Late Medieval Thoughts on the Office: Purpose

I always like to get a little perspective on questions of liturgy from different periods by looking at vernacular catechetical sources. That is, rather than looking at the conversations that clergy and the learned were having—because they were operating with shared assumptions—take a look at what they were teaching to the unlearned and hopefully were revealing just what those assumptions were!

So—here are two late medieval English vernacular texts that explain the purpose of the Office. The first is from the Myroure of Oure Ladye, the second is from the Henrican Rationale of Ceremonial from the early 1540’s.

The Myroure

Chapter 1: how and why God’s service is said each day in seven hours.

Sepcies in die Laudem dixi tibi. These are the words of the prophet David saying thus to our Lord: “Seven times in the day I have said praises to you.”

All reasonable creatures were made to know, to love, and to praise God and therein to have their endless joy. While our souls are imprisoned in these deadly bodies, we cannot – due to corruption and heaviness of these same bodies – continually accomplish that godly praising as they do who by death are made free from thralldom to the flesh and have come to the end of their joy, that is, the presence of God. Therefore our mother holy church ruled by the Holy Ghost, knowing the frailty and feebleness of her children, has set us every day seven hours. At least in these we ought to be occupied in the service and praise of God that is to say: matins, prime, terce, sext, none, evensong, and compline.

What Solomon says is true, that a righteous man falls seven times a day, and the number of all wickedness is named under seven deadly sins against which the holy church has ordained seven sacraments and is given seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. Therefore, to get remission of our sins, and to thank God for his gifts, we say praises to him in the said hours, seven times each day. Since God made all things in six days and fulfilled them in the seventh day and rested, therefore doing thanks to God for all his works and for all that he made, each day we praise him seven times. Also because the life of man is divided into seven ages where we have spent our time idly or evilly therefore we thank God for our life and seek recompense for such negligence; seven times a day we do service to God. All of this life passes under seven days where the people of this world who are given to active life are occupied in getting their livelihood – and ours – so that they may not freely attend each day in all these times to praise God with their tongues. Therefore we who are called to contemplative life ought to praise God for them – and for us – every day seven times that we may say to our Lord with David, “Lord God, I praised you seven times in the day.”

Chapter 2: why these seven hours rather than others.

But now, you might ask why these seven hours – that is to say, matins time, prime time, and so forth – are assigned by the holy church for the praise of God rather than other hours since there are so many more hours in the day and in the night than seven. To this I answer that these hours are more specially privileged than others because of the great works that God has wrought therein for which he is everlastingly to be praised. Therefore we read that Saints both in the old law and in the new praised God in these hours. For David the prophet says to God this concerning himself: Media nocte surgebam ad confitendum tibi, that is, “Lord, at midnight I rose to praise you.” He also says this: Vespere, et manet meridie narrabo et annunciabo. That is, “At morning, at prime time, at noon, and at evening time, I shall tell and show your praises.” Also Daniel the prophet worships God three times in the day kneeling, according to the exposition of St. Jerome, at terce, sext, and none. Also Peter and John went up into the temple to pray at the hour of none, as it is written in the Acts of the Apostles. St. Paul and Silas, being in prison, prayed to God at midnight, and then the earth quaked and all the prison doors opened and all the fetters and bonds of the prisoners were loosed. Our Lord Jesus Christ also prayed, not only in one part of the night, but all the night he remained awake in prayer as the gospel tells. At the beginning of the holy church, the clergy and the common people – both men and women – rose to praise God four times in the night. First, at the beginning of the night when people are accustomed to go to bed. Second, at midnight. The third, a little before daybreak, and the fourth time at the morning. At evening, our Lord was taken by the Jews, bound and scorned. At midnight he was born. Before day he despoiled hell, and in the morning he rose from death to life. Therefore on some feasts matins are yet said at evening, and in some orders at midnight, and in some before day, and in others, at various times of the night. In some churches they say matins in the morning time.

At prime time, our Lord Jesus Christ was led to Pilate and accused. In the same hour after his resurrection, he appeared to Mary Magdalene, and another day he appeared to his disciples as they were fishing at the same hour. At the hour of terce, our Lord Jesus Christ was scourged, crowned with thorns, and scorned. The same hour, after his resurrection he appeared to the women coming from the sepulcher. On Pentecost Sunday at the same hour he sent the Holy Ghost down upon the apostles. At sext, our Lord Jesus Christ was nailed on the cross, and fed with vinegar and gall. At the same hour after his resurrection, he appeared to the apostle St. James, and on Ascension Day at the same hour he sat and ate with his apostles. At the hour of none, our Lord Jesus Christ cried and he gave up his soul to death. At the same hour, a knight opened our Lord’s side with a spear and smote through his heart from which came water for our baptism and blood for our redemption. On Easter day, he appeared at the same hour to St. Peter. At evening time, our Lord Jesus Christ on Shere [Maundy] Thursday ate with his apostles and ordained the holy sacrament of his holy body and blood. At the same hour on Good Friday, he was taken down from the cross. On Easter day at the same hour, he met with two of his disciples going toward Emmaus, and made himself known to them in the breaking of bread. At compline time, our Lord Jesus Christ on Shere Thursday at evening prayed and sweat blood. At the same hour on Good Friday, he was buried. On Easter day at the same hour, he appeared to his disciples gathered together in a closed place for fear of the Jews, and said to them, “Peace be with you.” Thus you may see that not without great cause are these hours set and ordained to be specially occupied in the serving and praising of our Lord God rather than other hours of the day.

The Rationale

The service used in the Church daily in some places or upon the Sundays and other feasts in all places, that is to say to have matins, prime, hours, evensong, and compline, whereof the most part is of Scripture, as the Psalms, and many times the legends (certain things added by man well reformed) are very godly and expedient both for that the ministers prayeth and giveth and thanks to God for themselves and for the people, and also that by the example of their prayers, they move and excite the people to pray with them. And therefore, for the adorning of the same service, surplices, copes and other vestures and ceremonies in the doing thereof are very laudable and comely.

The sober, discreet and devout singing, music and playing with organs used in the church, for the service of God are ordained to move and stir the people to the sweetness of God’s word the which is there sung [and not understanded (contained but struck out in one of the two manuscripts…)], and by that sweet harmony both to excite them to prayers and devotion and also to put them in remembrance, of the heavenly triumphant church, where is everlasting joy with continual laud and praise to God.

