Morning & Evening Prayer
For Christians the privilege, obligation, and tradition of daily prayer are traced not only to the Jewish discipline adopted and developed by the early Church but to Jesus himself. As a boy he was taught the Jewish custom of praying three times a day. The morning prayer consisted of the meditative recital of the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4-7) which confesses the Unity of the Lord our God and the duty to love him, and the Tephilla, a prayer made up of eighteen acts of blessing God (benedictions) – e.g. “Blessed art thou, O Lord, God of Abraham…” The afternoon prayer required only the Tephilla, while the evening prayer was the same as morning prayer. Of course, the use of the Shema and Tephilla was the minimum, not the maximum, and along with them the pious Jew prayed the Psalter and offered his own petitions. Jesus obviously used the discipline of daily prayer and made it the means of communion with his Father in heaven. At the age of twelve he told his mother, “I must be about my Father’s business.” (Luke 2:49)
The Anglican services of Morning and Evening Prayer, sometimes called Matins and Evensong and referred as the Daily Offices, the Choir Offices and the Divine Office, are directly descended from the system of daily services or Canonical Hours of the medieval Church. The latter developed from the simple morning and evening prayer of the early Church and are to be found in the Breviaries used by the monastic and secular clergy.
The creation of Morning and Evening Prayer in the sixteenth century was an important advance in engaging the laity in the duty and joy of daily worship and prayer. The daily services can and were intended to be, under the blessing of God, a wonderful vehicle for the knowledge of God through the encounter with him through his Word and in prayer. There is no reason why either or both of the services should not be used in the home as the basis for personal and/or family prayers.
Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer begin with a call from God through his minister to his people to engage in penitence, praise, thanksgiving, instruction from God through his Word, and petitionary prayer. Kneeling down and thereby symbolically submitting to the sovereign mercy of God, his people confess not only their rebellion against him (“we have offended against thy holy laws”), but the actual sinfulness of their souls (“there is no health in us”). The declaration of divine absolution and remission of sins pronounced by the priest or bishop is composed of a medley of scriptural sentences. To all who repent of their sins and believe the promises of the Gospel there is full and free forgiveness, even as there is also a call to “be pure and holy,” for faith works by love and issues in good works.
The rest of the service is an expression of responsive faith. The faith which has responded to God’s call and heard his promise of forgiveness and eternal life now speaks to God and hears from him. It is entirely fitting and appropriate for believers to begin their response by saying the Lord’s Prayer which is the model for all prayer. The mind, now having descended into the heart, and warmed by God’s gracious presence, is ready to praise his name. This is done through the versicles taken from Psalm 51:15 which lead into the Gloria Patri (the little doxology); “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost…” Christian souls now ascend in and with Christ to heaven by the presence of the Holy Ghost to bow before and adore the Father, in the Name and through the mediation of the Son. They worship the Lord God, who is the Blessed, Holy, and Undivided Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
Responsive faith continues to praise the Lord through the Venite which celebrates the Majesty of God as the Creator, Sustainer, Provider, and Judge. The recitation of the Psalms and a lesson from the Old Testament follow. Notice, it is not called a reading. It is a lesson from God himself through the illumination of the Holy Spirit on the mind. The Te Deum laudamus, Benedictus es Domine, or the Benedicite omnia opera Domini follows the lesson with praise to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. The next lesson is from the New Testament. The Benedictus or Jubilate Deo follow and continue the praise of God.
At this stage, praising, believing souls are ready to speak to God and tell him what they believe as baptized Christians on the basis of his Revelation to them through sacred Scripture. They join in the Apostles’ Creed making his or her personal profession of faith with “I believe” in unison to show the response of the Bride (the Church) to the Bridegroom (Jesus Christ).
Finally, as forgiven, praising, and believing souls, worshippers express their faith and commitment to Jesus as Lord by engaging in petitionary and intercessory prayers for themselves and others; especially those with heavy responsibilities in State and Church. They pray for others in the confidence that the Lord God who has blessed them will also bless those for whom they pray. They pray in the name of the Lord Jesus to the Father in heaven, in the power of the Holy Ghost. The set prayers, which are all memorable in style and theology, include the two great prayers which all mature Anglican ought to know by heart – the Prayer for all Conditions of Men and the General Thanksgiving. The final prayer of the service is the Grace, taken straight from the Bible (2 Corinthians 13:14)
This is the logic of faith of Morning Prayer and the same logic is there in Evening Prayer. Modern usage often begins the Office at the Versicles and thereby destroys the logic of faith which requires us to begin where we are, in our sin, in order to rise by and in Christ, as forgiven people to the praise of God Almighty. This is why in the Common Prayer Tradition the confession of sin is not optional. Such is the human condition that we always need to confess our sins of commission and omission, and to recognize both the bias to sin which is deep in our souls and our participation in the sins of mankind as a whole. There is an exception to this general rule when the Order for Holy Communion is to be celebrated immediately after Morning Prayer, since there is a full penitential section in that Order.
Intimately connected on earth to the Daily Office is the Litany or General Supplication. It is to be used after the Third Collect of Morning or Evening Prayer on certain days. The Litany is composed of:
The entire Litany, apart from the beginning and the ending is addressed to the Lord Jesus.
The Holy Bible is the record, inspired by the Holy Spirit, of God’s self-revelation to human beings. It was written under God’s superintendence for our benefit, that we may learn therein, through the illumination of our minds by the Holy Spirit, of the nature of God and of his salvation offered to us in Jesus, the Christ. To hear or read Scripture prayerfully and in faith is to place oneself in the position to be taught by God, where the Lessons become truly teaching sessions of the Holy Ghost.
One of the aims of modern Liturgy, with its multiple options, appears to be to keep people from staying with one form of worship, one set of texts and prayers. However, there is great spiritual benefit in the use of the same text day by day, especially if they are, as in the Daily Office, excellent Canticles and Prayers in fine, memorable English. However, this benefit only applies if they are said, sung, or prayed in faith with the mind in the heart. They will become utterly boring if they are merely repeated because that is what is required. To the heart which is seeking to know and love God, they become the very words through which that knowledge and faith is expressed. Familiarity with them increases their usefulness as the content of the human response to God’s gracious invitation to draw near to him and behold his glory.
For more details, read “Worship without Dumbing-down” by The Rev. Dr. Peter Toon, M.A., D.Phil.
(Preservation Press of the Prayer Book Society of the USA 2005)