Dear people of Grace,

I made a couple of references in my sermon last week to Morning Prayer and the Daily Office. So, what exactly is this Daily Office?

Although the observation of the Lord’s Day and weekly celebration of Holy Eucharist is the central act of our communal life as Christians, the official daily prayer of Anglicans is established in the Daily Office.  Praying together multiple times per day is not anything new. The very first Christians continued Jewish practices of praying at set times of the day, but by the Middle Ages these prayers, known as the Liturgy of The Hours or the Divine Office, had become the exclusive duty of the clergy and monastics. During the English Reformation, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer reduced the eight monastic offices to two: Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer. By printing the Daily Office in English, Cranmer returned the rhythm of daily prayer to the laity.

Morning Prayer (BCP, p. 37/75) and Evening Prayer (BCP, p. 61/115) have remained at the heart of daily prayer for the Anglican Church throughout the world. Our current Book of Common Prayer in the Episcopal Church also includes a form for Noonday Prayer (BCP, p. 103), as well as Compline – traditionally the last monastic office of the day, said before going to bed (BCP, p.127). There are even short one-page “Daily Devotionals for Individuals and Families” (BCP, p.137). With this emphasis on daily prayer in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, we can see how seriously the Church takes this act of daily communal prayer.

Theologically, the habit of Anglican Christians to pray the same liturgy, around the same time, across the many time zones of the world, in both northern and southern hemispheres, is like the “perpetual fire burning on the altar, it shall never go out.” (Lev 6.13). It is a unifying prayer of the catholic Church.

Perhaps the greatest individual benefit, aside from the obvious value of spiritual discipline, is that we get exposed to an awful lot of scripture! If we pray the Daily Office morning and evening, we read the complete psalter every seven weeks, and virtually the whole bible in two years.

I pray Morning Prayer in the chapel at Grace every morning, Monday through Thursday, at 9am. Please consider joining me for this beautiful Episcopal liturgy.

 Blessings and Peace,
Deacon Nick