Why do you read prayers?

Q. I love the reverence of the service, but prayer that isn’t extemporaneous seems stale and contrived.  Isn’t it better to just pray from the heart rather than read prayers?

A.  Much like the songs that we sing are not our own words, but rather are “set” words which were written by someone else which we then take up in song as our own, so too the prayers themselves are “set” in a similar way. I do not think that this constrains our ability to pray meaningfully and truly any more than singing words given to us by someone else keeps us from truly and meaningfully singing.

The liturgy is meant to be learned.  By this I mean two things:

1. On the one hand, the liturgy is not immediately understandable in all its significance when first we encounter it.  We will have to take the time to learn what it means for the priest to ask God to “. . . cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy Name; through Christ our Lord” (that is an excerpt taken from The Collect for Purity, the first collect in the service of Holy Communion).   We must learn what is being asked, why it is being asked, why it is being asked at this point in the service, why it is being asked for us by the priest rather than corporately by each person in unison, etc.  In other words we will have to study the liturgy, becoming its student and allowing ourselves to be shaped by its theology.
2. The other thing that I mean by the phrase “the liturgy must be learned” is that it needs to be memorized.  In this sense, “learned” takes on the connotation of making the liturgy your own.  Just as you are better able to sing and appreciate a song when you already know the words, one is better able to pray the liturgy (rather than simply read it) when it has been internalized.  Does memorizing the liturgy seem a daunting task?  There is no need to be intimidated, for I think that you will find that you will memorize the liturgy without even knowing it, as we say it together week after week.  (This, incidentally, is another reason why it is good for the liturgy to be consistently the same, rather than changing week to week).