A Lukan Spirituality

As an Order, we are evolving. This revision of The Book of Offices and Services comes out of my discernment, with the confirmation of the Council, that the needs and practices of members of the Order require a revised, single volume The Daily Office accommodating a range of usages. Since the “ordinary” for daily prayer published in The Book of Offices and Services forms the template for the “propers” in The Daily Office, the Council decided that a revision of our offices and services had to come first.

In the six decades since the founding of the Order of Saint Luke, our community has been exploring and discovering a spirituality informed by Saint Luke the evangelist, author of the gospel that goes by his name and his subsequent narrative of the Acts of the Apostles. Through continuing reflection on his “orderly account” (Lk 1:1, 3) we have begun to glimpse his priorities and distinctive insights into “the events that have been fulfilled among us.”

Since any attempt to summarize or systematize Luke’s telling of the story risks distorting Luke’s work, we approach attempts to identify a Lukan spirituality with humility and joy, not mastery. This venture is both evangelical and apostolic, for we desire to be shaped by Jesus in the power of the Holy Spirit to proclaim and embody the good news of Jesus Christ. This is clear in our Rule of Life and Service: we affirm the apostolic hope, live for the church, seek the sacramental life, promote the corporate worship of the church, magnify the sacraments, and accept the call to service. Clearly, our Rule of Life and Service sees in Luke a profound attentiveness to the evangel seen through the eyes of a community rooted in common life, liturgy and hope. Luke’s description of the nascent community in Acts 2: 42-47 could well be the pattern for our life together: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers…. [They] had all things in common…distributing as any had need…spent much time together in the temple, broke bread…with glad and generous hearts, praising God….” I can’t help but note that they left the results to God!

What then is the spirituality we seek to embody in our worship and life together?

First, Lukan spirituality is liturgical. It is grounded in worship and prayer, the sacraments and the hallowing of time. The daily office canticles are found in Luke—the songs of Zechariah, Mary, Simeon, and the angels (the Gloria in Excelsis). Luke lays out the “Word and Table” pattern of worship with his resurrection story of the two walking to Emmaus . In Acts we see a community together for praise, the sharing of meals (meals are always sacramental!), and always “gathering” and “being sent”—two profoundly liturgical acts. Lukan spirituality practices and rejoices in this liturgical life. Far from being perfunctory or sidebars, they are central to forming and sustaining evangelical and catholic prayer and service. As in earlier editions, the resources in this volume invite us as a community to rest on a solid liturgical and sacramental foundation. While here and there you will see deliberate references to Luke’s casting of gospel and ecclesial life, these Lukan themes underlie the entire project.

Second, Lukan spirituality is charismatic. We acknowledge, without apology, our dependence on the Holy Spirit, breathing life into dry bones. In Luke, the Holy Spirit is central. We cannot imagine faithful discipleship apart from the Holy Spirit’s promptings. From the annunciation in Luke 1 to Jesus’ “you will be baptized by the Spirit” to the Day of Pentecost to the apostles’ reliance upon the Holy Spirit in their actions, Luke-Acts portrays the Holy Spirit animating the each and all in the community. Other than John 15 and 16, there is no more sustained emphasis and narrative of the Spirit’s working in ordinary people to do extraordinary things. The Holy Spirit descends upon Jesus, leads him into the wilderness, sustains him in the face of temptation, births the church and empowers its proclaiming and embodying of the reign of God. The apostolic community is a sent and directed community—a charismatic community. In this sense, we understand that our baptismal charism (gift, grace) is the Holy Spirit sent from the Father and the Son to indwell us and direct our life and work. We seek to be self-consciously aware of grace as the immediate and ongoing work of the Spirit within us. We commend the resources of this volume to one another in that spirit: not as a law but as invitation and resource for the Spirit to prompt and inform our prayer. We trust the Spirit to make good use of it in the varied settings and occasions in which we gather. This spirited freedom and practicality is consistent with much of Christian history, including that of the Wesley’s and the early Methodists.

Third, Lukan spirituality is oriented to the poor and those who live and suffer on the margins of daily life. The character of the Spirit who baptizes us is the character of Jesus, who associates and suffers with the poor, the hungry, and those who weep (Luke 6:20-23). We seek to grow in his character and to trust that the Spirit who animates us proclaims and embodies good news to those most in need. Lukan piety will always impel us to commitment to the poor and marginalized because Jesus is to be found with them. By way of confession, this may be the most challenging aspect of Lukan spirituality for us. In general, we have much work to do in orienting ourselves toward those with whom Jesus identified and spent time.

Fourth, Lukan spirituality is prophetic and countercultural. This prophetic posture is imaginative and poetic in ways that subvert entrenched power and privilege. From the God initiated radical reversals in the canticle of Mary to Jesus’ sermon proclaiming release to the captives at Nazareth (Lk 4:18-19) to the narrative of Paul’s upsetting of the economy in Ephesus (Acts 19:21-31), Luke sets out a vision of the reign of God that was alarmingly revolutionary to both Jews and Romans. In that world created and maintained by a massive slave population, the Messiah’s letting all of the oppressed “go free” invoked a colossal reversal for the establishment. Unlike the beatitudes in Matthew, Luke’s casting of the beatitudes, and the addition of the woes, unequivocally reverse the prevailing social values, then and now (Luke 6:20-26). These cannot be toned down to be just pious individual virtues. The Book of Acts reports the many beatings and imprisonments of Paul. Those events did not occur because Paul was a heretic in a narrowly religious sense. Recalling the uproar in Ephesus, imagine your local chamber of commerce organizing a citywide rally against your congregation’s upsetting the local economy!

