User:David Underdown/Morning Prayer

Morning Prayer, in the Anglican Book of Common Prayer, also known as Mattins or Matins, was, until the last quarter of the 20th century, the main Sunday morning service most Sundays in all but the most high church Anglican parishes, with Holy Communion being the main Sunday morning service once or twice per month, or rarely, quarterly.

Service

The Prayer book rite consists of the following elements:

Intoductory sentence, general confession and Lord's Prayer.
Preces — a series of responsory prayers
The Venite (Psalm 95)
A portion of the psalter, usually two or three psalms.
Old Testament reading.
A canticle (Usually the Te Deum)
New Testament reading.
A canticle (the Benedictus or Jubilate (Psalm 100))
The Apostles' Creed.
Several prayers and responses, including the Kyrie eleison and the Lord's Prayer, and, in the English Prayer Book, "O Lord save the Queen//Because there is none other that fighteth for us but only thou O God," altered in the American Prayer Book to "O Lord save the state" and in Canada with the response truncated to "And evermore mightily defend us."
Prayers, including one for "our sovereign Lady Elizabeth" in Commonwealth Realms and for the state in the USA.
Collects
An anthem following the final collect ("In quires and places where they sing, here followeth the anthem," in the famous phraseology of the 1662 edition of the Prayer Book).

Other than in some cathedrals and college chapels, usually only one psalm is said or sung. A sermon or homily may be preached at the end on Sundays or other special occasions, such as important feast days, but does not form a set part of the liturgy. However, when Mattins has been the principal Sunday morning service, the sermon has been of central importance and indeed in Samuel Pepys's Diary, documenting domestic habits of the 1660s in the London professional class and nobility, the reference is to going to hear a particular preacher speak.

History and origins of the service

Immediately prior to the Reformation, while the Mass — the sacrament of Holy Communion — was celebrated as the main Sunday morning parish service, it was the custom for parishioners to "communicate" only once a year, at Easter. Thus, the Reformers’ institution of quarterly communion at which all present were expected to communicate was a considerable increase in the frequency of communion for ordinary parishioners.

On other Sundays, the Reformers instituted Mattins as the main service, and its classic form, in the standard 1662 version of the Prayer Book, is essentially unchanged from Archbishop Thomas Cranmer’s Second Prayer Book of Edward VI, published in 1552. It draws on the monastic offices of Matins, Lauds and Prime as set out in the Breviary. The Prayer Book lectionary provided for a complete reading of the Bible in the course of a year.

The original monastic offices would have used recitation by two alternating groups of monks or nuns. The Reformation saw a drive for the laity to be more involved in worship, the services were now in English so everyone could understand what was being said, so the responses were now designed to alternate between priest and congregation. However, particularly in more rural parishes (where population densities were lower, and farming had first call on people's time), this evolved into a recitation between parson and clerk on behalf of the congregation. With new reforming drives in the 19th century the role of the clerk was increasingly given over once again to the whole congregation and choirs and congregations began singing the psalms and canticles to a musical setting known as Anglican chant. With the development of the Oxford Movement and increasing liturgicalism among high church-inclined clergy and parishes, Anglican chant was increasingly displaced by plainchant in very Anglo-Catholic constituencies, where Morning Prayer survived at all other than as a minor devotional exercise prior to the celebration of the eucharist.

For much of the twentieth century, a church regularly using the Prayer Book offices of Morning and Evening Prayer (with more infrequent use of the Eucharist) as its main Sunday services might be seen as the quintessential Evangelical or Low Church expression of Anglican worship. In the past though, Nicholas Ferrer’s 17th century religious community at Little Gidding (commemorated in T.S. Eliot’s eponymous poem) required daily recitation of Morning and Evening Prayer, as well as the entire Psalter and later inspired a not unsuccessful Victorian attempt at reviving monastic life within the Anglican Church.

Possibly more consistent with 18th century religiosity, though astonishingly incongruous in view of subsequent developments, daily celebration of Morning and Evening Prayer as set out in the Book of Common Prayer was the essence of John and Charles Wesley's "method," which also included scriptural study, fasting, and regular reception of Holy Communion.

Current Use

In the latter part of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first Morning Prayer has (in England at least) fallen out of general use as a major service. Cathedrals will often still offer it as a said service early each weekday, but fewer still offer Choral Mattins on a Sunday. High Church parishes are now more likely to offer the Eucharist every Sunday, while Evangelical churches have tended to a much more informal style of worship, outside the old established liturgy.

Canticles

The 1662 BCP specifies the following canticles:
- The first canticle of Mattins is always the Venite, Psalm 95 ("O come let us sing unto the Lord: let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation..."), except on Easter Day, when the Easter Anthems ("Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: therefore let us keep the feast...") are sung.
- The Te Deum Laudamus — strictly speaking, a hymn rather than a canticle as such — ("We praise thee O God, we acknowledge thee to be the Lord: all the earth doth worship thee, the Father everlasting...") may be replaced by Benedicite Omnia Opera ("O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord...").
- The Benedictus Dominus Deus ("Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he hath visited and redeemed his people: and hath raised up a might salvation for us, in the house of his servant David...") may be replaced by the Jubilate Deo (Psalm 100, "O be joyful in the Lord all ye lands: serve the Lord with gladness and come before his presence with a song...").
In modern practice, the Benedicite and Benedictus are normally used during Advent and Lent and the Te Deum and Jubilate are used for the rest of the year. The Easter Anthems may continue to replace the Venite in the weeks following Easter.
20th century (and more recent) liturgies have provided other alternative canticles, including
- Salvator Mundi ("O Saviour of the world who by thy cross and precious blood hath redeemed us, save us and help us we humbly beseech thee O Lord: thou didst save thy disciples when ready to perish; save us and help us we humbly beseech thee...")
- Surge Illuminare ("Arise, shine, for thy light is come, and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee: for behold, gross darkness shall cover the earth and gross darkness the people...")
- and other canticles as the liturgical year proceeds.

Music

The psalms (and Venite) are normally sung to Anglican chant, and the canticles may be too, unless a fully choral setting is used.

Throughout post-Reformation English history significant events in national life have been commemorated with specially commissioned church services. Traditionally these have been services of Morning Prayer and thus the famous Te Deums and Jubilates of Dryden, Handel and others. Handel's Utrecht Te Deum and Jubilate (as with many other settings of the Mattins canticles, though the Te Deum is not strictly speaking a canticle), is of course a festal setting of Morning Prayer.

"In quires and places where they sing, here followeth the anthem," it says after the Third Collect in the 1662 Prayer Book, and the vast majority of church anthems composed prior to the latter part of the 20th century were contemplated as complying with that rubric, or its corresponding rubric in the Presbyterian Book of Common Order which provided the shape of the liturgy of most British-origin evangelical churches (ie Presbyterian, Congregational, Methodist and Baptist) until recent times.

As a principal Sunday church service Morning Prayer includes several congregational hymns.