A Brief History of Morning Prayer
The practice of setting apart certain times of the day for prayer can be traced back to early Jewish practice. In the time of Temple worship morning and evening sacrifices were offered and daily services of psalms and prayers were offered at 9:00 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. By 2nd c. CE Christians had adapted the practice of marking the day liturgically with morning and evening prayer. When Christianity was officially recognized by Constantine, Emperor of Rome, weekday services spread more widely and became more formal and took place in public worship spaces. A fuller monastic practice was developing at the same time, with a devotion to the reading of scriptures and the praying of the psalms. Some Eastern monks prayed the entire Psalter (150 psalms) daily! The monastic office consisted of 8 times of prayer, more or less every 3 hours. Of those 8, Lauds and Vespers were the two offices that developed into Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer and were most often prayed by the laity. In addition to Morning and Evening Prayer our prayerbook also contains short forms for noonday prayers and Compline (bedtime prayers). As most of you know, Compline is sung at Saint Mark’s every Sunday evening and is one of our most popular offerings. Evening Prayer is also prayed at Saint Mark’s at 6:30 p.m. Monday-Friday.
Over time, the praying of the daily office became more and more the duty of clergy and monastics and less a practice of the entire Christian community. Such daily prayers, if said at all, were said as part of one’s personal devotions at home. Lay people continued to attend mass regularly but rarely received communion. In the time of the Reformation, the weekday masses that had become the norm were eliminated and some German reformers sought to reincorporate the practice of Morning and Evening Prayer. As the Anglican Church began to establish itself as an entity separate from the Roman Catholic Church, Thomas Cranmer prepared two drafts for a daily office, one of which drew on the work of the German reformers. Cranmer’s two drafts both contributed to the form of the Daily Office that appeared in the 1549 Book of Common Prayer. Key components of that form included the reading of the psalter monthly across Morning and Evening Prayer and the reading of most of the Old Testament and Apocrypha across a year and the reading of the New Testament 3 times a year. Our prayerbook continues this pattern with a two year office lectionary. This systematic course reading of the books of the Bible and the praying of the Psalter are an important part of the rhythm and continuity of the Daily Office.
In 1561 Archbishop Grindal ordered that Sunday worship consist of Morning Prayer, the Litany, and Ante-Communion (the beginning portion of the Eucharistic liturgy). On Sundays on which Communion occurred, this same pattern continued with the addition of the full Communion liturgy. Communion was somewhat infrequent, ranging from monthly to quarterly but when it occurred there was a strong emphasis on everyone receiving communion, not just the priest which had become the norm in the Roman Catholic Church. Both the Wesleyan revival of the eighteenth century and the Catholic revival of the nineteenth century encouraged weekly communion and many Episcopal parishes added an early communion service, “the 8:00” service attended by the “early risers and particularly devout and pious members.” Morning Prayer remained the principle liturgy. Other parishes maintained a pattern of communion once a month and Morning Prayer the other three Sundays.
Across the twentieth century, as scholars encountered texts demonstrating that Eucharist was the central action of early Christian worship, energy developed to recapture that practice. The centrality of the Eucharist to Sunday worship became an increasingly accepted norm with more and more parishes making Eucharist the principle Sunday liturgy. The 1979 Book of Common Prayer reflected that change in thinking and clearly identifies Eucharist as the model for Sunday worship and for the first time developed a more comprehensive and substantial Liturgy of the Word that for the Eucharistic Liturgy. However the1979 Prayerbook also recognized the importance that Morning Prayer held for many faithful Episcopalians and provided the option of Morning Prayer being used as the Liturgy of the Word at Sunday Eucharists. In this practice, the Eucharistic lectionary is used rather than the office lectionary.