The Prayer Book tradition of worship is rich and robust, providing not only rites and rituals for individual worship services but indeed for an entire life of Christian worship. As a part of this ambitious large-scale schema, it should come as no surprise that there’s more to worship than simply going to Holy Communion every Sunday morning. There are the daily rounds of prayer, punctuated by the [Great] Litany a couple times per week, various pastoral offices for key stages in the natural and spiritual lives of a congregation and family, and pointers toward the development of private devotions to enable the individual worshiper to flesh out his or her own life of worship apart from the gathered Church.

What is often missed in today’s church culture, however, is that the original Prayer Book pattern for worship on Sunday morning was actually a three-part affair: Morning Prayer, The [Great] Litany, and the Holy Communion. Until relatively recent times, all three of these were appointed to be said in every church every Sunday and Holy Day. Granted, this was often shortened in actual practice, and by the late 19th century it was probably more common for people to attend just one service rather than all three in a row. Yet the full pattern of worship is still present even in our modern Prayer Books, and the typical malnourished Christian of today could benefit greatly from a retrieval of the spiritual rigor of our forebears. To that end, we’ll be looking at different combinations of worship services that you could carry out on Sunday mornings in your church.

Morning Prayer & The Litany

Let’s say the priest is on vacation. You could get a supply priest from elsewhere in the diocese to fill in for him, sure, but there are plenty of homegrown options available as well. How about save the parish a little money, time, and effort, and instead whole Prayer Book services that don’t require a priest? Take advantage of the situation as an opportunity, and make use of the other two Anglican services traditionally expected on Sunday morning: the Morning Office and the Great Litany!

Of all the possible combinations of services, this is the easiest one to work out. You proceed through Morning Prayer normally, and when you get to the rubric on page 24 (right before the Prayer for Mission) you skip over to page 91 and start the Litany. Simple!

There are really only two questions to ask yourself in the course of such a plan.

First: do we want to pause between the collects and the start of the Litany? In the original Prayer Book, the Daily Office ends with those collects, so anything else that followed it was extra. Singing an anthem at that point would have been perfectly natural, and indeed has remained a staple of Choral Evensong and Sung Mattins to this day. This is also the traditional point at which to include a sermon. The sequence could therefore be:

1. Morning Prayer through the collects
2. Hymn or anthem
3. Sermon or Homily or Bible Study
4. The Great Litany

The other question is: how do we want to conclude the Litany? Ever since 1928, the final section of the Litany has been cordoned off under a subheading (“The Supplication”) and rendered optional. As you prepare a Sunday service composed of the Office and Litany, you have to decide whether to include the Supplication or not. The rubrics in the center of page 97 explain where the Supplication supplants the shorter ending. The simplest explanation is that the top half of page 97 is the shorter ending, and the bottom of half of page 97 (leading to page 98) comprise the longer ending.

Because the Supplication is particularly “gloomy” – praying for aid against danger, and deliverance from unnamed afflictions, I recommend including it throughout Advent, Lent, and any other penitential occasion. In my own practice, I always include the Supplication whenever I pray the Litany on a Friday, and always skip it on Wednesdays. Again, find a pattern that works for you and your congregation, remembering that what is normal and familiar is sometimes best, and sometimes familiar normality needs to be challenged.