The ordering for Midday Prayer can serve as a great way to refocus on something other than our own problems and to work on bending ourselves back out instead of staying bent in.
Let Us Keep the Feast: Reflections on the Pascha Nostrum
The world God made is a world of rhythm and rhyme. Seasons change and come again before leaving us once more. There is a predictable stability in the constant diversity that God has made, something C.S. Lewis once brought out in his masterpiece The Screwtape Letters. As his fictional demon once put it, God has…
Vesper Light: Reflections on the Evening Canticles
Evening is when one of two things can happen to us as fallen children of Adam. We either thank God for the day’s victories or dread the onset of the night’s terror. We watch as the sun goes to its rest, mirroring us, or we fidget and search for ways to keep the lights on….
The History of the Lent Collects
The theme of the Lent collects is human sinfulness and our need for God. We “acknowledge our wretchedness” and are “tempted,” and our resistance is “weak.” We have “no power in ourselves to help ourselves,” have “disordered affections” and “unruly wills.” And so, what we need above all is “new and contrite hearts,” for “our…
Blessed be the Lord: Reflections on the Benedictus
The Daily Office of the Anglican tradition is known for many things. It has elements of rhythmic consistency and lines of beautiful prose. Part of this extraordinary heritage is the use of canticles/songs. These are either said or chanted at different times in Morning and Evening Prayer; many of them come from the very words…
A People of One Book
“I want to know one thing—the way to heaven…Let me be homo unius libri [A man of one book]. Here, then, I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone: Only God is here. In his presence I open, I read his book; for this end, to find the way to…
My Spirit Rejoices: Reflections on the Magnificat
Our God is a God of music. He does not sit in his high and noble tower, eternally contemplating his own existence, as some philosophers have hypothesized. He is, rather, always engaged in the drama of his own glory, bursting into the human world with shards of joy that inspire souls to sing out in…
We Praise You, O God: Reflections on the Te Deum
The Early Church has furnished us with a wellspring of liturgical resources. Studies in this area have seen a minor renaissance as modern Christians, particularly Evangelicals, have expressed a desire for a living tradition to hold on to. [1] They desire for this tradition to not simply be the accepted beliefs and practices of those…
Getting Started with the Daily Office: A Rookie Anglican Guide
Let’s face it: to the modern ear, “Daily Office” sounds more like your workplace than your prayer routine. However, while this “office” is not the workplace that it sounds like, it is, in a certain sense, a task or, more appropriately, a vocation. The odd name comes from the Latin officium divinum, which means “divine…
Family Prayer: A Rookie Anglican Guide
Do you want to introduce the Daily Office into the life of your family, but the length of those prayer times is a bit daunting for your small children? Or do you want a quick version to do yourself when you have a busy workday? Family Prayer is here to help! It is for exactly…
Midday Prayer: A Rookie Anglican Guide
Our days are busy. Life is a nonstop hustle from the time we finish breakfast until we get home from work or school. Lunch itself may be eaten on the go. In the midst of it all, we often neglect Paul’s instruction to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thes. 5:17). However, Midday Prayer is here to…