Some Thoughts…

Coming to these texts with the classic distinctions between “monastic” and “cathedral” ringing in my ears, I’m struck at how “cathedral” these descriptions appear—particularly the second. The emphasis on prayer/praise and on the the visual aspect of the ceremonies figure quite large in the standard definitions.

Note the comments in both that the singing of the hours is a means of joining the chorus of the Church Triumphant. Not just joining an angelic chorus, but particularly the saintly dead.

The offices are seen as edifying, but—particularly in the second—edifying by means of their example rather than their content. Seeing and hearing the song of the Offices should put the people in mind to pray themselves and join the saintly chorus. Of course, at this point, the services remained in Latin as Henry retained the Sarum Rite even after his separation from Rome.

“Cathedral” Conundrums

My writing has hit a snag…

I was on a pretty good roll, then page proofs for the St Augustine’s Prayer Book took me away, then focus on some web projects, and with both school and ballet starting up again for the girls the household’s been crazy, and now I’m trying to get my head back into it.

The real problem, though, is that I’m trying to make sense of the distinction between “cathedral” and “monastic” prayer in the Daily Office in a way that’s clear, accessible, and transparent. At the end of the day, the spirituality of the Daily Office goes in one of two major directions based on whether you take a “cathedral” or a “monastic” approach to it. I think I’ll be doing the Office a disservice if I don’t tease that out. On the other hand, so much of the scholarly literature that attempts to define these terms and isolate their characteristics is not terrible clear especially since—at the end of the day—“cathedral” and “monastic” are extracted ideals that don’t actually fit terribly well onto the historical practice. To complicate matters, there is considerable prejudice for the “cathedral” style and against the “monastic” style in the writings of the Liturgical Renewal Movement. To try and put the problem in a nutshell, it’s this: they see “cathedral” prayer as the communal prayer of the whole church and “monastic” prayer as the individualistic prayer of a spiritual elite. In keeping with the LRM’s central focus on worship as the activity of the whole people of God, you can see why they privilege the first over the second!

In line with LRM norms, the framers of the ’79 BCP tried to introduce quite a bit more “cathedral” elements into what they saw as Cranmer’s “monastic” re-write of the Offices. It’s not until I started digging into this particular angle of this aspect of the problem that I realized exactly what had been done to the Office in the ’79 book. The pieces are falling into place. The Anglican Office really is “monastic” at heart. But the current prayer book attempts to fundamentally imbue it with a “cathedral” character, and understanding how, why, and what that means and communicating it in a coherent and non-technical way is not easy…

This project as a whole is making me realize two big things. First, I’m coming to consciously see myself as participating in the first generation of a post-LRM critique. As I’ve said before, the LRM did many wonderful things, the Church is richer for its work—but it operated out of a number of fundamental assumptions that have to be re-explored. Second, there’s something about being a layman with an interest in lay devotion that gives me a different angle on a field that’s been principally written about and dominated by priests. I’m questioning some of the standard sine qua nons of liturgical scholarship as reflecting a clerical bias… More on this later—time to get the girls up and get the day rolling!

iOS Users: Breviary Update 2.0

Page proofs for the Saint Augustine’s Prayer Book are finally done and off to the publisher. SCLM work is taking up some time as well, but I stole the morning to work on the breviary preference problem and I *believe* I have it solved. So—users of iOS devices (and other devices), give this a try: http://stbedeproductions.com/breviary/test/combined_preferences.php

Once you save your preferences (and a pop-up should show you a long string of numbers), a “Pray with your new preferences” link will show up under the button and should take you to a functional breviary experience. So far, it works in my desktop Chrome browser, on the Kindle Fire, but my Android phone’s browser doesn’t like it and inserts a string of “undefined”s where they shouldn’t be. (That’ll be the next hurdle.)

Give it a shot—let me know what happens in the comments!

St Augustine’s Prayer Book Update

One of the reasons posting is light at the moment is because I’m finally reading through page proofs from the revised edition of the Saint Augustine’s Prayer Book! We’re hoping to have the proofing all finished by the end of the month, and printing to follow shortly from the good folks at Forward Movement!!

Breviary Update 1.5

Thanks to those of you who tried your iOS devices (and Windows 8 devices) against my attempted solution. Needless to say, it failed the test… Interestingly, while the solution worked on my Kindle Fire, I likewise failed to get a satisfactory result on my Android phone.

I’m looking into some of the newer browser capabilities/technologies that came along with the HTML5 standard and, after reading and playing a little with the cache capability, I’ve discovered that what I’m looking for is actually the local storage function. Again, it’s a fairly new technology and I don’t know how widely it’s implemented. However, I think there’s a good chance that most mobile devices should be able to handle it.

I was trying to figure out how to make it work with my code and came to the realization that I’m using a lot of server-side code to create client-side implementations. Not the best way to go… As a result, I need to retool several functions and transform them from (server-side) PHP into (client-side) JavaScript. Luckily, the syntax between the two is similar enough that this shouldn’t be too difficult.

So—I’ll have another test for you modern mobile users in a little bit, that (hopefully) will be more successful than the last!

[Update: Actually, before I recode everything, let’s see if this will do what I hope it will… iOS/mobile users, please try the “Save your Preferences” button at the bottom of this page: http://stbedeproductions.com/breviary/test/combined_preferences.php

There should be a pop-up mentioning local storage and perhaps a string with gibberish in it. I’ll fix the gibberish if this is actually going to work… Thanks again!]

CWOB News: Ecumenical Edition

Communion without Baptism is in the news again, but not from the Episcopal Church this time. Rather, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, an ecumenical partner (and the church in which I was raised), is in the midst of its Churchwide Assembly—analogous to the Episcopal Church’s General Convention.

