Sunday Worship is at 9:30 a.m.,

and special Holy Day services as announced

The Daily Office

Haha, no, it’s not your daily slog to work. Office, from Latin officium, basically means duty. In the Church, the daily duty of us all is to pray. So what we call the Daily Office is that round of prayer-offerings that punctuate the day… every day. The Psalmist said, “Seven times a day do I praise you because of your righteous judgments” (Psalm 119:164). So since seven is the biblical number of completion/perfection (see biblical numerology), ancient monastic communities developed the practice of gathering in for prayer seven times a day.  But we secular Christians (= we who aren’t monks) have a different lifestyle. So the Book of Common Prayer provides four daily opportunities for prayer, inviting us to use any or all of them as we can work them into our days (clergy are expected to pray Morning and Evening Prayer at least).

So here are some links, if you’re interested, to more on praying daily with the Church:

• Pray the Daily Office right now! –

  In the drop-down menu under DAILY OFFICES, click the top one- TODAY’S OFFICE- and it will take you directly to the appropriate service for the time of day. Since we think you should dive right in, we recommend doing this. That menu also lists all the daily prayer offices.

• The Daily Office Tutorial

  – A how-to, just as the name implies

• An optional set of Daily Readings

  – a schedule of Bible readings is called a lectionary. We follow the Revised Common Lectionary (RCL) on Sundays and other Holy Days. RCL Daily Readings is not the same as the one included in the Daily Office linked above (the one in the back of the Book of Common Prayer). The purpose of this one is to aid our understanding of the readings on Sunday, which is the Church’s principal day of worship. The Thursday, Friday and Saturday readings look forward to the coming Sunday, and the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday readings reflect back on the previous Sunday. If you like that idea, you can always open two pages on your device and read these ones instead of the ones included in the Daily Office- or read both.

  • A word of warning though: It’s better to read Scripture in digestible bits, rather than trying to read as much as you can for the sake of, well, reading as much as you can in as little time as possible. Reading the Bible in one year, for example, is a tall order, since you’ve got to read about four chapters every day. If you’re the type of reader who can absorb that much Scripture, go for it. But if you’re an ordinary mortal, it’s probably better to follow a lectionary.

When you click on any of the Sunday readings links on this page, you’ll stay on the same website. But clicking any of the weekday readings links will take you to Bible Gateway  (BG) where you can choose which translation of the Bible to read from. On the BG page you can also subscribe to receive the RCL Daily Readings in your inbox. So that’s a good thing, right?

• And if all this has got you more confused than enlightened, just contact us

Phone: 618-632-6168

Email:  stmichaels62269@gmail.com