Breviary

Midweek Evensong

The Sixth Week after Epiphany

Reading: Mark 11:27—12:2

Homily:

Lord, we pray for the preacher, for You know his sins are great.

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

All across the globe, for some 2000 years, Christians have raised our voices in prayer at the first sign of Vesper, the evening star. As the earth turns and the horizon rolls on, the terminal line of darkness kindles psalms and hymns of praise throughout every continent and country, so that 24 hours a day the Church lifts up her song of thanksgiving in thousands of languages, an endless offering of devotion to and through our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Liturgy of the Hours—also known as the Daily Office, canonical hours, or simply the breviary—is a Christian tradition inherited from our Jewish forebears, and shared in similar form with our Muslim brethren. It is the practice of regularly marking the hours of daily life with prayer, reading, and song. For Judaism, this sacrifice of praise replaced the sacrifice of animals during the Exile, after the destruction of the Temple of Solomon.

In Roman cities at the time of Christ, bells marked the beginning of the business day at the first hour (prime) and midmorning (terce), as well as the noon break for lunch (sext) and resumption of business midafternoon (none), finally tolling the end of the workday at 6:00 p.m., the time for Vespers, or Evening Prayer. Christians would gather together for Matins and Vespers, Morning and Evening Prayer, with the expectation of personal devotions at the other hours of the day, including Compline, our prayer before bed.

This Liturgy of the Hours was and is the public prayer of the Christian Church. Next to the Divine Liturgy—the Sunday worship of Word and Sacrament—the Daily Office held pride of place, even beyond the medieval rise of the Rosary. Expected of all the faithful, these canonical hours remain requirements for all clergy and monastics, a tradition never repudiated even as it has fallen into disuse amongst many Protestant parishes.

The heart of the Daily Office is and has always been the Psalter. This again we have inherited from the first generations of Jewish Christians. Jesus knew the Psalms by heart, and recited them from the Cross. They are His songs, His prayers. Some particularly ambitious monastic Orders recite all 150 Psalms every single day, at different hours of the day, quickly committed to memory.

The Psalms hold pride of place in all the liturgies of our hymnals: Matins, Vespers, Compline, and every Sunday setting. You’d be surprised how many Psalms you could already quote by rote. Praise, penance, humility, exaltation, vengeance: the Psalms provide us with a vocabulary to speak our soul to God in every mood and situation. They are deeply human.

Lutherans and Anglicans share an exquisite tradition of Morning and Evening Prayer. If you stick with the assigned readings found in the Book of Common Prayer or Lutheran Book of Worship, twice a day every day, you’ll get through the Psalter every month and the entirety of sacred Writ every other year—including some of those lovely Apocryphal books kept by our Catholic and Orthodox siblings. Luther included them in his Bible, and I firmly maintain that we also ought to include them in ours. Jesus knew them; shouldn’t we?

My Order, the Society of the Holy Trinity, exists to support Lutheran clergy of every judicatory body in upholding our ordination vows. We promise in our Rule to faithfully pray the Liturgy of the Hours, and to offer them in our congregations. We pray for all of you on every single morning, and we offer midweek Evensong here at St Peter’s on every Wednesday night. Should no-one else arrive, I will gladly sing amongst Jesus’ saints and angels. Thus the voice of prayer shall never cease.

I recount all this this evening in order that we, as Christians of the Augsburg Confession, may know the richness of our heritage and the depths of our tradition, a tradition which has never been lost, though often obscured. It binds us lovingly in catholicism to the Catholics, in orthodoxy to the Orthodox, in reformation to the Reformed, and in Christianity to Christ. It brings to us unity in diversity, repentance in rapture, and humility in exaltation. It is beautiful, good, and true.

A young woman recently told me that she’d been taught to continue to pray the Liturgy of the Hours “until she actually believed it”—and she did. It happened. It worked its way into her soul like oil in her bones, the pulse within her veins. Personally, I find that it’s rather like lifting weights: at first a struggle, next a chore, then a routine, and soon a necessity. If you skip it, you restlessly itch and ache. It becomes a part of you, as regular and rhythmic as the hours of the day.

I know I wax romantic. Such has always been my tendency. And don’t get me wrong: my own practice is far from perfect. On days when I’m not in the sanctuary, I often fail to keep the Daily Office, whether at home or on the road. Yet that’s the beauty of it; you never really fall behind. You simply pick up the following hour, the next reading, the monthly Psalms. Song and prayer do not judge, do not give up, do not ever abandon us. We pick up a book, lift up our voice, and sing.

It is pure grace, pure mercy, pure bliss. It is how we offer ourselves to Christ throughout our daily life, only to find Him already there, already offering to us all that He has and all that He is. Such is the life of the Body of Christ. Such is the prayer of the Church.

In the Name of the Father and of the +Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.