I haven’t followed Lutheran church politics for years and so I’m a little sketchy on the exact polity details here—I’m going to describe things as best I can from the outside with the hope that those who actually do know what they’re talking about will correct me when I err…

Unlike our system, they vote on “memorials” rather than “resolutions.” Like our resolutions, they are often bubbled up from local groupings (synods rather than dioceses). One of the memorials on tap this meeting comes from the Northern Illinois Synod. I’ll now cite from the Memorials Committee Report [pdf] of the pre-Assembly materials:

Category D1: Communion Practices

1. Northern Illinois Synod (5B) [2012 Memorial]
WHEREAS, The Use of the Means of Grace (1997), the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s (ELCA) guiding document on the “Practice of Word and Sacrament,” clearly states that “The Holy Communion is given to the baptized” (Principle 37, pp. 41–42); and
WHEREAS, since the publication of that document the ELCA has entered into full-communion partnerships with church bodies that do not share that same understanding; and
WHEREAS, the implementing resolutions of our full-communion agreements encourage us to extend sacramental hospitality to one another’s members; and
WHEREAS, some congregations of the ELCA currently have Communion policy statements which would effectively bar members of church bodies with which we are in full communion from participation in the Sacrament; and
WHEREAS, some ELCA congregations welcome everyone present to partake of the Eucharist without stipulating the need for Baptism; and
WHEREAS, clarification concerning Lutheran Sacramental theology and practice would be helpful in the life of this church at this time; therefore, be it
RESOLVED, that the Northern Illinois Synod memorialize the 2013 Churchwide Assembly to institute a process necessary to review and possibly revise the ELCA’s guiding documents concerning admission to the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

Background

The current guiding recommendations for the practice of Holy Communion are found in The Use of the Means of Grace: A Statement on the Practice of Word and Sacrament which was adopted by the 1997 Churchwide Assembly.
Principle 37 of that document states,

The Holy Communion is given to the baptized

Principle

Admission to the Sacrament is by invitation of the Lord, presented through the Church to those who are baptized.

Application 37G.

When an unbaptized person comes to the table seeking Christ’s presence and is inadvertently communed, neither that person nor the ministers of Communion need be ashamed. Rather, Christ’s gift of love and mercy to all is praised. That person is invited to learn the faith of the Church, be baptized, and thereafter faithfully receive Holy Communion.

In regards to the ELCA’s ecumenical relationships, the document also says this in Application A of Principle 49…

In the exercise of this [Eucharistic] hospitality, it is wise for our congregations to be sensitive to the Eucharistic practices of the churches from which visitors may come. (UMG, p. 52)

This guiding principle remains the recommended practice of this church. However, there is diversity in practice regarding who is welcome to the table among the worshiping communities of this church. Below are two examples of welcome statements in worship folders:

“We believe and teach the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, and we invite all who are baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to commune with us.”

“At meal-tables around the world, strangers become friends, and friends become family. In Holy Communion, we are invited to the Table of the Lord. No conditions, no coercion, just words of welcome and promise: “this is my body, given for you.” We are glad to have you worship with us! All visitors are welcome to share in the Lord’s Supper.

These statements represent the varying practice of Eucharistic hospitality in this church. It is important to recognize the desire to welcome people to the Lord’s Supper. This has been attributed as a response to the growing number of unbaptized people present at worship. The current religious context in which the church finds itself is increasingly
diverse, and local worshiping communities are met with numerous challenges to the practice of mission and ministry.

At the same time, this church recognizes that the celebration of Holy Communion occurs in the assembly of the baptized people of God. The importance of the clear connections between baptism and communion also needs to be recognized.

Staff in the churchwide worship team receive a number of inquiries on whether Holy Communion should be presented to only the baptized. Some are in favor of this, some are not in favor, and a good number simply ask, “What should we do?”

In the fall of 2012, the worship team gathered the professors of worship from the ELCA seminaries for a conversation about this issue. A similar conversation took place at a meeting of the Lutheran Caucus at the North American Academy of Liturgy in January 2013. In both of these conversations it was clear that more needs to be said than what exists in current ELCA documents. Regardless of the decision, it remains evident that this church would do well to have more resources on the relationship between Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.

Ultimately, decisions about communion practices are local decisions, and there is a need for a resource or resources to help congregations faithfully discern their communion practices.

Recommendation for Assembly Action

To receive with gratitude the memorial of the Northern Illinois Synod requesting a process to review the ELCA’s guiding documents on communion practices;

To invite members, congregations, synods and the churchwide organization into conversation and study regarding the Use of the Means of Grace;

To request the Congregational and Synodical Mission unit, in consultation with the Office of the Presiding Bishop and the Conference of Bishops, to establish a process to review current documents concerning administration of the Sacrament of Holy Communion; and

To request the Congregational and Synodical Mission unit to bring a report and possible recommendations to the April 2014 meeting of the ELCA Church Council.

So—this looks very much like the situation that the Episcopal Church was in at the last General Convention. We had Resolution C029 coming from the Diocese of North Carolina recommending a study but without the implied request for change that this memorial seems to bear. I covered this back at Convention-time; the result for us was that the wording of the resolution was substantially changed, the study was nixed and the canons were left unchanged.

However, based on Twitter chatter and the Assembly News, it would seem that this resolution passed, giving the green light for the requested study:

The 952 voting members of the ELCA Churchwide Assembly approved a proposal designed to invite the 4-million-member church, its nearly 10,000 congregations, 65 synods and churchwide organization into conversation and study regarding the Use of the Means of Grace – a statement on the practice of Word and Sacrament. The assembly called on the Congregational and Synodical Mission Unit of ELCA churchwide ministries, in consultation with the ELCA Office of the Presiding Bishop and the Conference of Bishops, to establish a process to review current documents concerning administration of the Sacrament of Holy Communion. The assembly also requested that the unit provide a report and possible recommendations to the ELCA Church Council in April 2014.

What the Lutherans do is worth keeping a close eye on. We have a very close ecumenical relationship with them—the closest thing there is to merger without it actually being a merger. Ecumenical relationships are mentioned as one of the spurs for this proposed change, yet what will such a move do to our ecumenical relationship? What should it do?

The Services of the Daily Office

Writing continues… Here’s the next installment on the Daily Offices. At this point, I’m starting to head into the actual structure and the nuts & bolts of the Office. I start with an overview. The next part will pick up with an examination of the various elements in their respective offices.

—————————————–

The Anatomy of the Daily Office

The Services

When we consider the Daily Office—the regular prayer services of the Church and our official public services on all days of the year that aren’t Holy Days—we see that there are a number of items that fall under this heading. They are grouped together at the front of the prayer book:

Rite I (Traditional language)
- Daily Morning Prayer: Rite One (pp. 37-60)
- Daily Evening Prayer: Rite One (pp. 61-73)
Rite II (Contemporary language)
- Daily Morning Prayer: Rite Two (pp. 75-102)
- An Order of Service for Noonday (pp. 103-107)
  - Concerning the Service (p. 108)
- An Order of Worship for the Evening (pp. 109-114)
- Daily Evening Prayer: Rite Two (pp. 115-126)
- An Order for Compline (p. 127-135)
Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families
- In the Morning (p. 137)
- At Noon (p. 138)
- In the Early Evening (p. 139)
- At the Close of Day (p. 140)
Additional Directions
- [Directions]
  - Morning and Evening Prayer (pp. 141-142)
  - When there is a Communion (p. 142)
  - Order of Worship for the Evening (pp. 142-143)
- Suggested Canticles at Morning Prayer (p. 144)
- Suggested Canticles at Evening Prayer (p. 145)
- Psalm 95: Traditional (p. 146)

Let me make a few orienting observations here.