The reality is that most of us in the Order of Saint Luke are privileged and powerful. We are invested in what is more than in what in God’s justice will be. Hence, we are rather deaf and blind to this dimension of Lukan spirituality. The coming reign of God challenges us to a deeper and more imaginative reading of this dimension of Luke’s work.

Fifth, Lukan spirituality is communal. With the early apostolic community that Luke describes, we seek to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers, even to share a common life in diaspora! That is why praying the daily office, continuing formation in the baptismal covenant, and celebration of the Holy Eucharist gives us such hope—hope that in sharing these disciplines faithfully, we share a common life though separated by regions, even continents. In our dispersion, we yearn for and commit to live in community, sharing joys, bearing burdens, and holding one another and ourselves accountable to the Rule of Life and Service. The one specific practice the Rule specifies is praying the daily office. This volume gives us the full structure for daily prayer and the hallowing to time through the day. At the center of this communal life, is the Holy Eucharist. Let us celebrate the sacrament whenever we gather, graciously and fully aware of the risen Christ who gives us his body that we may be for each other and the world the body of Christ, redeemed by his blood. Here you will find well-considered new settings (textual and musical) for Eucharistic celebration. As an order, we seek to live the good news of God’s new humanity as Christ’s new community of love and justice.

Finally, Lukan spirituality is apostolic. We are a community sent (Greek apostolos) by Christ to many places. Luke portrays Jesus and the apostles as itinerant for the sake of the gospel. While we may experience our dispersion around the world as a disadvantage, perhaps it is a gospel advantage. With Jesus, we intentionally embrace our dispersion. Of course, many of us would like to live in residence, as many monastic communities do. When we are together in retreat, we know how rich such communal life can be, and we are deeply renewed and sustained in such settings. Yet, we give ourselves to an itinerant proclamation in deeds and words for conversion and forming disciples. You may think I am alluding to the distinctive itinerancy of Methodist clergy. I am not. Rather, I am proposing that Luke gives us a picture of missionary people, over against our human tendency is to settle or see ourselves choosing where to reside.

As with that earliest apostolic community, Christ sends us as witnesses from our Jerusalem to our Judea and Samaria, and the ends of the earth (Acts 1:8). As a community in diaspora, we have many Jerusalems. Christ, by the Spirit, places us where we are to live the sacramental life and proclaim the apostolic hope. Our rule is a commitment in common to life-long spiritual formation. However, this formation is not an end to itself. What if we understood apostolic witness as itinerant ministry, not only in geographical terms, but also in terms of attentive presence. What if we understood our vocation as journey into the depths of the very place or places in which we find ourselves. Jesus’ instructions to the seventy merit continuing contemplation: “Remain in the same house…do not move about from house to house” in our transient world (Luke 10:7ff). We cannot generalize about the meaning of location and stability for each other. We can support each sister and brother in the call of God and the meaning of being winsome listeners and catalysts of conversion in the places to which the Spirit sends us. The traditional monastic virtue of “stability” for us may be in sustained attentiveness in the context where God plants us for the life of the world.

Our Lukan spirituality continues to emerge. Let us be a liturgical and apostolic community under the guidance of the Spirit, especially for the sake of the poor and those living on the margins of life, seeking Christ’s justice and reconciliation in the diverse places where the Spirit plants us.

So, my sisters and brothers, I commend this revision of The Book of Offices and Services to you. Use it well and anticipate a new single volume of The Daily Office in the not too distant future. I am grateful for all who have worked diligently to birth this greatly expanded revision. I want to add to the list of those to whom gratitude is due, Br. Dwight Vogel, who serves as the general editor for this project. His knowledge, joie de vivre and disciplined oversight are evident throughout the work. May this volume be good soil in which the seed of liturgical prayer grows. As always, the way of prayer is the way of faith. Adapt and supplement these rites and resources as you pray and worship with your sisters and brothers.

Soli deo Gloria.

+Abbot Daniel T. Benedict

Easter Thursday

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*An Apostolic Spirituality (based on Luke-Acts)

[Dwight Vogel’s notes from a presentation by Daniel T. Benedict]

Order of Saint Luke Retreat, Pittsburg, PA, October 1994

1. Centrality of the Spirit

i. Sent and directed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit

ii. Our spirituality is a gift of God

2. Trust in the power of Jesus who suffers with and heals Jesus as the crucified one who is Lord and Messiah

3. Bound into a prayerful eucharistic community (sharing joys, meeting needs, bearing burdens with, radical accountability)

4. Commitment to the marginalized

5. Itinerant proclamation for conversion and discipleship

[See] Luke 2:42-47  Note: This passage on which DTB’s presentation was based was the focus of my thinking and praying in the quiet time that followed.  It became the locus classicus for the chapter of Food for Pilgrims.   – DWV