The Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer (sometimes called Matins and Vespers) are staples of Anglican spirituality.  For most of the past five centuries, the typical Anglican was intimately familiar with these services – weekly Sunday Communion only having been achieved in the early-to-mid 20th century.  But now the tables have turned; comparatively few Anglicans are familiar with our Daily Offices, and know only the Communion Office.

There are many guides on the internet already explaining how to use the Prayer Book, how to find your way through the Daily Office, how to piece together the service, and give advice in getting use to it.  So I had no desire to replicate those resources.

Rather, I’ve put together a guide to learning the Daily Office from a different angle, for a different need: Sometimes the Prayer Book offices are too much for a newcomer to deal with.  Instead of diving all-in, some people need a gradual piece-by-piece introduction to this great tradition of prayer and devotion.  And, by approaching the Offices in this way, one learns the “heart” or “core” of the Office naturally, slowly growing and enfleshing it from the barest of ingredients to the fullness of prayer of beauty.

We’ve also gone through the twelve-step guide on this blog, but now I present it to you in a single document: Learn to pray the Office

Please share this with your friends, your parishioners, or anyone interested in learning to pray in a more robust, traditional, or biblically-grounded manner!