First, a distinction is drawn in the title of some services as “Daily” and others as “An Order…” Four services earn the “Daily”: Morning and Evening Prayer in Rites One and Two. (The brief devotions receive the term “Daily” as a class rather than individually.) This title reinforces their importance and their place in the Church’s understanding of the liturgical round. The others beginning with “An Order…” are recommended but do not have quite the same stamp of authority or necessity that the others do.

Second, you can’t actually pray either Morning or Evening Prayer with just the contents of this section! You need at least three other pieces to complete the service. They are:

The Collects for the Church Year
- Collects: Traditional
  - [Collects for Sundays of the Church Year] (pp. 159-185)
  - Holy Days (pp. 185-194)
  - The Common of Saints [for Days of Optional Observance] (pp. 195-199)
  - Various Occasions (pp. 199-210)
- Collects: Contemporary
  - [Collects for Sundays of the Church Year] (pp. 211-236)
  - Holy Days (pp. 237-246)
  - The Common of Saints [for Days of Optional Observance] (pp. 246-250)
  - Various Occasions (pp. 251-261)

The Psalter (pp. 581-808)

Daily Office Lectionary
- Concerning the Daily Office Lectionary (pp. 934-935)
- [The Lectionary] (pp. 936-995)
- Holy Days (pp. 996-1000)
- Special Occasions (pp. 1000-1001) [Different from the “Various Occasions” of the collects]

Third, instructions on how to do the services are scattered throughout the book. This can be confusing… The majority of what you need to know can be found in the service itself. However, directions on who should do the service are found in the brief “Concerning the Service” notice found just before it; some directions on possible points of confusion get short answers in the “Additional Directions” at the end of the section. Items specific to the Psalms and the Readings may be found in the notes prefacing the Psalter and the Daily Office Lectionary; clarifications on the Calendar are tucked away amongst the collects.

Fourth, the Rite II services and the Daily Devotions agree in dividing the day into four chief liturgical sections: Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night. The Patristic and Medieval Churches had their own counts for daily liturgical divisions (6 and 7+1 respectively); we have one as well. The fact that we have one at all hearkens back to the Patristic and Medieval models, but the fact that the count is less than both of the earlier models reflects our intention that these hours not be burdensome and ought to be practically possible for the regular working person—not just a monk or hermit.

When it comes to services that you might experience in churches, Morning and Evening Prayer are the big ones. In my years as an Episcopalian, I’ve seen Morning and Evening Prayer done in a number of ways in a number of places. However, as the official public services of the Church on non-Holy Days they’re not as common as you might expect. You’d think that cathedrals at the least would offer these daily: some do, but more don’t. I think that sends an unfortunate message, or rather, fails to communicate an important value that we claim to hold in common. Noonday prayer is less common than the big two. I’ve only experienced it in churches that have a special vocation to keeping the full liturgical round like St. Mary the Virgin, Times Square. It tends to be a small group or individual office. Compline too tends to be individual or small group due to its nature as a bed-time office. I’ve seen it done regularly and publicly, only in intentional liturgical communities like monasteries or seminaries. It’s not uncommon to use it to conclude evening church meetings or during multi-day retreats, though. Additionally, there seems to be a growing interest in the use of Compline as a choral experience: both St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle and Christ Church, New Haven, have famous Compline services that utilize the office to create a place of chant, candles, and beauty as a means of inviting a wide range of people—Christians, seekers, and non-Christians alike—to experience Christian liturgy as a place of holiness.

I don’t recall that I’ve ever seen an “Order of Worship for Evening” done. To the best of my knowledge, it was an interesting idea with classic roots that was new to this prayer book, but it has never generated the interest that its framers hoped it would.

The Daily Devotions are, by their very nature, not intended to be public church services—these are individual or household liturgies. I honestly can’t say how much they’re used; I can say that I don’t hear very much about them around the church. I think that may be a missed opportunity for us… Personally, I’m fond of them as a father of small children; they instill the concept of regular ordered prayer, but are not too long or burdensome for even young children. Early on, our family adopted the devotion “At the Close of Day” as bedtime prayers for our girls. Since it’s short and sweet, both of them had (quite unconsciously) memorized it even before they were able to read. I’ve frequently thought that a colorful laminated placemat with the text of the “In the Morning” and “In the Early Evening” devotions on either side might be a wonderful way to get these little offices into the kitchens and consciousness of families with children.

The Structure of the Offices

The structures of Morning and Evening Prayer closely mirror one another. It’s readily apparent from looking at how they’re put together that these are twin offices meant to complement and reinforce one another. Noonday prayer and Compline share in the same overall movement as the main offices, but the elements are not necessarily fit together in the same way. Compline, in particular, cleaves closer to models of older liturgies, and therefore follows a slightly different logic than the other three. An Order of Worship for the Evening has its own internal structure and possibilities, some of which mirror the offices, others of which do not—it’s doing a different thing and should be considered apart from the other liturgies in this section.

If we put the elements of the four prayer offices in parallel with one another, you’ll see the common elements emerge. Optional elements are in italics, common elements are in bold:

	Morning Prayer	Noonday Prayer	Evening Prayer	Compline
[Fore-Office]	Opening Sentence		Opening Sentence	Versicles
[Fore-Office]	Confession & Absolution		Confession & Absolution	Confession & Absolution
Invitatory & Psalms	Opening Versicles	Opening Versicles	Opening Versicles	Opening Versicles
	Invitatory	Hymn	Invitatory
	Appointed Psalms	Appointed Psalms	Appointed Psalms	Appointed Psalms
Lessons	OT Scripture Reading		OT Scripture Reading
	Canticle		Canticle
	NT Scripture Reading	Scripture [Sentence]	NT Scripture Reading	Scripture [Sentence]
	Canticle		Canticle	Hymn
	Apostles’ Creed		Apostles’ Creed
The Prayers				Brief Suffrages
	The Lord’s Prayer	The Lord’s Prayer	The Lord’s Prayer	The Lord’s Prayer
	Suffrages		Suffrages
	Collects	Collects	Collects	Collects
	Hymn		Hymn	Canticle
	Concluding Prayers		Concluding Prayers
	Blessing	Blessing	Blessing	Blessing

We’ll get lost in the details in just a moment, but first I want you to notice the arc that we have here. In all cases, we start with Scripture and then we move to prayer. One way to make sense of this pattern is that we start with edification and then we move to praise—but that’s not the best way to think about. This is the Office; it’s all praise! It would be better to say that we begin with praise that reveals and reminds us who God is (and, specifically, who God is for his people through time), then we continue with praise that offers our response to who God is.

