prayer and the calendar

[ioannis_theologos]

Dear all

I'm wondering about how best for a single layman to incorporate aspects of the liturgical cycle into daily prayer. The prayer books I have tend to be rudimentary: the morning and evening prayers they give are more or less the same any day or season of the year, so I feel when I just use them, I'm missing out on the wonderful variety of the different commemorations and liturgical seasons. I should add that I live far from my parish, and can only afford to attend about once a month.
At the same time, the most complete way of observing the liturgical cycles, the Divine Offices, seems too much given the time constraints of my secular work. So I'm interested in feedback on how to achieve a suitable 'compromise'.

In Christ

John

[GOCPriestMark]

If you have time to do the Midnight Office and Small Compline there are a few things you can do to get some content change.

The Midnight Office, in some versions, contains most of the morning prayers. The troparion changes only during prefeast, feast and post feast days. So it is not much change, but a little.

Small Compline can contain various canons, usually to the Theotokos from the Octoechos, but an akathist can also be done. In the church services there are guidelines regarding which canon is done, but at home it can be modified to whatever helps you.

Either one takes 30 to 40 minutes once you get used to the major portions.

[Jean-Serge]

Personnaly, since I am too far from a church, evry Saturday, I read the text of vespers (without everything that is said by deacons and priests) and do the same Sunday morning with the text of matins. After that, I read the Epistle(s) and Gospel(s) of the day.

Fortunately, I could find all theses texts in Spanish for Great Lent and I hope my book dedicated to Holy Week will arrive very soon... I also have in Spanish the texts of vespers and matins for most feasts... and a pencostarion in French.