Wrestling with God
The first Sunday in Lent, Invocabit, offers an overview of the season aimed at preparing everyone for a truly Christian life. The second Sunday, then, begins to show us the details of how this life is lived out, specifically through prayer. Reminiscere, as it’s known, presents us with prayer all the way from Israel striving with God to the woman who also would not let him go.
Very clearly, then, the focus of Reminiscere is prayer, and its name comes from the introit, in which we join Jacob and the Canaanite woman to petition God, saying: remember! “Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love.” The prayer continues and focuses further in the collect, as we pray for defense from all adversities that may befall the body and from all evil thoughts that may assault and hurt the soul.
Prayer is one of the three disciplines especially associated with Lent along with fasting and almsgiving, and indeed they all go together. Fasting and giving alms are two ways that shift one’s focus away from the desires of the flesh to the things of God which, through prayer, we pray are transformed for the benefit of our neighbors.
Remeniscere, then, is a reminder to prayer as well as to recall and confidently hold God to his promises. And it is a reminder that prayer in itself is no use unless we pray to God himself who holds all things in his hands and has the power to save.
Brief History
The Lenten season in general is traced back to the earliest centuries after Jesus’ Ascension, with the Council of Nicaea mentioning the 40-day fast as early as the fourth century. It appears that the historical propers and the 40-day length were set by the time of Gregory the Great in the sixth century and were preserved by the Church of the Reformation, which has handed it down to the churches today that preserve the historic lectionary.
Collect
O God, who seest that of ourselves we have no strength: keep us both outwardly and inwardly, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to body and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost: ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Lessons
Resources
Issues, Etc. interview with the Rev. David Petersen on Reminiscere
Propers found in Daily Divine Service Book: A Lutheran Daily Missal, edited by the Rev. Heath Curtis
References:
1. Lindemann, the Rev. Fred H. The Sermon and The Propers, Volume II: Pre-Lent to Pentecost. Concordia Publishing House. 1958.
Images:
1. The Canaanite (or Syrophoenician) woman asks Christ to cure, Pietro del Po, Italy, c. 1650.
2. The Woman of Canaan, Michael Angelo Immenraet, Belgium, 17th century.