The large headings printed in Morning and Evening Prayer divide the offices into four natural parts that can also be applied to Noonday Prayer and somewhat to Compline. (There’s no initial heading which is why I’ve supplied one—though in brackets—in the chart above. I suppose it’s as optional as its contents.) These headings reinforce the character of the arc that we’ve just noticed. The pattern starts with the psalms highlighting again their crucial function in the Office ecosystem. Notice that the presence of psalms is never optional. This book of divine praises is the Scriptural centerpiece of the Office. Then we move to the Scripture readings. I do think that the heading “The Lessons” in Morning and Evening Prayer is an unfortunate choice of words. It reflects a hold-over mentality from the early Reformation era that locates worship’s purpose in its instructional value. Even “The Readings” would be a better way to label what is about to occur that doesn’t prejudice the purpose of these Scriptures in the same way that the term “lessons” does. Then we move to the prayers. We get several different kinds of prayer in these sections but several cut across the four offices: the Lord’s Prayer, suffrages, collects, and blessings. Our prayer is not all of one type and our offices lead us through a variety as it schools us in the arts of praise.

Now we’ll consider the various elements in detail and do some thinking about what they do for us and how they connect to each other. Because of the differences between the Offices, I’m going to treat Morning and Evening Prayer in parallel first, then will discuss Noonday Prayer and Compline separately.

[To be continued…]

Breviary Update

Ok—so I’ve been working all this past week to get the preferences re-coded for the breviary, and I think I’ve finally accomplished most of what I’ve set out to do. There are a few other things I’d like to add, but this is what we have for the moment…

There have been a variety of preference issues; most notable, iDevices have had real problems setting cookies. I’m testing a solution that uses JavaScript rather than PHP to set the cookies that I believe should be much more effective.

I’ve tested it on my laptop and on my Kindle and it works fine. However, lacking an iDevice, I can’t check it on them… If someone who does have an iDevice would like to help, I’ll provide the basic steps. I’ll warn you, though, doing this will alter the cookie and will change your settings over to the new settings in ways that won’t play well with the old ones. On the flip side, if this works, everything will shift over to the new settings and that won’t be an issue…

The steps are simple:

Go to this url (it’s my test space): http://stbedeproductions.com/breviary/test/combined_preferences.php
Arrange your preferences however you like them. The sections slide for ease of use.
At the bottom of the page is the “Save your Preferences” button. Click it when you’re done.
When you click it, it should give you a long string of numbers, then tell you your preferences have been saved. Click “ok.”
Then, in the footer under the button is a link entitled “pray the breviary.” Click the link.
When the regular opening page loads, click the “Pray the Office” button under the “Use your default settings…” section.
See if it worked like it ought to.
Leave me a comment as to how it went.

That’s it—thanks in advance!

Liturgical Chickens Coming Home to Roost

This is more a passing thought than a well-developed argument so take it with a grain of salt…

The Liturgical Renewal Movement is the fundamental context for understanding the current shape of the ’79 Book of Common Prayer. In many ways, the ’79 BCP represents a substantial break from previous Anglican prayer books. The Eucharist was reordered. Additional options were made available. The Office was shifted a bit. Far more options were introduced into it. Classical patterns were shaken up. New Offices were added. The Calendar was greatly expanded to include heroes of the faith from the post-apostolic age.

The main reason for the radical change was because the aims and ideals of the Liturgical Renewal Movement had been internalized by our top liturgists. At mid-century and in the second half of the Twentieth Century, the LRM was the best game in town liturgically. It championed a return to the sources, a privileging of a Fourth Century model of Christian liturgy and community, and was profoundly ecumenical. It offered an opportunity for ecumenical fellowship through joint recovery and adoption of a more free, less strict way of conceiving of liturgy, church, and sacraments. Clericalism was targeting as a major problem liturgically and theologically as well as eccelesiastically and liturgy was re-branded as “the work of the people.”

Much good was accomplished here.

Of the classical church “parties” two were happiest with the ’79 BCP: the catholic wing and the broad church wing, particularly among the elites for whom the LRM represented an ecumenical consensus open to a liberality of spirit in contrast to liturgical and ecclesial conservatism; the “Spirit of Vatican II” and the “Spirit of ’79” made common cause with one another.

The Catholic wing thought they had made major strides because many of their longstanding issues with the Cranmerian reform had finally been undone. The liturgy had moved back towards a classic Western (Roman) model. The Calendar was once again filling with the heroes of the Great Church and of Western Catholicism in addition to a variety of Anglican worthies. Antiphons and propers were licit again. The Eucharist was the primary service on Sundays.

While these things were accomplished, it had more to do with their consonance with the aims of LRM than a tide of catholicity sweeping through the Episcopal Church.

Due to the influence of the LRM and its influence in the upper reaches of liturgical thought in the Episcopal Church, the ’79 BCP ended up having a more catholic appearance due to 1) the recovery of historical ideals that also guided the reform of the Roman liturgy post Vatican-II and 2) ecumenical rapprochement with Roman Catholics. Furthermore the performance of the liturgy likewise took on a more catholic appearance with a proliferation of chasubles in places where they would have been anathema as ‘too popish’ just a generation before.

But now we’re nearing the point of a generational shift. My liturgy teachers were young academics and graduate students at the time of Vatican II; they were the ones responsible for the modification of Protestant liturgies in the the post-Vatican II era. I sat at the feet of Saliers; I read White, Lathrop and Weil, and learned from them when we met. But now my generation is coming of age and are reaping the consequences of the choices of the LRM.

