Examining a little blue book

MICHELE MARR

“Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another,

that you may be healed.”

-- JAMES 5:16

This year, unlike so many years, Eastern Orthodox Christians (who

calculate the date of Easter based on the Gregorian calendar) and

Western Christians (who calculate the date of Easter based on the

Julian calendar) will celebrate Easter on the same Sunday, which

means they will also, for the most part, observe the season of Lent

at the same time.

Orthodox Christendom began its Great Lent on Feb. 23, two days

before Western Christendom, which began Lent on Ash Wednesday, Feb.

25. Both observe this penitential season (40 days in Western

churches, which don’t include Sundays in this period of fasting and

repentance, 50 days in Orthodox churches) in much the same way.

To make this spiritual pilgrimage to Easter, Christians throughout

the world pray, fast, examine their consciences and practice charity.

When I first began to take part in these disciplines of Lent, I

believed the occasional person who told me, “Oh, it’s no sweat,” and

I’d feel like a spiritual wimp.

But over the years, I discovered those people were -- I’ll say

fibbing. And if they weren’t, then they needed to be raising the bar.

I’ve always found fasting tough. If I eat fewer than three meals a

day, I long for the meals I eat to be feasts. Abstaining from foods

like dairy products makes me dream about skies that rain milk and a

Midas who turns everything he touches to cheese. No amount of

practice seems to make it all that much easier. I’ve spent my adult

life silently chanting, “Eat to live, not live to eat.”

Still, while fasting is easier said than done for me, it’s still

easier than taking stock in my spiritual health. The flaws of others

may seem to glow in the dark; mine linger well disguised.

When I first took a stab at this thing called self-examination,

amassing my shortcomings and wrongdoings was about as easy as picking

up spilled mercury. So I asked my then-pastor for some tips.

In addition to the Ten Commandments, he recommended a little blue

book, “Saint Augustine’s Prayer Book,” to help me get a clue. The

book is not written, as its title suggests, by St. Augustine. It’s a

compilation of prayers, devotions, liturgies and litanies edited by

the Rev. Loren Gavitt and first published as a book of devotion for

members of the Episcopal Church in 1947.

The 17th edition, which is the current edition, was produced in

1967 by Holy Cross Publications, which still publishes it.

In the 370-page, 3 1/2-by 5 1/2-inch royal blue book, sandwiched

between prayers and litanies, is a section that tackles

self-examination under the bright lights of the seven deadly sins:

pride, anger, envy, covetousness, gluttony, lust and sloth.

The book explicates each sin in detail; it doesn’t miss a lick.

Each time I pick it up I’m startled by how well it sets down the

darker side of human nature. Any temptation I have to pass myself off

as sinless, or hardly so, dissolves.

Pride includes irreverence, which includes such negligence as

“failure to thank God or to express our gratitude adequately.” Within

pride resides disobedience, which includes the “unnecessary

disappointment of another” and “failure, when in authority ... to

consider the best interests of those under us.” And pride holds still

seven more subsets of sin: sentimentality, presumption, distrust,

impenitence, vanity, arrogance and snobbery.

Anger encompasses resentment, pugnacity (in part, the nursing of

grudges, nagging, rudeness and snubbing) and retaliation, which,

among other things, includes an “unwillingness to love, to do good

to, or pray for our enemies.”

Envy follows anger, along with its cousins: jealousy, malice and

contempt. Inordinate ambition, domination, avarice, prodigality and

penuriousness (stinginess, selfish insistence on vested interests or

on claimed rights) all come with covetousness. With gluttony comes

intemperance and lack of discipline.

Sloth dwells with laziness and indifference, lust with a lack of

chastity, immodesty, prudery and cruelty.

They are a testament to all things -- evil done, good neglected --

that make the world so mean. Yet, when we dare to see them in

ourselves, we stand before the threshold of transformation and hope.

Note: “Saint Augustine’s Prayer Book” is not readily available in

retail bookstores. If you would like a copy for yourself, let me know

and I can tell you how you can order one.

* MICHELE MARR is a freelance writer from Huntington Beach. She

can be reached at [email protected].