At the most recent gathering of the Worship Committee, as we made the decision to return to Morning Prayer for our regular Sunday morning worship service as long as the church is ordered to be closed, there was some discussion of how we landed on the version of Morning Prayer that we have been doing, on and off, since March of 2020. Several members who are familiar with the Book of Common Prayer version of Morning Prayer pointed out that it’s a quite different structure. This is true! And so I was invited to offer an “instructed” version of the service to help people navigate through it.
The fact is that this format for Morning Prayer was put together in a bit of a rush as we went into lockdown for the first time, and it’s seemed to hold up well since then, so we haven’t really revisited it. If you have opinions or ideas about ways to tweak it, please feel free to share them!
Here is the basic Daily Office (morning/evening prayer) format in the BAS (beginning on p. 45; asterisks indicate elements that change seasonally):
[Penitential Rite]
Opening Sentences
Invitatory (canticle with antiphon)*
Psalm
First reading
Canticle*
Second reading
Canticle*
Creed
Intercessions*
Collect
Lord’s Prayer
Dismissal
As I adapted it for the principal service on Sunday, I relied on the following principles:
- Include as much as possible of what is familiar from the Sunday Eucharist (hymns, sermon, etc.)
- Aim for a length of about an hour (a basic Daily Office service is less than half that)
- Include as many seasonally changeable elements as possible, so as to create some variety (and I’m glad I did, because we ended up doing this for much longer than anyone anticipated!)
A fair amount (some would say a very confusing amount!) of variety is permitted within the basic BAS rite, including the substitution of an invitatory response for the opening sentences, the use of responsories or hymns in place of canticles, and so on. I took full advantage of that in assembling the service.
Here is the format that we’ve used over much of the past 22 months. The added/changed elements are in bold type. Again, items that change seasonally are asterisked.
Prelude
Opening Hymn
Announcements
Land acknowledgement
Opening Sentences
Penitential Rite
Invitatory (canticle with antiphon)*
Introductory Response*
Psalm
First reading
Reponsory (replacing Canticle)*
Second reading
Sequence Hymn (replacing Canticle)
Gospel Acclamation*
Gospel reading
Sermon
Musical meditation
Creed
Intercessions*
Offertory Hymn
Prayer over the gifts
Collect
Lord’s Prayer
Additional prayers
The Grace
Closing hymn
Dismissal*
Postlude
As you can see by comparing the two lists, the elements of the basic Daily Office format are there in almost the exact same order in the expanded service (with the exception of the Penitential Rite, which is moved to after the Opening Sentence), but there is a great deal of additional material, the bulk of which is music and the Gospel/Sermon, to make the service “feel” more like Sunday morning.
In the coming weeks, we may choose to “change it up,” a bit, for example by doing a Sunday morning version of Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer. Again, if you have any suggestions, the Worship Committee is happy to hear them!
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