My crystal ball is telling me that Holy Women, Holy Men and the furor around it is emblematic of the liturgical issues that we will be dealing with in the next few decades. We are at the point where we must come to terms with the fact that we have inherited a prayer book with a greater catholic appearance but without catholic substance behind it. To put a finer point on it, we have a catholic-looking calendar of “saints” yet no shared theology of sainthood or sanctity. While a general consensus reigned that the appearance was sufficient, the lack of a coherent shared theology was not an issue. When we press upon it too hard—as occurred and is occurring in the transition from Lesser Feasts & Fasts into Holy Women, Holy Men into whatever will come next—we reap the fruits of a sort of potemkin ecumenism that collapses without common shared theology behind it.

Is there a catholic theology of sanctity in the Episcopal Church? Yes, in some places. Is there an inherently Episcopal theology of sanctity that proceeds naturally from the ’79 BCP that is in line with a classic Christian understanding? Without question! But is it known? No. Is there any common Episcopal understanding of sanctity? The arguments around the church especially as embodied in the discussions within the SCLM lead me to answer, no—I don’t think so.

The struggle of this current generation will be to wrestle with a liturgy that portrays a catholic appearance but lack a catholic substance behind it. It’s not that the substance can’t be there—it’s that it’s not.

The Essence of the Office

This post follows on the other on the Sacrifice of Praise and Thanksgiving to complete my thoughts on the Essence of the Office.

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The essence of the Daily Office must be found on one hand in Paul’s exhortation for Christians “with gratitude in your hearts [to] sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God” (Col 3:12), and, on the other hand, to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17). The two central themes here that we must keep before our eyes are the idea of the use of songs and poetic praises of God and also continuous prayer springing from deliberate acts of periodic prayer. As we consider the Daily Office and its various parts and acts, we will return time and time again to these two basic principles that form its foundation.

Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs

The Anglican mystic Evelyn Underhill (†1941) in her book Worship reinforces the poetic character of the Daily Office and the significance of that quality:

Liturgical worship shares with all ritual action the character of a work of art. Entering upon it, we leave the lower realism of daily life for the higher realism of a successive action which expresses and interprets eternal truth by the deliberate use of poetic and symbolic material. A liturgical service should therefore possess a structural unity; its general form and movement, and each of its parts, being determined by the significance of the whole. By its successive presentation of all the phases of the soul’s response to the Holy, its alternative use of history and oratory, drama and rhythm, its appeals to feeling, thought, and will, the individual is educated and gathered into the great movement of the Church. . . . Nevertheless since its main function is to suggest the Supernatural and lead men out to communion with the supernatural, it is by the methods of poetry that its chief work will be done. . . . [P]oetry still remains a chief element at least in the Daily Office, which is mainly an arrangement of psalms, canticles, and Scripture readings. (Worship, p. 119)

She goes on to remind us of the interpretive errors that occur when we attempt to read poetry literally and miss its deeper sense and direction. As she sees it, poetry in the liturgy has three main purposes:

(1) It is the carrying-medium of something which otherwise wholly eludes representation: the soul’s deep and awestruck apprehension of the numinous. . . .

(2) It can universalize particulars; giving an eternal reference to those things of time in and through which God speaks to men. . . .

(3) It is a powerful stimulant of the transcendental sense . . .

All these characters of poetry are active in good liturgy, and indeed constitute an important part of its religious value. Moreover, poetry both enchants and informs, addressing its rhythmic and symbolic speech to regions of the mind which are inaccessible to argument, and evoking movements of awe and love which no exhortation can obtain. It has meaning at many levels, and welds together all those who use it; overriding their personal moods and subduing them with a grave loveliness. (Worship, p. 120)

Great art—great poetry—is that which can capture our minds and hearts, and suffuse reality with a new light, a new perspective. It helps us see our ordinary, everyday world as not so ordinary, and cracks open everyday reality to help us see the beauty, the glory, and the wonder that is concealed therein. It helps us see new possibilities; it helps us see grander movements.

This is my best perspective on Scripture: it invites us into a different way of seeing the world and our relationships within it. It invites us to experience the whole cosmos arrayed around the throne of God as portrayed in the heavenly throne-room depicted in Revelation 4-6, and leads us to speculate about what it means to live in a world where justice, mercy, and loving-kindness are fundamental guiding principles. We are invited to recognize our own world transformed and suffused with the light of God and to function as mirrors, lenses, and crystals, reflecting—focusing—diffusing—the divine light, casting it through our facets upon the world and people around us.

The Office with its language of poetry reminds us and orients us to this level of understanding and reflection. Too, it can help us get beyond a literalism and dogmatism that can either frustrate or limit our sense of the holy and the divine. The Athanasian Creed can be a hard pill for many to swallow. On one hand, it’s chalk full of complicated and philosophical technical terms. On the other, it ends with a declaration of damnation containing a certainty that seems to arrogate to itself a judgment properly left with God alone. The Episcopal Church has never been comfortable with it; Bishop Seabury (†1796), the first American Episcopal bishop, wrote that he was never convinced of the propriety of reading it in church, yet did want to include it along the same lines as the articles of faith to show that we hold the common faith of the West. Indeed, the 1979 revision is the only American prayer book to include it. Especially as modern people, we don’t know what to do with it—but the monks did! They sang it as a canticle complete with antiphons at Sunday Prime, the poetic and musical setting potentially subverting its dogmatism and softening its philosophical formality in song.

After speaking of the eight individual hours that formed the Daily Office in the West, Underhill draws them together and unites them with their purpose:

The complete Divine Office, then, . . . is best understood when regarded as a spiritual and artistic unity; so devised, that the various elements of praise, prayer, and reading, and the predominately poetic and historic material from which it is built up, contribute to one single movement of the corporate soul, and form together one single act of solemn yet exultant worship. This act of worship is designed to give enduring and impersonal expression to eternal truths; and unite the here and now earthly action of the Church with the eternal response of creation to its origin. It is her “Sacred Chant,” and loses some of its quality and meaning when its choral character is suppressed: for in it, the demands of a superficial realism are set aside, in favour of those deeper realities which can only be expressed under poetic and musical forms. (Worship, 124-5)

The more we sing of the Office, the more in touch we are with these melodies, harmonies, and rhythms of which she speaks. Yet, even if we are reading it alone in our rooms, we can still find the cadences there.

On a purely literary level, we can go through the Office step by step and note the presence of the poetry and music at every step. The psalms form the heart of the office. We respond to the Scripture readings with canticles, most of which are infused and inspired by the psalms—or songs like them. The suffrages themselves are verses of psalms recombined and related to one another in new ways. The collects and prayers speak in the language of the psalms and Scriptures.

