The Standing Commission on Liturgy and Music - Daily Prayer for All Seasons [English Edition]

Daily Prayer for
All Seasons

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Unless otherwise noted, all Bible quotes are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations from THE MESSAGE. Copyright by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

2014 by the Office of the General Convention of The Episcopal Church

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Let us pray.

Those words can be so embracing, so soothing. But there are times when they simply remind us that we dont have time to pray not the way we long to. We want to pray without ceasing, but we also want to repair that engine and train the puppy and plow the south 40 before sunset. Still, the call to prayer is strong. The call to pray throughout the day has sounded for centuries as a way to deepen our faith.

Daily Prayer for All Seasons provides a holy and wholly realistic way to order our days, no matter how full they seem.

Daily Prayer for All Seasons was compiled and written by a diverse team of people from all over the United States. We came together periodically over four years to create a set of prayers that acknowledge in their brevity both the need to pray and the short time we have to pray. The Daily Prayer for All Seasons team comprised people like you: we have jobs and families, groceries and gardens and ironing; subways to catch, doctors to see, and reports to write. We put these demands on the table. We never lost sight of those pressures on our time and energy as we plowed through wonderful resources for meditation and song, assembling the richest ones into a prayer book for all of us, clergy and laity, who think were too busy to pray.

Background of Daily Prayer

People in all kinds of religious traditions, including Judaism and Christianity, have been marking time with prayer for almost as long as weve had hours. Praying the hours, as its called, has always reminded us that God walks with us throughout each day; praying the hours is also a way that the community of faith comes together, whether were all in one place or scattered like raindrops. Praying at set hours links us, both to God and to all Gods people. We know this, and we are comforted.

In The Episcopal Church, our Book of Common Prayer offers beautiful services for morning, noon, evening, and nighttime in a section called The Daily Office (pp. 35-146). Daily Prayer for All Seasons offers a variation on that theme, a shortened version, where a complete service covers one or two pages at most, thereby eliminating the need to shuffle prayer books and hymnals. Daily Prayer for All Seasons works for individuals, small groups, and/or congregations. This prayer book presents a variety of images of God by including inclusive and expansive language for and about God, and it presents a variety of words by including poetry, meditation and prayers from the broader community of faith.

How to Use These Materials

The church divides its calendar into periods called seasons, which track the events of Jesus birth, death and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Church. The seasons are Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week (the final week of Lent), and Easter, followed by what the church calls Ordinary Time; because Ordinary Time is the longest season in the church year, we crafted two sets of services for the summertime: Creation (spiritual growth) and Rest. The eight sets of seasonal prayers provide the outer structure of Daily Prayer for All Seasons.

For the inner structure, each set of seasonal prayers falls into eight hours, which follows the pattern of Benedictine monks, who divided the day into a cycle of eight intervals, called hours, that effected a rhythm between work (labora) and prayer (ora). As a contemporary complement, the committee crafting Daily Prayer for All Seasons assigned a specific labor to each prayer hour: We named dawn as the time for praise; we designated starting the day as the time for discernment; later morning, wisdom; midday, perseverance and renewal; afternoon, love; evening, forgiveness; bedtime, trust; and midnight we named as the time to watch. Each hour has a name, which also dates back to Christian monastic history and which we printed in italics after the hours work name, for example, Praise (Lauds).

Dont be inhibited by the hours as weve labeled them. Maybe your day starts at the crack of noon or your bedtime comes after the night shift; maybe the end of your workday marks only the beginning of meetings for another part of your life. Its all right to adjust the prayers to the day as you live it, no matter how topsy-turvy it seems.

Adaptations for the prayers, lessons, meditations, and hymns may be made to suit the occasion. The questions that are provided for the meditations are only suggestions. They may be freely adapted, other questions may be used, or a period of silence may be kept.

Format for the Hours

BASIC FORM (Praise, Watch): Written in first person and generally anticipated for private use.

Entering and Going out (or Closing): the same simple, short call-and-response, which emphasizes the spiritual work of the hour

Scripture: a short, easily memorized passage, related to both the time and the season

Meditation: a question or a prompt for spiritual reflection

Prayer: a closing collect related to the hour and season

SHORTER HOURS DURING THE DAY (Wisdom, Perseverance and Renewal, Love, Trust): Intended for group use, may be adapted for individual use. These add the following to the basic form:

Prayer: an opening collect, suited to time and season

Praise: hymn, psalm, or canticle

Meditation: an inspirational quote precedes the prompt for reflection

Prayers: responsive prayers of the people, with space for personal intercession and thanksgiving

Lords Prayer: Versions of the prayer are omitted to allow for local traditions; if praying in a group, the leader may choose to specify the form of the prayer (old/new, short/ long, English/other language) to be used or encourage worshippers to pray in the language of the heart (versions of the Lords Prayer appear in the Appendix).

LONGER HOURS (Discernment, Forgiveness): Intended for group use, may be adapted for individual use. To the above, add the following:

Discernment: affirmation

Forgiveness: confession and assurance of pardon (the latter allows for lay leadership of the hour whereas absolution requires a bishop or priest)