On Our Knees: Thoughts on Masonic Prayer

Kenneth Fuller, Junior Grand Steward

Masonry teaches prayer by exemplifying a very sophisticated form of spirituality. While we, as Masons, rightly defer the title of religion to more appropriate faith bodies, we are, nonetheless, practitioners of a form of spirituality in which prayer is the decisive discipline. In this we can be compared to certain 12 step groups, which have a spiritual basis, yet which do not seek to be substitutes for any faith community. Masons pray. We pray as we open our meetings and in their closing. We give thanks for our food. We commend our departed brethren in their passing. We teach that every human being should invoke the blessing of deity upon every laudable undertaking. We are called to remember each other’s welfare as our own when at our devotions.

In the Master Mason Degree we have several distinct prayer forms, all of which are essential to any disciplined spiritual life in nearly every faith community. The Master prays a carefully crafted prayer after the candidates enter. This prayer hints at levels of meaning that cannot be known in the degree itself. This is always true of prayer and a life in the spirit. What we do on this earthly mosaic can never be fully known until we see our creator face to face.

Later there is a moment of unscripted spontaneous prayer. The one who prays knows not what or how to pray, for he has no idea of what will follow. Yet pray he must. And that isolated prayer is upheld by the silent prayers of those who stand, unseen, circling the brother who prays with brotherly love and affection. At the culmination of the degree two prayers are spoken. The first is a lament, by the craft as a chorus of despair and grief. Then King Solomon kneels and prays a prayer of selected verses from the Holy Scriptures and, in a Psalm-like cadence, reveals a hope subtly, yet barely, acknowledged throughout the degree. Indeed, to be a Mason one must pray. Silent assent is not enough. We must pray if we are to put our trust in God. We maintain that Freemasonry is not a religion, and it is not. It does and must have its proper form of spirituality. For, to trust in God is to trust in the unseen power of the world of the Spirit. As Masons we need not agree on the fine points of theology, nor even which Holy book is most sacred. We certainly do not seek any definition of God beyond that of a loving Father and that of a wise and creative architect of this space-time checkerboard. But we can and do pray together. We pray scriptural prayers and prayers written specifically for our work. We pray silently and in unison. We are led in prayer at times by the Master and at other times by the Chaplain. We pray for ourselves and as we do we pray for our brothers’ welfare. And when not in Lodge, we pray in our own religious communities, in our homes and in the deepest places within our hearts.

And for the true Mason prayer always precedes action: actions of brotherhood, citizenship, and widespread and unbounded charity, always in the spirit of building up our earthly temples for a glad Celestial reward. ■