The word “liturgy” may be foreign to you. Or it may be a word that is loaded with baggage for you. My hope is to change that.

“Liturgy,” according to the Oxford dictionary, is “a form or formulary according to which public religious worship, especially Christian worship, is conducted.” Maybe more understandably, Wikipedia defines liturgy as “the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group.”

Liturgy, for me, is the regular practice we do that shape a meeting, whether that be a corporate gathering of worship, a private devotional, or a football game.

Let me give three brief examples:

If you attend a church that says the same thing every week—whether it be the Lord’s Prayer, Apostles’ Prayer, or Eucharistic liturgy—that’s liturgy.

If you wake up every morning, make your coffee, sit down in your recliner, open up your Bible or devotional book, and begin reading—that’s liturgy.

If you go to a University of Alabama football game and hear the announcer yell, “First down, Alabama!” and hear everyone yell out in syncopated rhythms, “Roll Tide!”—that’s liturgy.

Liturgy is the regularity which shapes our gatherings.

You can see how this might get rote for someone if they don’t understand the purpose of the liturgy or “go through the motions” when they participate in the liturgy. It’s why many people switch churches or denominations and find that for years, even decades, they were just a passive observer in worship despite saying the “right words at the right times.” (Yet I’ve never heard someone say, “I stopped going to Alabama games. Every time they do the same things over and over. Can’t we just switch up the fight song every once and awhile?” But that’s another blog post for another time…”

Over the years, I have found liturgy to be deeply meaningful to me and to profoundly shape my worship practices. But this Lent, I found liturgy to be particularly meaningful to me in a way I’d like to share with you.

Every day, I listen to the wonderful Catholic podcast Pray as You Go. The podcasts ends with the same prayer every day—a liturgy—that only changes when we are in a new season of the church year.

During the season of Lent, the podcast has ended with this prayer from Ignatius of Loyola:

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.

Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.

Beautiful, isn’t it?

This Lent, I began praying that prayer out loud with the podcast hosts, allowing the words to seek deeply into my mind. But you know what I realized after a few weeks? They started sinking deep into my soul too.

During this season of Lent, I’ve had two situations come up in which I’ve felt totally helpless. Like, completely-and-totally-out-of-my-control kind of helpless. And in those moments, I tend to want to grab at anything and everything that can be in my control.

But this year, when I was praying to God about one of these scenarios, the following words just fell out of my mouth:

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.

I didn’t necessarily mean to say those words, though I meant them very deeply. They just kind of came out.

And while I dealt with that difficult situation, that became my prayer: Any semblance of control I thought I had in this situation, I give to you, God. Everything is Yours. Do with it what You will. If You will only give me your love and your grace, that will be enough for me. I have desires for how this situation turns out, but even if it turns out the complete opposite, Your love and Your grace will be enough for me.

Liturgy is not just a prayer we pray, but a prayer that shapes our prayer life.

Weeks later, when another completely-and-totally-out-of-my-control kind of helpless situation fell into my lap, I found that prayer unintentionally close to my lips again:

You have given all to me.
To you, Lord, I return it.
Everything is yours; do with it what you will.
Give me only your love and your grace,
that is enough for me.

This is the power of liturgy. When life hits us hard and we don’t know what to pray, or even how to pray, we fall back on the liturgy that has seeped into our souls.

Unfortunately, sometimes the liturgy that has seeped into our souls is the complaints of a Fox News or CNN host. Sometimes the liturgy that has seeped into our souls is abusive curse words from a spouse, parent, or grandparent. Sometimes the liturgy in our souls is the silence of an absent loved one.

But the liturgy in our souls can also be the words of Scripture or the prayers of the saints. So enter into liturgy. Let it seep into your soul. Let it shape you so that when life begins to squeeze you, these words of faith, hope, and love are what trickle out of you.

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