NEW RELEASE — Prayer by Number: Recovering the Forgotten Discipline of the Lord’s Prayer
Regulations for Knights and Priests
Beloved in Christ,
Over the past weeks we’ve been releasing a connected series on one of Christianity’s most forgotten disciplines: repeated and counted prayer.
Modern believers often hear phrases like “say five Our Fathers” without realizing that this comes from a much older apostolic and monastic system—where prayer was counted, embodied, and offered as full liturgical substitution.
We’ve now published the second major article in this restoration:
👉 The Lord’s Prayer by Number: Paternosters, Cross-Vigils, and the Forgotten Discipline of Embodied Prayer
https://celticorthodoxy.com/2026/02/lords-prayer-by-number/
This new piece documents:
• How Culdee monks replaced missed Mass with 150 Paternosters, Knights did 13
• How Cross-Vigil prayer formed spiritual “armor”
• How Knights Templar were bound to daily numbered Lord’s Prayers
• How repetition was practiced bodily—in cruciform posture
• How prayer ropes and beads emerged from this discipline
• How Christ Himself prayed repeatedly in Gethsemane
• How Desert Fathers like John Cassian preserved continual prayer through repeated verses
If you missed the earlier theological foundation, we recommend beginning here:
👉 The Persistence of Prayer: Repetition as Faith, Not Vanity
https://celticorthodoxy.com/2025/10/persistence-theology-repetition-prayer/
Together, these articles recover something essential:
Prayer is not only spoken.
Prayer is practiced.
Prayer is counted.
Prayer forms the body.
Prayer trains the soul.
This is not medieval invention—it is apostolic Christianity lived fully.
May this restoration bless your walk, deepen your devotion, and strengthen your daily prayer life.
In Christ,
Rev Dr Stephen M. K. Brunswick
Primace at St Andrew’s OCC
Orthodox Church of the Culdees
https://St-AndrewsOCC.org