Knowing God: Praying the Daily Office
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Knowing God: Praying the Daily Office Foundations At the heart of formation is knowing God, at the heart of knowing God is the deepening of our life of worship and prayer -- which is different from our life of leading others in worship and prayer; We are called first to be disciples of Jesus; This period of formation is the time for us to be developing our spiritual disciplines; We are required to be in Spiritual Direction with someone external to the Parish, we may also wish to begin a relationship with a Confessor external to the Parish (see page 773 of APBA); Formation involves learning to talk to ourselves about how we are getting on: reflective practice (we have been learning this through journaling) - How might we continue to keep a journal about our journey with God? Praying the Daily Office Great Jewish tradition of prayer and waiting, Jesus and his disciples prayed together, Christians from the earliest times gathered together for prayer and worship; Monastic communities brought the discipline of structured prayer alive in the Christian tradition, and our offices are abbreviations of theirs; Monks gathered seven times for prayer during the day, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer reduced this to two Offices; We now have the possibility of four Daily Offices: Morning Prayer, Prayer During the Day, Evening Prayer and Compline (APBA does not offer Prayer During the Day, but other Anglicans Prayer Books do); The Ordinal requires us to pray the Daily Offices; It is normal to use APBA for our Daily Offices, but there are other resources to help us to remain enlivened; Some of us have been praying this for years, for others of us this is new, and we need to grow into it; We pray as part of the world wide Church - many of us will pray alone, but we are joined spiritually with others If we can pray the Offices in groups or in the church building that would be good; Sometimes we cannot say the Office due to other circumstances, and we will know that others pray it for us on that day; We need to find ways to be creative about intercessions – have a prayer list, use prayer diaries (Diocese, mission agencies, Parish); If we are going to pray the Offices at home it may be helpful for us to find a regular space, and make it special. Two Forms of Daily Office in ‘A Prayer Book for Australia’ Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer at the front of the Prayer Book (First and Second Order) Daily Prayer at the back of the Prayer Book (different Office for each day) Additionally: ‘A Service of Light’ and ‘Prayer at the End of the Day’ (Compline) Plenty of Options for Variety Additional Canticles are offered (APBA Page 425), some people use Additional Canticles from other Prayer Books Other options are provided in the rubrics (APBA 431), including: (1) Addition of a confession; (2) Alternative opening prayers for Advent, Lent and Easter; (3) Alternative books are recommended for those who want an antiphon before canticles and psalms, and prayers at the end of psalms; (4) Using one day repeatedly for a season. Lectionary Provides readings and psalms for Morning and Evening Prayer each day, as well as the Eucharist; For Compline and the Service of Light everything that we need is in the text – but we might choose to use another reading from Scripture; Lectionary gives us the specific calendar for the year (the calendar is in APBA but days move because of moveable Feasts and Sundays, so it is easier to use the lectionary); Lectionary provides a table at the back for those who wish to read all of the Psalms in 2 months (in the main body of the lectionary some psalms are missed because of Sundays and other Holy Days); Lectionary provides a table for alternative Psalms for seasons; The Calendar The Calendar: APBA Page 452; Principal Holy Days – cannot be displaced. They celebrate the essential events of salvation; Festival Holy Days – may take place on a Sunday or may be moved to another day. They celebrate other events in the life of Christ and the Church; Lesser Festivals – commemorations. They remember martyrs and lesser saints and events, and may be displaced or omitted; The Seasons: APBA Page 454; Ash Wednesday, Good Friday and the Forty Days of Lent are fast days (not the Sundays in Lent); Ember Days – days for praying for vocations, and self-examination for those of us in formation: following Pentecost, week preceding St Andrew’s Day; Rogation Week – prayer for the whole created order [beating the bounds in the old days] in Australia this is now the week of St Francis in October; Some parishes celebrate festivals that are not in our Calendar, but which are in the calendar of the universal Church; Collects are provided in APBA and are used at Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and the Eucharist; Collects are provided as the ‘Prayer of the Day’ for the actual day or Sunday and ‘Prayer of the Week’ for the rest of the week; General Collects are provided for lesser saints who are commemorated (for example all martyrs, missionaries, monks, bishops); Additional Collects are also provided for Australian events such as Australia Day. David John Battrick BSG July 2009 .