Finding a Rhythm of Prayer in the Daily Office
I found myself in a season of life when prayer was really hard. In fact, I didn’t know how to do it at all. It wasn’t so much that my spiritual life had hit a wall. It was shipwrecked. Broken.
It hadn’t always been this way. I’d grown up in a household where we prayed before every meal, even when we ate out in restaurants. We were part of a church community that prayed. You were supposed to feel close to God when you prayed. Good stuff happened when you prayed.
In college, I found myself in a community where praying in tongues was a big deal. You could be a “prayer warrior.” Feeling the right feelings was really important when you prayed.
It all worked for me. Until it stopped working. In a season, then, of shouting all the raw emotions at God, and sensing nothing in return, a friend shared with me a prayer book with a red leather cover that our small community used together. This was my introduction to the daily office.
It was a blast of fresh air.
What is the daily office?
In its most basic form, the daily office utilizes the book of Psalms as conversation-starter with God. The daily office is sometimes also referred to as “fixed-hour prayer” (because communities pray it at fixed points of the day) or “liturgical prayer.” Christian traditions vary in the details, but the book of Psalms anchors any version of the daily office. Psalms was the prayer book that guided the worship of Israel. It was the prayer book of the early church.
If you were to visit a monastery today, depending on the order and tradition, you would experience gatherings of prayer like this with the monks or nuns maybe twice a day, or as many as seven times a day.
Imagine a river flowing that is the prayers of the saints through time and around the world. Stepping into that river is what the daily office is like. A mentor once said to a group I was in, “Pray the daily office twice a day every day for two years and see what kind of person you become.”
Within the psalms we find a prayer for every day of our lives. There are prayers of praise and thanksgiving. There are prayers of lament and anger. The psalms are a school of prayer. They teach us how to talk to God and how to talk about God. As Dallas Willard writes, “If you bury yourself in Psalms, you emerge knowing God and understanding life.”
The daily office in the Bible and in the Church's story
We find the earliest hints of a daily rhythm of morning and evening prayer in the story of Israel, long before the psalms came to be. The book of Exodus, in the time of Moses and the tabernacle in the wilderness, details offerings to be made each morning and evening.
This is reiterated in Numbers 28:3–8. Imagine this daily ritual forming your imagination of time and God’s presence each morning and evening—the sight of the smoke, the smell of the cooking meat and bread.
Generations later, a psalmist writes, “I will praise you seven times a day.” In time, a tradition makes this seven specific times during the day. We find Daniel praying at fixed points of the day. When we read in Acts that Peter and John were at the temple for a time of prayer, it would likely have been one of these set times that the community prayed the psalms. Likewise, when Peter later sees the vision that leads him to Cornelius’ house, he is engaged in noon-time prayers.
Christian monastic communities then continued this tradition. The desert mothers and fathers followed cycles of prayer. The Rule of Saint Benedict in the sixth century follows a pattern of seven daily times for prayer. This is the foundation for the contemporary Roman Catholic resource, The Liturgy of the Hours. (The red prayer book given to me was a layperson’s condensed 4-week version of this.) Benedict said, “To pray is to work, to work is to pray.” Our modern word “office” comes from this Latin word meaning "work." Essentially, prayer like this is our daily, first work.
In the English Reformation of the 16th century, Thomas Cranmer compiled what would eventually become the Book of Common Prayer. It was a radical missional initiative as it brought Scripture and a common prayer resource to regular English-speaking people. Today, the Book of Common Prayer offers morning and evening prayer, with additional options of midday prayer and compline (a prayer before sleep).
What Makes Up the Daily Office
Today, I am a part of the Anglican tradition. To some degree, this is a result of my experience of the daily office and the way the Anglican tradition stewards it.
When you open the Book of Common Prayer, you'll find Morning and Evening Prayer at the very front. These are the pieces that make up the daily office in this tradition.
An opening sentence. Philippians 1:2, Psalm 122:1, and Psalm 19:14 are all provided as options you can choose from. During special seasons, like Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter, other seasonally appropriate verses are offered.
Confession of sin. We take a few moments to embrace humility before God.
Invitatory. This is a call-and-response of a traditional prayer with roots in Benedict. It blends Psalm 70:1 and the Gloria Patri—a hymn from the 4th century that is repeated several times through the prayer liturgy.
Psalm 95 or 100. One of these celebratory psalms opens our time of prayer each morning.
Psalm of the day. The Book of Common Prayer offers cycles for praying the psalms in 30 days or in 60 days.
The first lesson. This is typically a chapter from the Old Testament, and the lectionary covers almost all of the Old Testament in a year.
Te Deum Laudamus (We Praise You, O God). Another 4th-century prayer.
The second lesson. This is a chapter from the New Testament. The lectionary covers the New Testament twice in a year.
The song of Zechariah. This is Luke 1:68-79.
The Apostles’ Creed.
The Lord’s Prayer.
The collects. The collects are brief 2-5 sentence prayers. One is assigned for each week of the year and prayed daily that week. Another collect is assigned to each day of the week. Additionally, three options are provided as a Prayer for Mission. The Book of Common Prayer also includes 125 more collects for a wide variety of life circumstances. Much like the psalms, this can be a rich resource for when we don’t know what to pray.
Intercessions, thanksgivings, and praise. This is an opportunity for spontaneous prayers, anything else we may have on our heart and mind in the moment.
The General Thanksgiving. This prayer was first composed for the 1662 Book of Common Prayer.
