How to Do Morning Prayer in the ACNA’s 2019 Book of Common Prayer
Where Do I Start?
Whether you’re a Rookie Anglican or just “Angli-curious,” perhaps you’ve heard of this new Book of Common Prayer 2019 (BCP 2019) and are asking yourself, “What is this thing?” or “How do I use it?”
Learning how to use the BCP is a little like learning to drive a car. It feels weird at first, and there’s much to remember. After a while, you don’t even think about the mechanics of driving, and you focus on the road and cars around you (with a little music thrown in!). This is a learning process that takes some dedication, but I promise you that if you give yourself a little time, it will become very familiar. The mechanics will fade away into the background, and you will focus more fully on God.
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As you read this guide, I recommend either pulling out your own physical copy of the BCP 2019 or downloading an electronic copy here. Follow along and look through the book as you read.
Here’s Why You Should Do the Daily Office
Morning and Evening Prayer, known together as the Daily Office, are the most basic building blocks of Anglican life. Morning and Evening Prayer are basically scripts. These scripts walk you through
- confessing sin,
- worshipping God,
- reading Scripture, and
- Praying for yourself and others.
Although there are also weekly, seasonal, and occasional scripts in the Prayer Book, the vast majority of the BCP 2019 is dedicated to helping you walk through these daily scripts.
Here’s why the Daily Office is so important: The meat and potatoes of the Christian life are worship, Scripture reading, and prayer, all done in community. If you want to be a strong follower of Jesus Christ, these practices must be present in your life. The Daily Office brings these things together and guides us through them.
How do I start Morning Prayer?
Go ahead and open up your BCP 2019. The very first thing you will come to, after the table of contents and preface, is the order for Morning Prayer (p. 11). Start by simply reading through Morning Prayer. You’ll find italicized words in small print that give directions for who says what, and what posture to take while praying.
Whom is the “Officiant?”
The first confusing term for you may be “Officiant.” Although you can do the Daily Office on your own, the context is assumed to be a gathering of believers with one person leading. If you are praying alone, that won’t apply, and you can read everything. If you gather with your family, in a small group, or at your church, one person can be designated as the “Officiant” for the group. This position exists so that prayer can be both communal and responsive. Remember, worship, Scripture reading, and prayer are intended for us to do in community.
Confession of Sin & Inviatory
As you begin to read Morning Prayer, you will first confess your sins together (11-13). This marks the beginning of our time, because it is only through God’s forgiveness in Christ that we can approach him in praise or with requests. Next is the Invitatory. That’s simply a fancy way of saying God is inviting us to worship him, and we are all asking God to help us do so. This opens up our time of worship.
The Venite, Jubilate, or Pascha Nostrum
Next, you’ll see the Venite and the Jubilate (14-15). Those are Latin names for Psalms 95 and 100. You can pick one of those psalms, saying them out to God. For centuries, these psalms usher the people into a time of worship, because the words of God beckon us into his presence to worship him with joyful hearts. Another song, the Pascha Nostrum, is used in Eastertide and is composed of New Testament verses. It’s powerful stuff! These are all part of the canticles.
Psalm(s) Appointed
After we’ve begun our time of worship with one of these, we read or sing out the Psalms appointed. This leads us to a very exciting feature of the BCP 2019 that you can find on page 268. Keep a finger in your spot in Morning Prayer and turn there now and meet me in the next section!
The Psalter
You are now looking at the explanation of the Psalter on p. 268. I’d recommend reading that entire page. What you’ll see is that “the recitation of the psalms is central to daily worship throughout the Christian Tradition.” Others have called the book of Psalms the Bible’s Prayer Book. The psalms are unique because of their many voices. These are indeed the words of God, inspired Scripture; they are also the words of a human author crying out to God. Jesus frequently quoted the Psalter and, incredibly enough, we get to pray the Psalms as well!
Praying the Psalms does at least three things:
- Allows us to worship and praise God with the words he himself has given us.
- Teaches us how to pray as we ought.
- Exposes us to the full spectrum of human emotion and experience, helping us to come to God with everything, even when our words are words of anger and frustration. This too is worship!
If you turn the page, you will see at the top of page 270 the words “Day 1: Morning Prayer” above Psalm 1. That means that, at Morning Prayer on the first day of the month, you will begin reading here. If you turn to page 274, you’ll see the words “Day 1: Evening Prayer” above Psalm 6. On January 1 (and Feb 1, Mar 1, Apr 1, etc.), you would read Psalms 1–5 in Morning Prayer, and then Psalms 6–8 in Evening Prayer. If you follow this built-in guide, you will recite all 150 psalms every 30 days. There is also a 60-day plan, that helps reduce the amount of reading per day. We will address that in our next section on the Lectionary.
The Psalms & The Lectionary
Going back to Psalm 1, you can begin by reading it straight through if you are alone (I recommend doing so out loud). If you are with multiple people, you can have one person read the psalms out loud for everyone, read them in unison, or read them responsively. Responsive reading means the leader will read the first line of each verse, up to the asterisk. Then everyone will respond by reading the second half of the verse.
For Psalm 1:1, the leader would say, “Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly.” Then everyone would respond in unison, “nor stood in the way of sinners, and has not sat in the seat of the scornful.” This way of reading the psalms is fun because it gets everyone involved. Once you’ve read all the Psalms for Morning Prayer, you can flip back to page 16. You can say the “Glory be” at the bottom of page 16, signaling that this section is wrapped up.
