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Our Worship
The Daily Office:
Morning & Evening Prayer
While we celebrate Holy Communion every Sunday, all
Christians
are encouraged to involve a pattern of daily prayer and Bible study in
their lives. Part of the richness of the Anglican tradition
is
what we call the Daily Office, or Morning and Evening Prayer, which
provides for a formal time of prayer and Scripture study twice each
day. These services can be celebrated corporately or
individually.
In the early centuries of the Church this pattern of daily prayer was
formally established and over time evolved into the Divine Office.
While the Divine Office provided a beautiful and enriching
form
of prayer, study, and teaching from Scripture and the writings of the
Church Fathers, it became so complicated, unwieldy, and
time-consuming that in most places it was only maintained in monastic
communities because ordinary Christians simply did not have the luxury
of breaking away from their work eight times during the day to follow
the Divine Office. At the time of the English Reformation,
Archbishop Cranmner, the principle author of the Book of Common Prayer,
distilled the complicated Divine Office down to the simple services of
Morning and Evening Prayer – simple enough for the average
Englishman to pray and read on his own.
While the Daily Office isn't the only option for our daily prayers, the
advantage of the Office is that it keeps our prayers focused on God and
on his Kingdom rather than allowing them to become self-centred as we
are often prone to make them. The Daily Office, in
combination
with the Daily Lectionary found in the Prayer Book, also has the
advantage of walking us through most of the Bible over the course of a
year with a selection of Psalms, an Old Testament lesson, and a New
Testament lesson for both morning and evening of each day of the year.
If
you
need more information or would like to talk to us please call us
at (250) 334-9673
or send us an
.
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