Ancient sources reveal that a tradition of daily prayer at stated hours developed quite early in the history of the church. The practice of assembling for these times of daily prayer was derived in part from Jewish custom and is mentioned in the New Testament. Christian daily prayer evolved into two forms: monastic prayer, practiced by members of separated communities (originally of laypeople), and cathedral prayer, for which members of the local congregations would assemble with their bishop and other leaders. Daily prayer included the recitation of psalms and hymns, with congregational responses. Some elements in historic Christian liturgies seem to have originated in the practice of daily prayer.
The Tradition of Daily Prayer
Prayer has always belonged to all Christians but has been perceived in some historical periods as the possession of the clergy. In the last decade, rising interest in such prayer forms as meditation and chanting has been paralleled by a growing interest in “historical” Christian prayer forms. Christian spirituality, spiritual direction, contemplative prayer, and prayer groups are no longer the domain of only religious and clergy, but of all the people of God.
In no case is this more true than that of the Liturgy of the Hours (Daily Prayer or the Daily Office), the name given to the communal celebration of particular times of the day in order to mark them with a Christian meaning by prayer. Its complicated history was misunderstood at some key points in liturgical renovation, resulting in prayer books better suited for private prayer than liturgy, which is always the corporate prayer of the people of God.
The liturgical tradition upon which the restored books drew was a mixture of two different types of liturgy: one monastic and one popular (known as the “cathedral” form). In order to begin the restoration of the Daily Prayer in parishes, it may be helpful to understand these two different traditions of prayer services and separate them from each other.
The primary hours of Daily Prayer are morning prayer and evening prayer. Morning prayer is a prayer of thanks and praise for the new day and for salvation in Jesus, symbolized by the rising sun. Evening prayer is the Christian way of closing the day, a reflection on the good of the day, and reconciliation for the wrongs done. The symbol of Jesus at evening prayer is again light, here the light of the candle that symbolizes the light of Christ dispelling all darkness.
Morning and evening prayer (also known as matins and vespers, or evensong) were part of the prayer environment of early Christians. The charge to “pray without ceasing” in the New Testament was observed in different ways among early Christians. First, and foremost, was the weekly celebration of the Eucharist on the Lord’s Day, Sunday. Second was the prayer of the “domestic church,” the family gathered to pray at meals and at sunset and sunrise.
The early Christians inherited this tradition of praying at the turn of the day from Judaism, adding their own Christological meanings to it. By the second century, Christians were gathering together to observe morning and evening prayer in some form. The form was elaborated in the third century and written down in great detail for us by the fourth.
What we can see is a liturgy intended in every way to be “popular”—in other words, to be celebrated by the whole church on a daily basis. The key to the celebration was to make it relevant to the time of the day (morning prayer should celebrate morning, evening prayer, evening) and to the season (Easter morning prayer should be somewhat different than Advent).
One major witness to much of the prayer detail is a woman named Egeria, a pilgrim in the late fourth century to Jerusalem and the Holy Land. She wrote back to her friends (believed to be in northern Spain or southern France):
What I found most impressive about all this was that the psalms and antiphons they use are always appropriate, whether at night, in the early morning, at the daily prayers at midday or three o’clock, or at Lucernare (evening prayer). Everything is suitable, appropriate, and relevant to what is being done (Egeria’s Travels, ed. John Wilkinson, [Jerusalem: Ariel Publishing House, 1981], ch. 25).
The other important part of these popular prayer services was the use of standard hymns and psalms. These were repeatable components of the liturgy designed to enable all laypeople to participate in them. This, along with the use of incense, candles, and processions made for a colorful, celebrative event in which anyone could participate.
Developing in the same historical period (fourth century) was another kind of daily prayer, monastic prayer. In the deserts of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, the growing monastic movement gave rise to another type of morning and evening celebration. Monastic prayer can be more properly thought of as a service of prayer and meditation on Scripture than as liturgy. The primary reason is that liturgy implies the whole church of God gathered together to pray (including clergy), and the monastic movement in its beginnings was a lay movement.
The monastic service was designed for a stable community in which there were fewer distinct roles, and in which silence played a major part. The use of the Psalms was not so much a means to praise God (as in the popular office) but a way of listening to the voice of God. The Psalms were therefore recited by one person while everyone listened in silence. There was no concern for specific times of the day. The Psalter was simply read from beginning to end in the course of a week. There was also little regard for the liturgical year; this was not the focus of the monastic course of prayer.
Eventually, it was the general history of the church that determined how these two types of prayer evolved. The monastic movement became urban when many monks moved into the cities from the desert. Many city churches became monastic centers where the cathedral or popular office became a combination of monastic and popular elements. The outcome of this merging of ideas was the dominance of the monastic style. Along with this, the rise of clergy in the monastic movement made this dominant style the domain primarily of clergy and monks. The final step in this de-evolution of popular daily prayer was the trend toward private recitation, originally a spoken or non-choral celebration of morning and evening prayer that became solo—truly private.