For me, deliberately and conscientiously setting aside time to meditate, or pray, or “be”, or listen, or whatever you want to call it, is the surest way to develop my relationship with the divine. And just like my relationships with family and friends, the more time I spend on it, the stronger the relationship is. And given the current “work-from-home” situation, which has provided me with more flexibility (hello between meetings childcare!) and more time (goodbye 90 minute commute!), I’ve been able to pray the Liturgy of the hours, also known as the Divine Office, with varying degrees of rigour.

The Divine Office consists of praying seven times daily: Matins and Lauds (combined), Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. The full divine office is primarily only used in monasteries nowadays, but certainly throughout most of the history of Christianity, structured prayer several times daily wasn’t limited to only the religious houses. I use The Anglican Breviary and at least pray Matins and Lauds together as one office, and Vespers and Compline together as one office — which is how Morning and Evening Prayer came to be in the Book of Common Prayer. Throughout Advent and Lent, I add the little hours of Terce, Sext, and None. During the Easter Triduum, and Ash Wednesday, I try to get up in the night to do Matins and Lauds and will pray Prime upon waking. If anyone is interested I’ll go into more detail in later posts about the mechanics of the individual offices, but let me start with why I prefer the Anglican Breviary (which has been adapted from the Roman Breviary), versus the Anglican Church’s Book of Common Prayer (BCP):

The Divine Office is more reflective of the changes in the liturgical year. In the BCP, Morning and Evening prayer don’t change that much, with the exception of the Collects (seasonal prayers) at the end. Although the structure of the prayers doesn’t change that much from day-to-day, virtually every element of the Divine Office (psalms, hymn, readings, collects) changes according to the season and whether or not the day is a feast.
Because it changes so much during the year, the Divine Office is more complex. This might not be a positive to most people, but I’m a “details guy” and relished the challenge of learning the prayers and rubrics. Fortunately it’s not that difficult or dry thanks to this excellent how-to, written by the publisher. Most importantly, I like to believe that I’m helping to keep “alive” these tiny details of the language of our faith, such as which prayers are said on a given feast day, or omitting the opening versicles during the Pascal Triduum, or adding the “Great O” antiphons during Advent. These cultural nuances developed over centuries, lasted for centuries, and helped define our church, our prayer and our spiritual heritage. It would be a shame if they were lost to the progress of secularism so now it’s up to me (or you) to not forget them.
There are seven prayer times. Depending on the time of the year, and if all goes according to plan, here’s the schedule I try to stick to: 1. Matins/Lauds - 12am or 2am while everyone is asleep (The world is so peaceful at this time); 2. Prime - 6am just before everyone wakes up. 3. Terce - 10am or between morning meetings; 4. Sext - 1pm or after lunch; 5. None - 2 or 3pm between meetings since it only takes 5-10 min; 6. Vespers - 4pm, which is just before dinner prep… or as close to sunset as I can get; 7. Compline - 9:30 or just before I go to sleep. This frequency doesn’t let me forget my connection to the divine and really keeps me “grounded” (for lack of a better word). One could try to do something similar with the BCP, by picking additional psalms, collects and readings for mid-day prayer.

Note that I often abbreviate the psalms from what’s in the “Ordinary” of the Breviary. There are meant to be fourteen psalms during Matins/Lauds, five at Vespers, and three at the little hours… which is a lot of psalms. Depending on the season or my time constraints, I reduce it to eight psalms for Matins/Lauds, three psalms for Vespers, and one psalm for the little hours. It seems to me that singing the psalms was the basis of much of the prayer for the Desert Fathers, so I also see the benefit of mindfully reciting all fourteen of the psalms… when I have the time.

So if you think that more frequent, structured prayer would help your spiritual journey, consider getting a copy of the Anglican Breviary. It might be a little more complex than the Book of Common prayer initially, but the rewards are well worth it. If nothing else though, consider taking a few more times in your day to go meditate, or pray, or “be”, or listen. You can try reading through the psalms if you don’t want to be bothered with a prayer book (they’re available in the links of the Resources section of this Blog). But the first and most important step to pray without ceasing is to pray … a little more often.