Following this, on 17, you are instructed to read the Lessons. Is the lesson simply a selection of Scripture for reading that day? Where do you find these? Great question! Keep your finger in Morning Prayer, and flip back to 736.
The Daily Office Lectionary
This is the last section of the BCP that we will visit together, but it is arguably the most important. In front of you on page 736 is a description of the Daily Office Lectionary. If you read that, the purpose and logic of the Lectionary will be explained to you. To put it briefly, a “lectionary” is a list of “lections” (“readings”) appointed to be read on specific days.
If one were to follow Morning and Evening Prayer perfectly for a year, they would read the Psalms every 30 or 60 days, most of the Old Testament once, and most of the New Testament twice. In our distracted and overscheduled world, this may seem impossible. I admit that it would take a lot of discipline and commitment, but it is certainly possible. However, this Lectionary also offers a two-year option that reduces the daily reading, making it more feasible to stay on track with the Bible. No matter what, if you just read something rather than nothing, you’re off to a good start!
You’ve recited the Psalms in worship to God, and now you are about to read the Lessons. Flip through the Lectionary, then find the current date. You are given an Old Testament reading and a New Testament reading. Next to that, you’ll find a selection of the Psalms. This is the 60-day option. You can follow that instead of the 30-day option we covered before if you wish. Read the Lessons out loud with your Bible in hand. After each reading, you can say “The Word of the Lord.” Everyone should respond, “Thanks be to God!” After the Lessons, you can read or sing one of the responses listed on 17-20, followed by the Apostle’s Creed, which is a summary of the Christian faith.
The Prayers
We’ve worshipped, we’ve read Scripture, and we’ve prayed. We begin by greeting one another and asking for the mercy of Christ as we pray. Then, we recite the Lord’s. Much like the Psalms, the Lord’s Prayer is our model for how to pray and is itself a prayer worth praying.
Next come the Suffrages. These are a series of prayers said responsively, and almost all are snippets of Scripture together. These three elements (Introduction, Lord’s Prayer, Suffrages) form the first section of the prayer. The second section of prayers is the Collects. “Collect” is a name for a prayer that was written as part of the “collected” prayers of the church. These are concise, theologically dense prayers that make very specific requests of God in the name of Jesus. The instructions on 22–25 will help you cycle through these prayers daily.
After the Collects, we are instructed to offer any thanksgivings or intercessions as we desire. You’ll notice that this is the first time in Morning Prayer when extemporaneous prayer has been offered. Is that because unscripted prayer is bad and scripted prayers are better by nature? No, not necessarily.
Enriching the Mind with the Word of God & Prayer
However, the point is first to have allowed the Word of God to saturate our minds and hearts, and secondly to have allowed the prayers of the church to guide our language. After this schooling in the language of prayer, we are in a far better place to bring to God all those things with which we are concerned.
Pray for others, pray for the lost, pray for yourself, pray for your family, your church, whoever, whatever! This can go on as long as you desire, or you can skip entirely. The important point to take away is that both scripted and extemporaneous prayers are good and important, and each has its place in our devotional life. The third and final section of prayer is the closing, where we pray the general thanksgiving, ask God to hear us according to his will, and request the grace and peace to go with us.
You’re done! Your first time through this, it will probably take you an hour, maybe longer. As you get more familiar with the office, it will not be uncommon for you to pray all of Morning or Evening Prayer in 20 or 25 minutes, almost entirely from memory. Why would you want to get to that point, to show off and impress your friends, or to make God like you? Of course not! It boils down to mastering the fundamentals of a devotional life grounded in worship, Scripture reading, and prayer to God.
Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.
Colossians 3:16–17
Mastering the Fundamentals
Vince Lombardi was a legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers, a professional football team. Legend has it that on his first day of practice with the team, Lombardi held up a football and said, “Gentlemen, this is a football.”
If you ever play a sport, the fundamentals are the first things you learn. Learning how to position your feet, tackle correctly, block, and hold a football are all fundamentals of the game of American football. As someone plays the sport longer, they will eventually learn complex schemes for offense, defense, and special teams. Yet, no matter how advanced you get, you never outgrow the fundamentals.
Being Anglican, at its very core, is a personal and communal spirituality—a way of being Christian in your everyday life. In the Daily Office are the fundamentals of life. The Daily Office is the fundamental element of Anglican spirituality that anybody can start today and can never outgrow.
The ultimate goal of the Daily Office is to seek to behold God in all his glory. We worship because he is worthy, for he has redeemed us at the price of his own blood. We read Scripture, it is the living word of God, and he speaks to us there every time we pick it up. Finally, we pray because he says he hears us and cares about all that’s happening in our lives. It is not prideful to say that you want to master these fundamentals; it is part and parcel of following Jesus Christ. It is mere Christianity.
Cover image by chatkarenstudio, courtesy of Canva.
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The Standard of Prayer Book Worship (Jerusalem Declaration 6)
We rejoice in our Anglican sacramental and liturgical heritage as an expression of the gospel, and we uphold the 1662 Book of Common Prayer as a true and authoritative standard of worship and prayer, to be translated and locally adapted for each culture.
Here’s a Bookmarked, Easy-to-Navigate PDF of the ACNA’s 2019 Book of Common Prayer
The Anglican Church in North America’s 2019 Book of Common Prayer is available for free online here. However, I’ve heard that people are looking for an easy-to-navigate bookmarked PDF. (Granted, an app or something like http://www.bcponline.org/ would be better! But for now a PDF must suffice.) Special thanks are due to Matthew Heflin, who took…
