Saturday, January 20, 2007

What are the Divine Offices?


Originating from Jewish tradition of praying throughout the day, the Divine Offices/hours developed early in the history of Christianity with the first followers of Christ and continues today. By pausing regularly throughout the day to pray and read scripture one is able to pattern all of life in worship and prayer.

Based on scriptures such as Psalm 119:164, “Seven times a day I will praise You”, Psalm 63:6 “on my bed I remember You; I think of You through the watch of the night”, and similar verses (Psalm 1:2, Psalm 16:7, Psalm 119:97, etc.), 8 different times of the day emerged, 7 during the day and one during the night. The most well known and time-honoured development of this is “The Rule of St. Benedict” (which we have loosely followed) written by the well-known monk himself in the 6th century. He wrote it in order that the rhythm of life for the monks in his monasteries would be based and centred on worship and prayer, but it can also be a great tool for us in the city who seek to do the same in the midst of an urban lifestyle.

If you’re interested in reading it, you can find the rule in its entirety here.

We’ve tried to set this up in such a way that from a computer at home or work you can easily pause to read scripture and simple prayer. Recognizing that very few of us find it easy to carve time out of our day, these are set up in such a way that you could read/pray through them in as little as 2 minutes or you can take longer to meditate and pray through the scriptures and prayer suggestions. In this way we can increasingly give time to God throughout our day as we seek to pattern our lives in prayer and worship as urban monks.

May the Lord be with us as we seek to give all of our days to Him!

Still wondering: How do I use the Divine Offices @ TILT?

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