Morning Prayer: A Rookie Anglican Guide
It’s very easy to wake up in the morning, get dressed, have a cup of coffee while we check the latest news, and immediately jump into our day. We often check our emails before we check in with our souls. What would happen if, instead, we started our day in praise and thanksgiving to God?
Morning Prayer is the first prayer of the day in the Daily Office. It provides a way to rise in the morning, praise God for bringing us through the night, and dedicate ourselves to him at the start of the new day. It provides a way of consecrating ourselves to the Lord for that day.
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Like all our four offices of daily prayer, Morning Prayer can be said alone or with others and by clergy or laypeople. It is often also called Matins, especially when sung.
Multiple authors have explained the value of the Daily Office for finding God, emotional stability, and even verse memorization. However, like many of the Book of Common Prayer’s liturgies, it can be intimidating. I encourage you to check out our other articles and Rookie Anglican guides about the Daily Office. And if you’d like a simplified version of Morning Prayer, check out our Daily Office Booklet.
A Refresher on the Daily Office
Morning Prayer is one part of the Daily Office or the daily rhythm of prayer in the Book of Common Prayer. Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer are the two principal services, with shorter services of Midday Prayer and Compline said at noon and before bed. The four-part rhythm is:
- Morning Prayer (morning)
- Midday Prayer (noon)
- Evening Prayer (early evening)
- Compline (before bed)
As David Smith explains, these prayer services are the “most basic building blocks of Anglican life;” they are “scripts” that walk you through “confessing sin, worshipping God, reading scripture, and praying for yourself and others.”
The Three Parts of Morning Prayer
Morning Prayer can be divided into three parts: Preparation, Proclamation, and Prayers.
- The Preparation features a confession of sin and a series of responses that prepare the heart to hear God’s word.
- The Proclamation features God’s word in the Psalms and the Scripture readings, together with Canticles or songs taken from scripture.
- The Prayers feature the Lord’s Prayer, written prayers from across church history, and a time for personal prayer, together with prayers to conclude the service.
1. Preparation
Confession of Sin
The first thing we do in both Morning Prayer is to confess that we have sinned,
We have left undone those things which we ought to have done, and we have done those things which we ought not to have done…
It may seem odd to confess that we have sinned right after we have woken up. However, we are, after all, always sinners in need of grace, and there is still much that can happen between either Evening Prayer or Compline and the next morning. So, we ask for God’s forgiveness.
At this point, there are two options. A priest, if present, can offer one of two absolutions. If a deacon or layperson is saying the office, they say instead,
Grant to your faithful people, merciful Lord, pardon and peace; that we may be cleansed from all our sins, and serve you with a quiet mind; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
(This can also often work quite well for a priest if he is saying the office alone, as one can’t really pronounce absolution on oneself!)
Invitatory
After we confess our sins and receive the Lord’s grace, we recite an antiphon that ushers us into a time of praise.
Invitatory Psalm
After we confess our sins and receive the Lord’s grace, we recite an antiphon that ushers us into a time of praise. A psalm or hymn follows this. In the morning, this is typically the Vinite (verses from Psalm 95) or, as an alternate, the Jubilate (Psalm 100). During Easter, the Pascha Nostrum (compiled from passages in 1 Corinthians and Romans) can take their place. Do only one of these.
VEnite
These verses, taken from Psalm 95, speak of God’s kingship over everything and his role as creator of everything in heaven and on earth.
Jubilate
Based on Psalm 100, the Jubilate calls us to serve the Lord with gladness and thanksgiving in all we do.
Pascha Nostrum
The Pascha Nostrum reminds us that Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us. Therefore, we should consider ourselves dead to sin. It also reminds us that we shall all be made alive in Christ.
- For a commentary on the Pascha Nostrum, go here.
2. Proclamation
The Psalm(s) Appointed
At this point, we transition to praising God through the Psalms, which are, after all, the reflections of David and others in their own relationship with God. These can provide a powerful lens through which to process our own relationship to him. There are two possible ways to go through the Psalms. The Prayer Book divides the Psalms into a 30-day cycle in the Psalter itself. However, there is an alternate 60-day cycle at the back of the book with the Daily Office Lectionary (pp. 734-763) for those who want shorter daily readings.
Readings
From the time of praise, we transition into the reading of scripture. There are two readings each for morning and evening appointed each day, which can be found in the Daily Office Lectionary (see above). If used as prescribed (in the words of the Prayer Book),
The Old Testament is read in its entirety once a year (with the exception of a few passages)… The Gospel and Acts are read in their entirety twice each year… The Epistles are read twice each year… except for the Revelation to John, which is read only once, during the Advent season.
