There are five primary settings in which we Anglicans say the Daily Office.
- Parish
- Individual
- Cathedral
- Monastic communities
- Seminary
1. Parish
Thomas Cranmer placed Morning and Evening Prayer in the Book of Common Prayer for its daily use in parish churches.
The Anglican ascetical system is a Prayer Book spirituality. A weekly practice of Eucharist and a daily practice of the Prayers of the Church (Daily Office). The Prayer Book is 2/3 plus about the Eucharist and the Office. Our system assumes that with these practices as “the ground” we engage an individual practice of personal devotion and reflection as fits our circumstances and temperament. This ascetical system gets called by various names --the Threefold Rule of Prayer, the Benedictine triangle, the Prayer Book pattern of prayer.
This is a spirituality of the parish as a microcosm of the Body of Christ and its engagement in common prayer.
Our life in community, our reflection, and our service are nurtured from the soil of Office and Eucharist. The daily connection with Scripture and common prayer and the weekly receiving of Body and Blood orient us to the ways of eternity and feed us for “real life.” St. Paul must have observed a comparable set of practices. Paul also knew that it all was God’s doing. “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” (Romans 8: 26 – 27). From In Your Holy Spirit: Shaping the Parish Through Spiritual Practice, Robert A. Gallagher, Ascension Press, 2011
If the parish priest gives herself to it, the parish will have a public Office. Evelyn Underhill expressed it this way:
The priest’s life of prayer, his communion with God, it’s not only his primary obligation to the church; it is also the only condition under which the work of the Christian ministry can be properly done. ... for his business is to lead men out towards eternity; and how can he do this, unless it is a country in which he is at home? He is required to represent the peace of God in a trouble society; but that is impossible, if he is not in the habit of restoring to the deeps of the spirit where His Presence dwells. ...A priest’s life of prayer is, in a peculiar sense, part of the great mystery of the Incarnation. It’s meant to be one of the channels by and through which the Eternal God, manifested in time, acts within the human world; reaches out, seeks, touches, and transforms human souls. His real position in the parish is that of a dedicated agent of the Divine Love. . ... (pp. 2, 3)
The priest’s own devotional life – this is decisive. The primary way in which he can lead his people to pray is by doing it himself. The spirit of prayer is far more easily caught then taught. ... The priest who prays often in his own church, for whom it is a spiritual home, the place where he meets God, he’s the only one who has any chance of persuading his people to pray in their own church. ... So to, the saying of Matins and Evensong in church is the most valuable help to the same end. Even though the priest may often do this alone, the very fact that he does it counts. It is an act of devotion to God, done for his people; and if it entails a sacrifice of convenience or time, all the better. (pp. 18, 19)
From The Parish Priest and the Life of Prayer, Evelyn Underhill, 1937
2. Individual
It has become more common for individuals to say the Office in some form on their own. Some do it with an emphasis on “daily, others with an emphasis on “the hours.”
There are on-line versions, books of the Prayer Book Offices with all the readings within the book, and, of course, there’s the Book of Common Prayer along with a Bible.
I usually do Morning Prayer at home (after coffee and the NY Times on Kindle) and Evening Prayer at my parish. I have done it using my phone on the bus or at the coffee shop. And on those occasions when I have gone the day without saying the Office I have said a short form from memory in my bed ("Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.")
The parish church can provide training and coaching to assist people as they say the Office on their own.
The parish can support people in using the Daily Office by:
Showing people several web sites on the Daily Office. Have the parish web site link to the Daily Office on the web.
Producing short forms lifted from elements of the Office in the Prayer Book
Making it easy for members to purchase a copy of the Book of Common Prayer (BCP) or the Daily Office Book from Church Publishing (includes the Four Offices, all the readings and psalms). Offer inexpensive copies of the pew type and take orders for higher quality copies. Do the same with the Bible. Offer options from among the translations approved for use in the Episcopal Church.
Integrating training and coaching on individual use in a variety of programs.
Supporting individual use by parish communal use.
