Daily Office Update

There are many options available for those who wish to pray along with the Church’s daily offices. One can use Treasury of Daily Prayer for this, though as Pr. David Petersen noted years ago, that book is pretty much designed to be a single office book, and that indeed is how my wife and I have settled into using it. There is the lovely Brotherhood Prayer Book which gives one a maximal Gregorian experience with a Lutheran accent. Various individuals have published Breviaries (office books), including For All the Saints from American Lutheran Publicity Bureau and Concordia’s older volumes: Daily Prayer by Robert Sauer and The Daily Office by Herbert Lindemann. 

I wanted to share in this post how I’ve sort of settled into praying the Office, and it’s not from any of those books, oddly enough. It’s a strange combo of my Bible and my Phone (and before I got that new Bible I wrote about a while ago, it was just my phone!).  

I begin with Matins with its opening versicles, and then pray the Psalms assigned for the morning from the monthly Psalter (this is the genius of the Book of Common Prayer, and you can find it in Treasury). I pray these from the King James Version, and have my Bible marked with where the Psalms begin and end, morning and evening. Then I read the first assigned reading from the Original King James Version Bible Reading Chart. It’s usually a chapter from the Old Testament, sometimes from the Apocrypha (and usually so on saints days, such as the Apostles’). After reading that chapter, I pray the Te Deum Laudamus. Finishing that I turn to the second assigned reading, again, usually a chapter. In the morning, this will come successively from Matthew-Acts; and then repeat in the course of the year. After reading the second chapter, I pray the Benedictus. Then I use Lutheran Prayer Companion (most often the electronic version) to offer up the prayers for the day (two morning prayers and then a prayer based on successive petitions of the Our Father). The collect for grace and the benedicamus round out the office. I have, of all things, a spreadsheet on my phone with the appointed Psalms and Bible Readings for the month. I’m slowly filling it out. It makes it very simple to double check that I’m praying the correct Psalms and readings.

Sometime post 3:30 p.m.., I’ll pray the evening office. And here it is the same: Opening versicles from Vespers, the monthly Psalter, the first reading from the Old Testament (mostly the next chapter from the morning) or Apocrypha, Magnificat, the second reading from the Epistles or Revelation, the Nunc Dimittis, and then usually just the Kyrie, Our Father, and Collect for Peace, closing with the Benedicamus. I actually usually reserve the Evening Prayers (two for each day from Lutheran Prayer Companion) for sometime closer to bedtime.

I’ve found it a joyously simple way to stay rooted in the Daily Office. It’s true that it short-shrifts the Hymns, but I do occasionally throw one of those in too, particularly the daily hymns from the Lutheran Prayer Companion which mirror in many ways the traditional Breviary hymns for each day. I’m curious if others have adapted a way of praying the office that has proven beneficial to them?