Faith | Cats | Hope | Grace

The first Book of Common Prayer was written in 1549 by Thomas Cranmer, then Archbishop of Canterbury. The prayer book was intended to provide a common worship across parishes in England as well as provide a way for the faithful to “hear, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest” scripture.

Daily prayer has a foundation in early Jewish practice of praying at appointed times of the day. In later Christian history, those in religious orders prayed the Liturgy of the Hours—matins, lauds, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, and compline. With the Daily Office, Cranmer sought to make the offices accessible to everyday people and reduced the number of offices included in the prayer book to two—morning and evening prayer. Through the Daily Office, the prayer book was intended to allow scripture to shape people’s lives as well as order their day around daily worship. Using the Daily Office, people can read through the entire Bible in the course of two years. The readings appointed for the day for the Daily Office are based on the lectionary in the back of the Book of Common Prayer and is based on a two-year schedule. Also included is the Eucharistic lectionary for readings on Sundays and feast days which is on a three-year cycle. More recently, churches including St. Peter’s have been using the Revised Common Lectionary. This lectionary is shared by Episcopalians, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, and others. The shared use of this lectionary allows the Christian family across denominations and across the country and the world to pray together around the same readings. (Have you ever noticed the bulletin board in front of Mt. Carmel across from the Belmont building? It gives a great heads up of the coming readings.)

So where do you start if you want to introduce a daily prayer practice to your life? As Thomas Cranmer intended, you can start with the Daily Office. If you have a BCP, morning prayer starts on page 37 for Rite I and page 75 for Rite II. Evening Prayer starts on page 61 for Rite I and page 115 for Rite II. As I mentioned, the lectionary is in the back of the prayer book to tell you what the appointed readings are for the day (We are currently in Year 2). If you’d rather have everything in a single book, the Daily Office is available for purchase as a two-volume set. You can just go to the current day and make your way through the readings, psalms, and prayers. But you can also get the prayer book online and even listen to the Daily Office as a recording. The web site Mission St. Clare offers both the text and audio of the Daily Office.

Morning or Evening Prayer typically takes about 20-30 minutes. And let’s be honest, sometimes it can feel difficult to find this much time or starting with the Daily Office can just feel daunting for other reasons. There are shorter, less formal, prayer services included in the prayer book. For example, there are the Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families that start on page 136. Like the Daily Office, the daily devotions are divided in morning and evening. There is also a service for Noonday and Compline. Compline, one of the services added in the 1979 prayer book, is a particularly beautiful way to close the day.

Whatever works best for you, the Book of Common Prayer can provide a number of ways to pray outside of Sunday worship.

Resources

Book of Common Prayer (print, available in English and Spanish): https://www.churchpublishing.org/categories?n=15

Book of Common Prayer (online): https://bcponline.org/

Lectionary (Eucharistic and Daily Office: http://www.satucket.com/lectionary/index.htm

Mission St. Clare (text and audio of Daily Office in English and Spanish): https://www.missionstclare.com/english/

Daily Office app (Apple): https://apps.apple.com/us/app/mission-st-clare/id445186741

Daily Office (Android): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.missionstclare