Ukrainian Orthodoxy		Orthodoxie ukrainienne

Keeping Time with God:

Ways of praying the Orthodox Divine Office

Dr. Alexander Roman alex@unicorne.org

We know from the Acts of the Apostles that the early followers of the Lord Jesus prayed at certain hours of the day and night. This practice evolved into the daily prayer of the Church, which is for ALL Christians, the “Horologion” or the Divine Office or Praises. There are more ways than one in which we may fulfill the command of our Lord to pray always and keep watch with the Church . . .

The Divine Office is a way of sanctifying time while keeping us engaged constantly in the work of the glorification of God.

Following the rule contained in Psalm 118/119, we are to praise God “seven times daily” and also during the night, something that is contained in the monastic rules, including that of St Benedict.

These times were basically every three hours, beginning at six in the morning and ending at around midnight. Each service is called an “hour” no matter how long or short it is and these are: Nocturns or the Midnight Hour; Matins and the First Hour (the longest service of the day), the Third, Sixth and Ninth Hours (corresponding to nine a.m., noon and three p.m.), Vespers at six and Compline at nine. Vespers is actually the first Hour of the day.

Fr. John Whiteford has arranged a very user-friendly set of Reader’s Services, or the horologion that can be used by the majority of us who are not in Holy Orders. They simply remove the priest’s prayers and liturgical exclamations and provide other instructions on how we may pray them either alone or with others.

However, there are also other means at our disposal to pray the Hours that were especially popular with the Old Rite Orthodox that I wanted to share with you here. Ready? Let’s begin . . .

First of all, the foundation for most of the services of the Orthodox and Byzantine Catholic Churches is the Rule of prayer of St Pachomius, the great Father of monasticism in Egypt.

This rule is arranged in English here:

http://pages.prodigy.net/frjohnwhiteford/stpachomius.htm

Its structure was revealed to St Pachomius by an Angel who taught it to him and his monks to say at the beginning of each and every hour of the day and night!

In addition, instead of the 100 Jesus Prayers, they also prayed 12 psalms, so as to get through the entire Psalter once during the day and once in the night.

Armed with familiarity with this prayer structure, we can now proceed to different ways of substituting other prayers for the Horologion and in this I will follow the Old Rite tradition.

First of all, we may pray the Hours using Psalms. The entire Byzantine psalter is divided into 20 sessions or “Kathismata”, each further subdivided into three “stases.” Here is an online version at www.pomog.org

So say we have decided to pray the horologion using the psalter alone, we begin, preferably at six in the morning or else at another time with the Nocturnal Office by praying the beginning prayers of the Rule of St Pachomius. After the Creed, we then say two kathismata or sessions of the psalter and then come back to the Rule to end with “It is truly meet” and the closing prayers.

We do the exact same for Compline, except we use one kathisma.

For Matins or Orthros, we leave out Psalm 50 and the Creed but say either 5 or 3 kathismata, according to our ability.

We say one kathisma for each of the lesser Hours, preferably throughout the day and as close as possible to the prescribed times.

For Vespers, we say two kathismata.

At the end of both Nocturns and Compline, we may also say the prayer of repentance and for others, as indicated at the end of both in Fr. Whiteford’s Reader Services at the above site where the Rule of St Pachomius is also to be found.

A second way to fulfill the Horologion is to use Jesus Prayers in place of the psalms.

Following the exact same structure above, but in place of the Psalms, we would say:

600 Jesus Prayers for both Nocturns and Vespers

1500 for Matins

1000 for the four lesser Hours (250 each)

400 for Compline

One may also use the Jesus Prayer to replace the entire Psalter of 20 kathismata. Each kathisma can be replaced by 300 Jesus Prayers and so 6,000 prayers would cover the entire Psalter.

A third way is to fulfill the Horologion using Canons and Akathists combining them with the above Rule of St Pachomius.

For Matins, we would pray 3 Canons together and 3 Akathists. After the first Ode, we would pray the first Akathist, after the third Ode, the second and after the sixth Ode, the third Akathist – these could be ANY Canons or Akathists we would have. Fr. John Whiteford lists a generous amount on his site above.

Or we could simply fulfill the rule for Matins with one Canon and one Akathist.

Vespers, Compline and the Midnight Hour are assigned one Canon and Akathist each.

And one may then fulfill the four Lesser Hours altogether with one Canon and Akathist.

If one has a book of Akathists, one may pray them in honour of any spiritual subject or devotional theme, miracle-working Icon or Saint.

For the more ascetically inclined, one may fulfill the Horologion using prostrations:

Vespers – 200 prostrations

Compline – 50 prostrations

Nocturns – 100 prostrations

Matins - 200 prostrations

For all the Lesser Hours together – 250 prostrations (50 each with 50 for the Typika service).

However, a lighter rule than the above for prostrations is also given as:

Vespers – 100 prostrations

Compline – 50 prostrations

Nocturns – 100 prostrations

Matins – 200 prostrations

For the Hours together – 250 prostrations

Roman Catholic and also Western Rite Orthodox have the practice, that is said to be taken from the Christian East, to substitute the Hours with Our Father’s. One recites 25 Our Father’s for Matins, 15 for Vespers and seven each for all the other Hours. This comes out to 75 Our Father’s or half of the “Pater Noster Psalter” of 150 Our Father’s. On Mt Athos and elsewhere, monastics pray up to 150 Our Father’s with a full prostration at the end of each prayer. Then they go on to saying 150 “Hail Mary’s” in the same manner.

This is all quite ambitious, to be sure. Some might say one is better off sticking with the Horologion prayers themselves! The point is that we may not always have them with us where we are or where we travel to. One may always, however, have a book of psalms or a prayer rope on one’s person or case that one may use to fulfill the seven-fold prayer of the Divine Praises. It is a wonderful and spiritually healthful way of sanctifying time and deepening our life in Christ.

Monasteries can also allow monastics the choice of not praying, for example, the office of Compline, but simply reciting the requisite number of Jesus Prayers or prostrations for it in their cells.

In any event, here are some options open to us as a way to both vary and deepen our prayer life with the Church!

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