Grounding our parishes in prayer, rather than in program
Tuesday, January 7, 2020 at 12:31PM 
Sister Michelle Heyne, OA sent a message to the Professed and novice members of the Order of the Ascension this morning. She was sharing two new resources for the Daily Office: The Hour, an online magazine with an Anglican Catholic Left orientation, and the Society of St. Nicholas Ferrar, formed to create commitment, community, and practice around saying the Daily Office. Michelle closed her message by thanking the members for all they do, especially “grounding our parishes in prayer, rather than in program.”
The first issue of The Hour begins with this, “We contend that the pervasive neglect of the Daily Office throughout our church is a real problem.” The editors seek to address the problem by bringing together theory and practice. I hope you’ll take a look at The Hour.
From the Rule of the Order of the Ascension
The Threefold Rule of the Church: All Professed Members will live within the Threefold Rule of the Church. We are each to be at the Holy Eucharist every Sunday, say the Office daily, and have a fruitful pattern of reflection/personal devotions. All Professed Members who are also priests-in-charge of parishes will establish, and fully participate in, that pattern in the common life of their parish. All who are not in a position of such responsibility will be supportive of efforts in their own parish to shape the pattern. Novices will establish the pattern in the first two months of their novitiate.
The Daily Office is offered in an appropriate way each day. All Members say the Office daily. Priests in charge of parishes provide for, and participate in, a public office in their parishes.
The Church’s Office, said by two souls in the village church on Monday night, is an infinitely tremendous thing; the special service with its teeming congregation is trivial by comparison. … There is nothing so contagious as holiness, nothing more pervasive than Prayer. This is precisely what the traditional Church means by evangelism and what distinguishes it from recruitment. …All prayer, ideally, is to the Father, through the Son, in the Spirit; but ascetically and analytically the Office tends to emphasis the first objectively, the Mass is the mutual loving embrace of Christ, and prayer in private depends upon the Paraclet’s indwelling. -Martin Thornton
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Resources
The Society of St. Nicholas Ferrar
The Threefold Rule of the Church