A few passages of the Apocrypha are included. This is in keeping with the Anglican principle that these books are useful “for example of life and instruction,” though we derive no doctrine from them.
Canticles
Canticles are songs, whether sung or spoken, that respond to the readings. Traditionally, for Morning Prayer, these are the Te Deum (a 4th-Century Christian hymn) after the first reading and the Benedictus (the Song of Zachariah) after the second. During Lent, the Benedictus Es, Domine, mostly derived from the apocryphal Song of the Three Young Men in the longer Greek version of Daniel, can be read in place of the Te Deum after the first reading.
Te Deum laudamus
The hymn known as the Te Deum (from its incipit, Te Deum laudamus) dates from the 4th century. It extolls God the Father as worthy of praise in both heaven and earth by all creatures and people, including the heavenly seraphim and the apostles, prophets, and martyrs. They praise Jesus the Son for his life and death, for our salvation, his resurrection, and his Kingship in Glory.
Benedictus
The Benedictus is the Song of Zechariah found in Luke 1:68–79. In it, Zechariah praises God for delivering salvation to his people. He reflects on all the Old Testament promises being fulfilled in the coming of Christ and proclaims his son John’s importance as Prophet of the Most High.
Benedictus es, Domine
The Benedictus Es, Domine canticle is taken from The Song of the Three Young Men, part of the longer, Greek Septuagint text of the Book of Daniel, which we find in Catholic bibles or Protestant/ecumenical editions with Apocrypha. The canticle praises God both in his temple and on high, where he is seated between the Cherubim.
3. The Prayers
We then move from the time of scripture and response to an extended period of laying our concerns and thanksgivings before the Lord.
The Lord’s Prayer
We begin with the prayer Jesus taught us. We say it in unison, expressing our shared faith and dependence on God. The Lord’s Prayer encompasses adoration, petition, and surrender.
Suffrages
The suffrages are where we petition for the world, the church, and those in need. In Morning Prayer, they begin, “O Lord, show your mercy upon us,” and we pray antiphonally for these things.
Collects
Collects are brief prayers that gather the congregation’s intentions and desires into a focused petition. They are often composed to correspond to specific days or seasons in the liturgical calendar. Collects typically follow a distinct structure, beginning with an invocation or address to God, followed by a particular request or petition, and concluding with a doxology or affirmation of faith.
We usually begin with the Collect of the Day, which is the collect for that week of the church year and usually (with few exceptions) the one used in the previous Sunday’s church service. It can be found on pp. 598-640 of the Prayer Book. We follow this with the collect for the weekday and then one of the prayers for mission. Any additional collects we wish to include can be found on pp. 641-683.
To learn more about the Collects of the Christian Year, read “What is a Collect?” and “Announcing Collect Reflections: Reflecting on the Collects of the Christian Year.”
Thanksgivings and Intercessions
Here, we lift up all of our individual concerns and those we know about to God’s care. As David Smith reminds us, “Pray for others, pray for the lost, pray for yourself, pray for your family, your church, whoever, whatever! This can go for as long as you desire.”
The General Thanksgiving
The General Thanksgiving is the natural follow-up to our extemporaneous prayers. It also closes the prayer time if the service has been said alone. In it, we thank God for “all the blessings of this life” and ask him to continue to make us aware of his mercies.
The Prayer of St. John Chrysostom
Evening prayer traditionally finishes with the prayer of St. John Chrysostom, especially if said with a group. This late 4th or early 5th-century prayer is credited to the notable Archbishop of Constantinople from that time. It humbly thanks God for giving us the time to join in prayer together through Christ (“that when two or three are gathered together in his Name you will grant their requests”) and petitions him to fulfill those requests in the way that is best for us.
Dismissal and Grace
Finally, we end with a responsive dismissal and a verse of scripture that thematically sets us on our way.
We’re Here to Help
This seems like a lot, I know, even explained. However, we’re here to help. You can sign up for our Daily Office Booklet to have a simplified, printable booklet to guide you through Morning and Evening Prayer every day, including a table of readings. You can also check out DailyOffice2019.com, sponsored by Anglican House Publishing, for an online version of the Daily Office that you adjust to your own preferences.
Photo by sdominick from Getty Images, courtesy of Canva.
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