A Short Daily Office

This summer at church we are having a series of talks at our main eucharist aiming to help people to pray. My first offering is a short Daily Office, and I thought I'd share it with you:

A Morning Office

O Lord open my lips

and my mouth shall proclaim your praise


Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,

and to the Holy Spirit;

as it was in the beginning

is now and shall be forever. Amen.

Alleluia


Lord, be with me this day,

within me to purify me;

above me to draw me up;

beneath me to sustain me;

before me to lead me;

behind me to restrain me;

around me to protect me.


Lord, whatever this day may bring,

Thy name be praised.

An Evening Office

O God, make speed to save me.

O Lord, make haste to help me.


Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,

and to the Holy Spirit;

as it was in the beginning

is now and shall be forever. Amen.

Alleluia


Lighten our darkness we beseech thee O Lord,

and by thy great mercy defend us

from all perils and dangers of this night;

for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.


Abide with us Lord Jesus,

for the night is at hand and the day is now past.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Prayers for Evensong

The BBC were at the Cathedral yesterday, recording our Choral Evensong . I wrote some new prayers for the occasion, which I share here: In the evening of the day, we come to you, O God, bringing those we have met, for your blessing, our hurts for your healing, our sins for your forgiveness, our labours as our offering and our lives as our worship; we come to you through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, who became like us, that we might become like him. Amen. Lord Jesus, you call us into your church; help us to leave behind the things we cling to, coax us with the treasure of heaven, and in the age to come, when the first will be last and the last will be first, allow us simply to be found within your Kingdom, and to feast at your table, where there is abundant life for all your world, for with you all things are possible, and in your name we pray. Amen. God of all hope, may the light of your justice search out the darkness of our world; may the power of your love banish al...
Read more

Theology and the Man in Black

Image
I went to hear a paper at the University this evening entitled 'The Apocalypse according to Johnny Cash: Examining the 'Effect' of the book of Revelation on a contemporary apocalyptic writer'. As well as some fine music and lots of humour from YouTube , the paper was examining how we detect the effect of the Bible on the world, and using Cash's The Man Comes Around as a means of doing this. One of the papers themes was that because Cash doesn't name Jesus as the Man (who comes around) he has a weak Christology and leaves his work open to a range of interpretations of who 'The Man' could be - from Cash himself to George W. Bush! Lots of food for thought about how what we say is then heard and repeated in our culture, which has little understanding of the Gospel. But the thing that really stood out for me was the suggestion that it was possible to tell that Cash was really reading the Bible in this song (rather than just regurgitating what his traditio...
Read more

Faith and Struggle on Smokey Mountain: The Michael Ramsey Prize 2016 Shortlist 1

Image
Review of Benigno P. Beltran, Faith and Struggle on Smokey Mountain: Hope for a Planet in Peril (Orbis, 2012). If all the books on the Michael Ramsey Prize shortlist are as good as this, then I’m in for a treat!   It is good to have an author on the shortlist who is not from the UK or the US.   Beltran is from the Philippines.   A Roman Catholic priest, and a teacher of theology, Beltran has also been the chaplain to the most notorious rubbish dump in the world – Smokey Mountain in Manilla.   Here around 25 000 people lived as scavengers, and became a symbol of both poverty and the ecological degradation of the world. This is a deceptively short book.   It is both moving and challenging.   It also covers several different genres.   Most obviously, it is autobiographical.   Benigno Beltran was a Pilipino priest who was sent to study in Rome.   He returned to the Philippines to train seminarians.   On h...
Read more