness by his own great act of forgiving us who had so dreadfully wronged him.

As a condition of our newfound sonship, God expects us to return good for evil when others offend us. This expectation is reasonable because we are showing how similar we are to our Savior. When Jesus says, “Offer no resistance to one who is evil,” “Give to the one who asks of you,“ and “Love your enemies,” He is really asking us to treat each other the way God has treated us. He is calling us to resemble by the perfection of our love for others, by our mercifulness and by the holiness of our lives the perfection, mercy and holiness of God.

We must have this mindset if we want to be called Christians. Let’s keep listening to Jesus’ words and acting on them.

Sincerely Your Spiritual Father in Christ,

Fr. Drew

Pronounce the words

Lorenzatti, "Man of Sorrow"

Let's look at the goal, the New Year's resolution, from within a broader perspective.  To pray the canonical hours is firstly and foremost a resolution "to pray." I've been focussing a lot on the peripheral, logistical elements of setting up the time to pray.  Necessary.  But I can't lose sight of the fact that this is supposed to be prayer.  It's supposed to be a direct interaction of an intimately relational sort with the living God.

This is where all of the little things such as when and how and where and what I'm saying yield the one big thing: communing with the Almighty.

Good to keep in mind as I continue to tweak the "lesser things." They're "lesser," however, not because they lack a strong relation with the bigger thing.  But because they're more susceptible to alteration for the sake of the preservation of the bigger thing.

Pronounce the words clearly.  Not slurred.  This is a lesser thing with a strong relation to the greater thing.

Saturday Mornings

Masaccio, "Madonna Casini"

7:25 AM and done with Prime.  35 minutes until Mass.  Wondering if it's worth trying to budget another 15 minutes of sleep on Saturday Mornings.  That would push wake-up to 5:15 AM. Perhaps worth a try as long as the morning office doesn't get rushed.  A larger data set would help me make that call.  I'll wait a couple of more Saturdays.  The same could go for Sundays, although, Matins is slightly longer.

It's the feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes.