Meditations on the Angelus (I)

For Lent, I have undertaken a number of practices -- where "have undertaken" means what it always does for me: to promise and yet fail to fully deliver (God's mercy be praised). I am taking up a daily prayer called The Angelus, which is to occur at 6 AM, Noon, and 6 PM (or, stumbling out of bed at 6:15, it happens around 10 when I remember, and so on).

I was raised a protestant. Actually, I was raised nothing. I did not regularly go to church until I was almost ten. But when I did start going to church, it was a protestant church. It was Methodist, at a time and place where there was still some old time religion present there. It was very austere: no images in our sanctuary. There was one picture of ginger Jesus, and of that ubiquitous drawing of praying hands in the fellowship hall and the singing room to the side. And that was it. 

​There was also no mention of (let alone prayers to) the saints. Hail Mary was something that I would only have associated with football, which interested me less even than veneration. The Angelus involves saying three 'Hail Mary' prayers, and after a few days of this, the oddness of it struck me. I feel as though I need to confess to my protestant family and friends the things that I am thinking about.  I want to meditate on this practice that seems so strange to me even as I go about it. 

Meditation is the way I want to approach it. As fond as I am of putting all of my reasons in a logical order, step by step, all together, this is not how I came to my own view. It is thus quite strange that I so often treat others this way and expect them to respond.  Mea culpa.

Here, then is my first meditation. I thought I would get further today, but I suppose not. It is the act of meditation itself. I have a number of (leading) questions, comprising what I regard as an eventual argument. But rather than step through them all at once, I will approach it piecemeal. For the next few entries I will meditate on one question. The questions are complex and have many sub-questions, which will be quite enough to occupy me each day. One question at a time, day by day.​