Why Series #1: Praying at certain times

This is the first question in our “Why” series of blog posts:

Question: Why do we gather to pray at certain hours at Iona House?

The Village Prayer Chapel at Iona House

Some history might be helpful: The practice of stopping to pray at certain hours of the day goes all the way back to the Old Testament where we read about Daniel, while in Babylon, praying three times daily. It is such a regular and noticeable practice that it causes him to be the recipient of persecution (see Daniel 6:10-28). This practice seems to be firmly rooted in the life of Judaism at the time of Jesus, and we suspect it was His practice as well. We read about Peter and John, in the book of Acts, going up to the temple to pray “at the hour of prayer”, which was approximately 3pm (see Acts 3:1). This is after Pentecost - demonstrating that the early church continued the practice of Judaism of stopping for three times of prayer each day.

This continues to be the normal practice of Christians into the apostolic and post-apostolic era of the Church. These prayer times were corporate prayers and utilized a simple liturgical form that included Psalms, Scripture readings, and the Lord’s Prayer. Some Church Fathers also encouraged a simple private devotional time at the beginning and end of the day. Scholar Andrew McGowan refers to this as the “three plus two” pattern of the church: three corporate times of prayer and two private times of prayer shaping each day. We can assume that some variation of this was the practice of the Church in the first three centuries.

With the conversion of Emperor Constantine in the early 4th century, the Church went through some significant changes as it suddenly became culturally and politically acceptable to be a Christian. Many people flooded into the Church, causing some to lament the lack of discipleship and formation of these masses of new converts. Though the story has many contours and nuances, essentially it is around this time that we see large numbers of individuals leaving metropolitan areas to go out and seek God in the Egyptian Desert. These people became known as the Desert Fathers and Mothers. They longed for a more demanding and more rigorous faith, a more contemplative faith focused on really learning to pray, a faith that reflected more of the vitality of the Church threatened by martyrdom in the first three centuries. These folks, in many cases, formed communities that became the first fruits of what we know of as the “monastic tradition” which emerged in the 4th century as a distinct feature of Christianity. The monastic tradition was keen to focus on prayer; their goal was to learn to pray unceasingly (I Thes. 5:17) as St. Paul exhorted Christians to do. But to learn to bring the remembrance of Christ back to their mind at all times, they needed to start with specific times. In the Benedictine tradition (the monasteries that followed St. Benedict’s rule), the number of prayer and worship offices became seven times a day, drawing inspiration from Psalm 119:164 that speaks about stopping to praise God seven times a day. So it is the monastic tradition that preserved what was a universal practice of setting certain times aside to pray and worship God each day.

In the English Reformation, Thomas Cranmer attempted to re-normalize the notion of daily corporate prayer by consolidating the 7 monastic times into two major “offices” (times of prayer) designed for everyday / ordinary Christians - Morning and Evening in the Book of Common Prayer that he compiled to guide the 10,000 parishes in the British Isles under his leadership. Others following Cranmer advocated for two other minor / shorter prayer times to be added as a daily option as well: midday prayer and compline (compline is the prayer time before going to bed). These got preserved in English Church and have been passed down into our setting.

At Iona House, we seek to echo the practice of the Early Church by once again offering three times of corporate prayer a day, while encouraging guests, residents, and all within our community to also practice morning and evening personal times of prayer. We’re not making this up; we’re not trying to do something extraordinary or heroic; we’re just echoing the earliest normal practice of the Church.

Why does this matter and what does it accomplish? Gathering together as a community to hear the Scriptures read, to listen in silence, to confess our sins, to offer thanksgiving and intercession is a simple but power act of setting first things first. We structure our day in reference to Christ… not meals, work deadlines, entertainment, or anything else. The day at Iona House is structured around worship and prayer. It’s countercultural and deeply formational to our souls. Regular participants will sometimes find that they don’t always feel like they want to be there. But something happens when you do something, not because you surface-level want to, but because you know it is right and good and ultimately vital to your soul’s formation into Christlikeness. The long term effects are undeniable. We become people who learn to pray with “sturdy words” - tried and true words given to us in scripture and by the Church. We learn to set aside our own agenda and more quickly attune ourselves to the presence of God throughout the day. We are reminded that we are not alone; that we belong to a large family of others who are similarly praying. These are just a few of the good things that happen when we set aside intentional, regular, communal times of worship and prayer.

Why 9am, noon, and 4:30pm? There’s nothing sacred about these precise times. But they do nicely anchor our day at Iona House with work starting after Morning Prayer, work ceasing at midday prayer and our daily time of silence and solitude ending with Evening Prayer before people go off to prepare dinner and start their evening.

You can join into prayers with us at Iona House from wherever you are by using the simple prayer app: https://www.dailyoffice2019.com/ (2019 refers to the year of the Book of Common Prayer this is adapted from)