As we pray the Office and sing it—whether aloud or in our hearts—we are incarnating the Pauline injunction to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God and to one another. As its poetry becomes more deeply a part of us, as these songs become more fully implanted within our hearts, they leads us to a more beautiful lens for locating God at work in our world.

To Pray Without Ceasing

This notion of having the songs and psalms implanted in our hearts and consciousness leads us in to the second principle, to pray without ceasing. If we wish to learning the meaning of this phrase, we must turn our eyes to the Desert Fathers and Mothers for it was they who devoted their entire efforts to live its meaning.

The fourth century was a tumultuous time for the Church as Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313 meant an end to persecution and brought with it a tacit sign of imperial favor. (Christianity wouldn’t actually become the official religion of the empire until 380 under Theodosius.) While the easing of restrictions against Christianity brought in a wave of converts—some no doubt embracing it for political gain—this same easing equally triggered a crisis of spirituality. For decades, Christian authenticity had been bound up with martyrdom; fidelity to the way of the cross was identified with the willingness to die a martyr’s death. With martyrdom at the hands of the authorities no longer an option, where was an earnest Christian to turn?

The answer came in the form of the desert. Christians who sought to embody the commands of Scripture sold their possessions, renounced family life, and sought lives of prayer and austerity in the deserts, either on their own or in the company of like-minded souls. This way of life, which would flower into monasticism and feed the church spiritually for centuries to come, was popularized by bishops and theologians who wrote inspiring accounts of the lives of simple men and the spiritual riches they uncovered. The great bishop Athanasius (†373) penned the Life of Antony which chronicled the life and spirituality of one of the earliest desert saints and spread word of the movement across the Greek-speaking world. Not to be outdone, the ascetic and scholar Jerome (†367), living in a monastery in Jerusalem, wrote a number of lives that sought to supplement (or replace) the Life of Antony, bringing knowledge of the desert life to the Latin-speaking church. The first great systematic works of Western Christian spirituality, John Cassian’s (†435) Institutes and Conferences, were written for the benefit of his monastery in Gaul, containing remembrances of his youthful spiritual dialogues with heroes of the Egyptian and Palestinian deserts.

As we sift through the literature of the early monastic movement and the desert saints who founded it, we come back time and time again to this injunction to “pray without ceasing,” to praying of some form of the Daily Office, and a fundamental belief that the use of the Office was the key to praying without ceasing. The characteristic pattern of desert life is captured in a brief description of how Antony lived:

The money he earned from his work he gave to the poor, apart from what he needed to buy bread, and he prayed often, for he learned that one should pray to the Lord without ceasing. He also listened attentively to the Scriptures so that nothing should slip from his mind. He preserved all the Lord’s commandments, keeping them safe in his memory rather than in books. (Life of Antony 3, Early Christian Lives, p. 10)

Note the way that work, prayer, and memorization of the Scriptures are interconnected here. This way of life is further clarified by an episode where a desert hermit was disputing with a group of uber-pietists called the Euchites or Messalians concerning prayer without ceasing:

Some of the monks who are called Euchites went to Enaton to see Abba Lucius. The old man asked them, ‘What is your manual work?’ They said, ‘We do not touch manual work but as the Apostle says, we pray without ceasing.’ The old man asked them if they did not eat and they replied they did. So he said to them, ‘When you are eating, who prays for you then?’ Again he asked them if they did not sleep and they replied they did. And he said to them, ‘When you are asleep, who prays for you then?’ They could not find any answer to give him. He said to them, ‘Forgive me, but you do not act as you speak. I will show you how, while doing my manual work, I pray without interruption. I sit down with God, soaking my reeds and plaiting my ropes, and I say, “God have mercy on me; according to your great goodness and according to the multitude of your mercies, save me from my sins [Ps 51:1,2].”’ So he asked them if this were not prayer and they replied it was. Then he said to them, ‘So when I have spent the whole day working and praying, making thirteen pieces of money more or less, I put two pieces of money outside the door and I pay for my food with the rest of the money. He who takes the two pieces of money prays for me when I am eating and sleeping; so, by the grace of God, I fulfill the precept to pray without ceasing.’ (Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 120-1)

This blend of piety and practicality is found throughout this early literature. The life described is one filled with basic manual labor—weaving ropes or baskets made from the leaves of the desert palms or scratching out subsistence gardens from the rocky soil—suffused with constant prayer. Indeed, the Egyptian monks in particular were famous for prayers that were “brief but frequent.”

The prayer recited by Abba Lucius is an adaptation of the start of Psalm 51. Reading through the Life of Antony and the description that Athanasius gives of Antony’s struggles in spiritual travail, a pattern emerges. At a great turning point in Antony’s life, during a struggle with demons that left him both physically and spiritually battered he retained his faith and focus by ceaselessly chanting, “If they place an encampment against me, my heart will not fear” (Ps 27:3). When people came from the cities, hoping to find him dead, he would pray verses from Ps 68:1-2 and Ps 118:10. Throughout the literature, the words of the psalms are constantly appearing through their prayers and discussions. In truth their whole conversations are shot through with Scripture, but consistently the psalms predominate. In fact, the Egyptian “brief but frequent” prayers that appear in the corpus are almost always drawn from Scripture and the psalms. One of the works of Evagrius of Pontus (†399) consists entirely of one-liners from Scripture to be used for prayer in a host of situations organized in relation to the eight vices identified by the desert monks.

For these monks—many of whom were illiterate—Scripture came through hearing. Preeminently, Scripture was heard and memorized in the Daily Offices. The foundation of the Office gave them the words they needed to meditate in the midst of their work and to truly pray without ceasing no matter what they were doing.

Perhaps the preeminent connection between the Scriptures, the psalms, and praying without ceasing comes from the second conference on prayer recorded by John Cassian. Abba Isaac says that the whole goal of the monastic way of life can be summed up like this: “This, I say, is the end [goal] of all perfection–that the mind purged of every carnal desire may daily be elevated to spiritual things, until one’s whole way of life and all the yearnings of one’s heart become and single and continuous prayer” (Conferences 10.7.3). Cassian’s companion Germanus asks how this sort of focus can be achieved. The reply from Abba Isaac is that there is one particular formula for meditation that can secure this result:

The formula for this discipline and prayer that you are seeking, then, shall be presented to you. Every monk who longs for the continual awareness of God should be in the habit of meditating on it ceaselessly in his heart, after having driven out every kind of thought, because he will be unable to hold fast to it in any other way than by being freed from all bodily cares and concerns. Just as this was handed down to us by a few of the oldest fathers who were left, so also we pass it on to none but the most exceptional, who truly desire it. This, then, is the devotional formula proposed to you as absolutely necessary for possessing the perpetual awareness of God: ‘O God, make speed to save me; O Lord, make haste to help me’ [Ps 70:1]. (Conferences 10.10.2)

Yes, this is the line that is used as a verse and response to open each of the prayer offices. No, that’s not an accident.

