Morning and evening prayers are structured around the ritual reading of sacred texts and meditating upon them. As in most liturgies, divine service here begins with bowing down before the Holy and acknowledging our sins. As in most liturgies, place is provided for prayers of supplication, praise and thanks. These exercises for the start and end of day can be simple and intimate, they can be enhanced with music and ceremony. Howsoever they are practiced, they provide an opportunity to be still, to be recreated and refreshed.
In every religion there is an impulse to consecrate time, to offer up every moment to the holy, to recognize the presence of the holy in every moment. In monasteries and other retreats this vision, zeal, and devotion are often ritually celebrated by gathering for prayer and worship at various hours throughout the day and night; and such monastic practices have often coloured and effected the development of the public liturgies. When the first Christian communities began to develop, the members of those communities brought with them the heritage of the Jewish and the Gentile liturgies and devotions. The practice of praising God in prayer and song at the rising and the setting of the sun was part of this heritage. Distinctively Christian liturgies of morning prayer and evening prayer were almost immediately established. In the time of Constantine, these liturgies flourished. In the time of Constantine something else also flourished: retreat from the world. For many in the church the new partnership between church and state was dangerous; they feared the church would become corrupted by the worldly, and they retreated to deserts and lonely places to pray and to become living anchors of prayer for a church now afloat in worldly affairs. These early hermits or anchorites were the foundation stones of Christian monasticism. In time, numbers of hermits gathered near one another for protection and spiritual community, and out of those unions developed the rules and disciplines for communal living that still direct and colour monastic and religious life in the church.
The monasteries were not social organizations, but communities. The communal life consisted of work to support the members and prayer to support the church. The work of prayer soon had the day methodically divided up into eight canonical hours or times for communal supplication and praise. Morning prayers were divided into three distinct services: Matins, usually celebrated just after midnight; Lauds, celebrated just before dawn; and Prime, celebrated at the beginning of the work day. There were also three periods of prayer to consecrate the day, Terce, celebrated at mid-morning; Sext, celebrated at noon; and None, celebrated at mid-afternoon. Evening prayers were divided into two distinct services: Vespers marked the setting of the sun and end of the work day, Compline marked the end of day and the time for sleep. These monastic liturgies soon came to be codified, published, and adopted by the church in an official prayer book. The prayer book was variably called The Book of Hours, The Breviary, The Divine Office. The strength of this monastic discipline of prayer had, however, a negative effect upon the church. The rigour and methodical nature of monastic prayer and striving for the holy made it seem to be a work for professionals; morning and evening prayer were lost to the masses, a great gap between the professional church people and the church-going people opened. The celebration of the liturgy in a language most people no longer spoke or understood, the encouragement of strange devotions, the resistance to moral and doctrinal reform all widened the gap until, thanks be to God, as with Israel in the Exile, the Spirit dashed the church to pieces in order to save it, reform it, and bring it back to life anew.
In this day of reformation, Thomas Cranmer set out to write a new prayer book, a book common to all, a book proper to all, a book usable by all. The Book of Common Prayer gave the liturgies and the scriptures back to everyone. There was a language all could use, there was a simplified discipline of prayer all could follow. Once again, at the rising and the setting of the sun was the Lord’s name by all to be praised.