Join with the national church using today’s prayers
Christians have prayed at regular times of the day since the earliest centuries of the Church. Psalm 119:164 speaks of praising God seven times a day. Over the centuries this developed into the Church’s daily offices of prayer. In the sixteenth century Thomas Cranmer simplified these into Morning and Evening Prayer so that ordinary people could share in the Church’s daily rhythm of prayer, using the Bible, psalms and short prayers called collects.
You can access the Church of England’s Daily Prayer resources by clicking the buttons above.
Some suggestions are made below for gestures that you might adopt:
¶ Preparation
Begin by being still before God.
In the morning, as you say, “O Lord open our lips”, you might make a small sign of the cross with your thumb over your lips.
In the evening, as you say, “O God, make speed to save us”, you might like to make the sign of the cross over your body.
¶ The Word of God
After the preparation (which will sometimes include a psalm), Morning or Evening Prayer contains a set of Psalms to be prayed each day. The buttons above will display the psalms from the Church of England’s lectionary for morning or evening prayer, which are prayed slowly across a seven-week cycle.
If you would prefer to pray the psalms over a month (this is what is suggested in the Book of Common Prayer), you can find a simple 30-day pattern here along with the Common Worship psalms here or the Book of Common prayer psalms here.
Once you get used to praying the Psalms, you might like to try chanting them. If you’d like to learn to chant, why not drop by for morning prayer at St Augustine’s at 8.30am?
To be continued…..
