Morning & Evening Prayer
Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer are derived from the system of daily offices of the Middle Ages found in the Breviaries of the secular and monastic clergy of the Roman Church. They are variously called the Daily Offices, the Choir Offices, or the Divine Office. These services developed out of customs of daily praise, instruction, and prayer, both public and private, kept from apostolic times. They are based on the devotional practices of pious Jews at the time of Christ’s birth, who offered prayers three times a day at the hours of the daily sacrifice in the Temple (Psalm lv.18, Dan. vi.10, cf. Acts iii.1, x.3, 9).
The Daily Offices were well developed in the Western Church by the sixth century and are found in the monastic Rule of St. Benedict. There were essentially seven distinct offices, consistent with Psalm cxix.164: “Seven times a day do I praise thee.” These offices were sung daily “in choir” in all monasteries, cathedrals, and churches with a collegiate body of clergy. The parish clergy were expected to read them each day at some other time, if they were prevented from attending their choral and corporate recitation the church. Laymen were encouraged to attend, particularly the morning office of Lauds and the evening office of Vespers, but they were not obliged to do so.
This elaborate system of daily worship has been described as “the sanctification of time,” and it was viewed as a part of the Church’s “bounden duty and service” in continually offering to God of “the sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.” It was the genius of the great Reformers, such as Luther and Cranmer, to see the advantage to the Church of making the Daily Office a means of corporate worship for all the faithful, laity as well as clergy, and in particular, a means for the recovery of a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures by all the people of God. The scripture lessons appointed for each day are arranged such that all the major doctrines of the Church are covered in the course of a year. Many who have come after him have admired Cranmer’s skill in devising the Offices.
There is a clear pattern to the Daily Offices. They begin with man approaching God, a penitential approach to the holy presence of God, then move quickly to acts of praise in the words of the Psalter. At this point, the direction reverses and God speaks to man the lessons, first in the Old Testament that in one form or another speaks of the Old Covenant, and again in the New Testament lesson that speaks of the New Covenant. The canticle between the two lessons is a bridge between the two Testaments; the canticle sung after the second lesson, usually a “Gospel” canticle, is a response of praise for God’s revelation and for his redemption of his people. At the Gospel canticle, the direction has again reversed to have man speaking to God, and this is continued through the remainder of the Office with either the Apostle’s or Nicene Creed and the prayers. Our prayers are offered in the Name of Christ because He is the basis for our faith — beginning with the Lord’s Prayer, the ideal prayer taught to us by Christ himself. Adapted from the Oxford American Prayer Book Commentary, 1950.