A Prayer of Saint John Chrysostom.
Benediction. Options offered include 2 Corinthians 13:14, Romans 15:13, and Ephesians 3:20-21.
Consider each of these pieces building blocks that you can use with the time that you have. When we pray morning prayer at the Abbey of the Heights, we omit the first lesson and the prayer that follows it. We use the 60-day cycle of the psalms. We keep the collects to just three. This typically takes 15-20 minutes, and that gives ample space for intercessions, praise, and silence.
Evening prayer follows a similar format:
An opening sentence. John 8:12, Psalm 26:8, or Psalm 141:2.
Confession of sin.
Phos hilaron (O gladsome light). This is one of the oldest prayers of the early church, dating from the 2nd or 3rd century.
Psalm of the day.
The song of Mary. From Luke 1:46-55.
The second lesson.
The song of Simeon. From Luke 2:29-32.
The Apostles’ Creed.
The Lord’s Prayer.
The collects.
Intercessions, thanksgivings, and praise.
The General Thanksgiving.
A Prayer of Saint John Chrysostom.
Benediction.
You can see the emphasis on weaving Scripture throughout our prayer in this Anglican structure. Other traditions vary, but what they all have in common is the psalms as the core.
Why Pray the Daily Office
The daily office can answer the question: How do you pray when you don’t know how to pray? The daily office provides a means to pray on days when it’s really hard to pray or on those days you just can’t seem to find the words. In some ways, it can be like training wheels for your prayer life.
Parker Palmer, in A Hidden Wholeness, talks about farmers in the Midwest who, in winter, prepare for big snowstorms by tying a rope from the back door of their house to the barn so they can safely go outside. The blizzards come quick, and in the thick of it, you can’t see, and many a farmer has frozen to death, lost right outside their own door. The rope secured the way.
The daily office can be like this rope. It keeps us on track. It provides a way when distractions assault us. The daily office offers a way of entering into a new world.
I have found a number of things especially helpful about the daily office. First, these words are trustworthy. Praying Scripture is praying true words about God. These words are good, rich, and mature theology. To pray these words is to pray like Jesus. Second, there is beauty in these words. The psalms are poetry, and they shape my imagination with incredible images of what God is like. They speak not just to my head, but also my heart. They shake me out of the same old words I can get stuck in.
Third, there is a structure to the daily office. It provides a guide for my prayer. I’m not left wondering what to say or fumbling through whatever is on the top of my mind. Fourth, there is unity in these words. To pray the daily office is to pray in unity with other Christians, sometimes around the world, sometimes throughout time. Last, these words are enough. I don’t have to get up at 5 a.m. and pray for hours on end to be a good Christian. It’s not about how hard I try. All I have to do is show up.
How Do You Start Praying the Daily Office?
The daily office comes in numerous forms, depending on your tradition or community. For Roman Catholics, there is the Liturgy of the Hours. Anglicans and Episcopalians utilize the Book of Common Prayer.
If you don’t come from a liturgical tradition, I recommend one of two resources to get started. Phyllis Tickle has a three-volume set, The Divine Hours (Prayers for Springtime, Prayers for Summertime, Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime). Save this link to your phone’s home screen to easily access the prayer for the day. It offers four readings each, and they’re sequenced straight through for minimum page turning. It also includes daily prayers from the Book of Common Prayer. This is a simple place to start.
For a single-volume resource, I recommend Common Prayer: A Liturgy for Ordinary Radicals, compiled by Shane Claiborne, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, and Enuma Okoro. It includes morning, midday, and evening prayer. If you’ve used a daily devotional book before, the structure in this should look and feel familiar. It’s also available on a website.
Here at the Abbey of the Heights, we use the 2019 Book of Common Prayer published by the Anglican Church of North America. The online version, which also includes audio, is available at dailyoffice2019.com.
The version you choose doesn’t matter as much as simply doing it. Find a resource and a rhythm that works for you and commit to it. Start small. If you’re new to this practice, don’t start trying to do this seven times a day. Commit to either morning or evening prayer. Set a reminder on your phone for the same time at least five days a week. Protect the time.
Don’t let yourself get overwhelmed by all the pieces you find in a resource. Again, start small. Choose a brief opening prayer, read the psalm, and find a brief closing prayer. That can be enough. Remember that the goal is to grow in the love of God, to experience connection with God, and not to check all the boxes. There are no gold stars for reading every single word every single day. A slow and steady habit will change you slowly over time.
Find community and do this with others as much as you are able. It’s not designed for personal devotion time. The daily office invites us to connect with the Body of Christ, past, present, and future.
Remember, we are always beginners in prayer.
Wrapping Up
You don't have to be in any particular tradition to use the daily office. These aren’t magic words. Generations of Christians have found them to be really good words for shaping us to love like God loves. Most of the content is Scripture. Most of the supplemental liturgies and prayers come from the historic Church. The daily office is for every person who wants to follow Jesus.
When we pray Scripture out loud, we listen to God speaking to us in these words. Eugene Peterson writes,
Scripture and prayer are not two separate entities. My pastoral work was to fuse them into a single act: scriptureprayer, or prayerscripture. It is this fusion of God speaking to us (Scripture) and our speaking to him (prayer) that the Holy Spirit uses to form the life of Christ in us.
If you want to learn how to pray, if you want to deepen a sustainable prayer life, I don’t know of a better practice than the daily office.