From In Your Holy Spirit: Shaping the Parish Through Spiritual Practice, pp 46, 47
3, 4, and 5. The Office in cathedrals, monastic communities and seminaries
We can be thankful that these places offer daily adoration and prayer. They share with the parishes and individuals the holy work of daily prayer. On occasion many of us have participated in the offerings of cathedrals and monastic communities. The cathedral setting can cause our spirits to soar. The monastic house can bring us to a deeper place. And the seminaries could in what they do provide the church with priests ready, as Underhill put it, to lead people out towards eternity; a country in which the priest is at home.
However, if we use any of the three as our mental model for the parish’s saying of the Office, we will get things wrong. They end up becoming barriers to the parish’s prayer life.
The parish church is not a cathedral nor a monastic community nor a seminary. When we use those mental models, consciously or unconsciously, we will create problems in our parish’s ascetical life. The most common problem is that we dismiss doing the Office in the parish as requiring too much work, being too complex, or requiring more people than we will have gather day by day.
We see the cathedral mental model in play when the parish does a very special Evensong a few times each year and offers no public worship most days of the week.
The monastic office is commonly four to seven services each day. It’s usually more elaborate with antiphons and singing. The enrichment that works for a monastic community can be problematic in a parish. Some of the clergy having lost touch with why the Offices are in the Prayer Book talk about doing the Office as a monastic practice. In our tradition it is above all else a parish practice; a normal thing for any parish to do.
In some cases, thinking of the Office as a “monastic practice” becomes a way to dismiss its use in the parish. In other cases, priests create an artificial monasticism in the parish’s Office – the BCP is replaced with some “richer” book, many antiphons are added, and the service gets longer and longer. It becomes less accessible to most parishioners and difficult for the person attending occasionally. And, it disconnects us from the church’s Book; which in turn makes what we are doing less sustainable over time. The parish church can learn a great deal by studying Saint Benedict and seeking to apply his insights about life in community to the parish. But the parish is not a monastic house. I knew a rector who was an associate of Holy Cross and imposed that community's breviary on his parish. His claim was that the book was based on the BCP. True enough. But it was not the church's book. The canons and rubrics of the Prayer Book are there, in part, to help priests avoid the temptation of clericalism.
Finally, the practice in some seminaries of daily Morning and Evening Prayer, offered at the same time each day, is both part of the Church’s daily offering to God and a soaking of the future priests in the stuff of holiness. However, they need specific guidance in how to translate the Office into a parish setting.
So, focus your ascetical guidance on helping individuals live in the Rule of the Church grounded in Eucharist and Office and in offering a daily public office.
rag+
Resources
Postings about the Office on Means of Grace, Hope of Glory
Introducing the Daily Office into a parish's DNA
Daily Office: the priority of worship
The Office: Daily, the Hours
Parish development resources: Episcopal Ethos, the Daily Office
A life, not a program
Developmental Initiatives on the Daily Office: action planning tools
Equipping Individuals to Use the Office
Books
Fill All Things: The Spiritual Dynamics of the Parish Church. Sections on the Office include – The threefold rule of prayer (the Prayer Book Pattern) pp. 56 – 57, the Daily Office relationship with the Eucharist pp. 59 – 60, on pages 169 - 178 thoughts on why people say the Office, its place in parish development, how to strengthen and promote the office, quotes from various writers, stories of parishes saying the Office, and a poem by Amy Hunter.
In Your Holy Spirit: Traditional Spiritual Practices in Today’s Christian Life – pp. 43 – offers an understanding of the place of the Office in the person’s spiritual life and specific suggestions about how people can say the office in a way that takes into account their personality and life circumstances.
In Your Holy Spirit: Shaping the Parish through Spiritual Practice – Eucharist and Office pp 21 – 22, “The Daily Practice: The Prayers of the Church” pp. 43 – 51 including the primary elements, individual use, parish communal use, the importance of experimenting and innovating, and ways in which we undercut the parish’s saying of the Office.
Practicing Prayer: A Handbook – Offers ways to engage the Office along with a variety of personal devotions.