Litany Desk

From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death,

Good Lord, deliver us. *

We had Morning Prayer most Sunday mornings when I was a boy. The minister officiated the service not at the Altar as he did on First Sunday, when we had Holy Communion, but from his chair up front in the chancel, facing to the side; and he spent most of his time on his knees at the prie-dieu, the prayer desk. 

Speaking from personal knowledge and experience as one of the species, boys are impatient with religion that goes on overly long, and the dreaded thing that stirred ultimate impatience for this particular boy usually happened to my surprise upon coming into the church on a Sunday morning in Lent: the prie-dieu was up front in the center of the aisle facing the Altar, and had suddenly become the Litany Desk.

It signified that religion would go on overly long on the knees this morning. Very much overly long. Even longer than the dreaded words of First Sunday: “Let us pray for the whole state of Christ’s Church.”

The exact quote slips my mind this morning, but in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Tom Sawyer there is a chapter when Tom is in church, and not a willing victim. He becomes focused on an insect, as I recall, and then on an animal (maybe it’s a cat, memory fails me this morning) and somehow because of something Tom innocently initiates as a diversion from the tedium of the unending worship service, the animal becomes a major disruption to morning worship. 

But what is on my mind is Tom’s impatience with the preacher’s long, endless pastoral prayer. It was the same prayer every Sunday morning, and Tom knew it by heart; and his impatient boredom was driven to distraction when something was added, a name, or an event, or a concern, or some intention or other. Tom Sawyer and TW+ had a great deal in common in those days, those years as boys. The misery of my colleague Tom Sawyer always came to mind upon seeing the prie-dieu in the center aisle, poised to host The Litany.

In later years, The Litany, now restyled “The Great Litany,” became a favorite liturgy. Especially in a large church such as St. Paul’s, K Street in Washington, DC, beautifully chanted in long, winding procession of crucifer, celebrant and choir that wove down the center aisle and round the side aisles of the nave until finally ending in the chancel. The Litany, one of our most ancient services, may be the oldest liturgy in the Prayer Book, dating back perhaps to the fifth century.

The petition of The Litany that always gave me a bit of a start was the one about sudden death, which even as a boy I realized could come upon anyone at any age, even me. It’s all in my mind this morning because it’s Lent, and the Litany was always part of Lent, and because we all need to be mindful that any moment could be our last, and that every day is beautiful, every day a blessing.

MAN, that is born of a woman, hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up, and is cut down, like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay.

In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour, but of thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?

Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy and most merciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternal death.

Thou knowest, Lord, the secrets of our hearts; shut not thy merciful ears to our prayer; but spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee. *

TW+ 

• 1928 BCP