The Daily Office - prayer throughout the day

Regular prayer

Since the early days of Christianity, the followers of Jesus Christ have turned to God in prayer at regular times as well as at any time when they feel impelled to call out to God. In the first centuries after Jesus walked on earth, some Christians felt called to take up a life in which prayer was a fixed component, often spending time living out in the desert or isolated in caves or remote islands, the better to concentrate on bringing the whole people of God before him in prayer. When the early monasteries were founded they formulated and followed different Rules of Life, all including set times to pray. Often there were seven set prayer times during the day, and prayer in the middle of the night before returning to sleep.

When the Church of England drafted its first Book of Common Prayer this included a prayer schedule with Morning and Evening Prayer. The format has changed over the centuries but the modern language Common Worship services that we use at St Michael and All Angels is based on the same structure.

The basic format

The idea is to have a structure that always contains some of the same ingredients: Bible readings, some familiar prayers such as the Lord’s Prayer, and some prayers that change according to the season of the Christian year e.g. whether it is Lent, Easter, Christmas, etc. Most people include a time for spontaneous prayer and keep lists of people and matters to pray about.

Morning Prayer

We use a simplified version of the Common Worship Morning Prayer service at St Michael’s.

Evening Prayer

At St Michael’s we say Evening Prayer from the Common Worship Daily Prayer book (“The red book with the cross on the front” as one of our members calls it.) You can find the same service online on the Church of England web pages. This link will take you to the listings page for all kinds of daily prayer, morning and evening, traditional and contemporary. The service we use is Evening Prayer (Contemporary). There is an app to download for computers, tablets or phones, scroll down on the same page to find that.

The Bible readings

Many Western churches use the same set of Bible readings in their services: the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL). A “lectionary” is a list of readings for a calendar. The RCL has a three year cycle and most of the Bible is read at some point during these three years, with some parts such as the Gospels being covered many times. Morning and Evening Prayer always contain one or more Psalms. Then there are two further readings, which normally work their way through part or all of a book of the Bible over a period of a few weeks.

Psalms are read every day because they are wonderful prayers that encompass the full range of people’s feelings, hopes, fears, love of God - God has heard it all before and we need not be afraid to be honest about ourselves before him. Even if you don’t feel the same as the Psalmist on one occasion, there is comfort in knowing that these ancient prayers are speaking to someone, somewhere, all the time.

The other readings ensure we read from all the areas of the Bible, Old and New Testaments, The Torah, the Prophets, the Wisdom Literature, the History books, the Epistles and always one Gospel reading per day at Evening Prayer.

This link provides you with the April readings on our own website.

For the whole year, try the lectionary site at oremus.org here. This will show you alternative lectionaries to view online or download.