John Cassian makes the explicit connection between the Daily Office and the continuous prayer of the Egyptian monks in his other big book, the Institutes, but he does so by framing it in the midst of one of the disputes about monastic practice. By the end of the fourth century, there were two major centers of monastic practice—the deserts of Egypt and the deserts of Palestine. They had different ways of praying the Daily Office. The Egyptian model was the same in format as what appears to have been done in many of the early cathedrals of the period—one public service in the morning and another in the evening. Twelve psalms were sung, then there was a reading from the Old Testament, then one from the New Testament. That was it for the day. The Palestinian model was to gather more frequently. Jerome, writing from his monastery in Bethlehem, advises this:

Further, although the apostle bids us to ‘pray without ceasing,’ and although to the saints their very sleep is a supplication, we ought to have fixed hours of prayer, that if we are detained by work, the time may remind us of our duty. Prayers, as everyone knows, ought to be said at the third, sixth, and ninth hours, at dawn and at evening. . . . We should rise two or three times in the night and go over the parts of Scripture which we know by heart. (Letter 22. 37)

and instructs the parents of a young virgin dedicated to the church to train her in the same way: “She ought to rise at night to recite prayers and psalms; to sing hymns in the morning; at the third, sixth, and ninth hours to take her place in the line to do battle for Christ; and lastly to kindle her lamp and to offer her evening sacrifice” (Letter 107.9).

The Egyptians responded rather harshly. One characteristic response comes from the Egyptian-trained Epiphanius:

The Blessed Epiphanius, Bishop of Cyprus, was told this by the abbot of a monastery he had in Palestine, ‘By your prayers we do not neglect our appointed round of psalmody, but we are very careful to recite [the prayer offices of] Terce, Sext and None.’ Then Epiphanius corrected them with the following comment, ‘It is clear you do not trouble about the other hours of the day, if you cease from prayer. The true monk should have prayer and psalmody continuously in his heart.’ (Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 57)

Thus, he suggested that by having more set hours of the day, the monks were neglecting this continual prayer of the heart and instead were satisfied only to pray when the clock told them it was time to do so. Frankly, this is kind of a cheap shot. An argument could equally be made that since the Palestinian monks were hearing the psalms more, they had better opportunity to memorize them and keep them always in their hearts—but the (Egyptian) sayings don’t see fit to give us the Palestinian abbot’s response!

In light of this argument between the two parties, John Cassian tries to take a middle path. After explaining the Egyptian system, and before talking about how to pray the day hours, he says this:

For, among [the Egyptians as opposed to the monasteries of Palestine and Mesopotamia] the offices that we are obliged to render to the Lord at different hours and at intervals of time [i.e., the day offices of Terce, Sext, and None] to the call of the summoner, are celebrated continuously and spontaneously throughout the course of the whole day, in tandem with their work. For they are constantly doing manual labor alone in their cells in such a way that they almost never omit meditating on the psalms and on other parts of Scripture, and to this they add entreaties and prayers at every moment, taking up the whole day in offices that we celebrate at fixed times. Hence, apart from the evening and

Morning Prayer for 5/16/2024

gatherings, they celebrate no public service during the day except on Saturday and Sunday, when they gather at the third hour for Holy Communion. For what is offered [freely] is greater than what is rendered at particular moments, and a voluntary service is more pleasing than functions that are carried out by canonical obligation. This is why David himself rejoices somewhat boastfully when he says: ‘Willingly shall I sacrifice to you.’ And: ‘May the free offerings of my mouth be pleasing to you, Lord.’

So, John Cassian is, in essence, admitting that the Egyptians have a more perfect practice: the two Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer give the stern Egyptian monks all they need in order to pray without ceasing for the rest of the day. But then he goes right ahead and tells his monks to do the three day hours in Palestinian fashion! The Egyptian way may be better, but the Palestinian is easier—and is likely better training for those still needing to learn their psalms.

In essence, we can say that these two groups show us two different ways of using the Daily Office to learn how to pray without ceasing. The “Egyptian” model is to only have two long Offices with psalms and readings at both. The “Palestinian” model is to have shorter and more frequent Offices with psalmody, leaving the reading of Scripture for the long Office at night. The Palestinian model wins decisively in the West; Benedict expresses in his Rule what has become normative in the West: eight liturgical services of prayer with an additional monastic business meeting—Chapter—that itself acquires liturgical material. Indeed, this pattern of frequency in corporate recitation of the Offices gets taken to its extreme in the monasteries of Cluny to the point that up to a full eight hours of the day were spent singing liturgies!

With the creation of the Book of Common Prayer at the Reformation, Archbishop Cranmer put the Anglican churches onto the other path. Whereas for centuries the Western Church had followed the Palestinian model, Cranmer turned us back to the Egyptian model. Up until our present book, our Offices had consisted of just what the Egyptian Office had: psalms, a reading from the Old Testament, a reading from the New Testament and prayers, all done twice a day. (The 1979 book gives a “Palestinian” nod with the introduction of Noon Prayer and Compline.)

If prayer without ceasing is our goal (and why shouldn’t it be?) we must recall that the Egyptian model is the harder path. In order to fulfill the call, we would be wise to take their advice. Pray the long Offices as they’re appointed, but then—throughout the day—make our private prayers “brief but frequent.” Take a verse that strikes you in the morning. Ponder it through the day; make it your prayer. Repeat it to yourself as you sit in silence. Whisper it to yourself as you work. Roll it in your mind while you eat. Make it part of your prayer without ceasing.

This, then, is the essence of the Office—to make our spiritual sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. By speaking in “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God” our hearts are lifted and our minds expanded to see a world imbued with God. As we take the words of the psalms and the Scriptures into ourselves, we provide ourselves with the basic resources to “pray without ceasing.” The practice of the Office—whether together or alone—builds up in us the pattern of praise and points us in the way of the habitual recollection of God.

The St. Bede Blog

Formerly haligweorc; Liturgical Spirituality for the Episcopal Church