I would say that any Orthodox layman is generally well versed in the annual liturgical cycle. Any average parishioner knows the dates of the Twelve Great Feasts, the date of Pascha in the current year, and the day of his patron saint. Probably somewhat fewer know about the weekly cycle, although they’re probably all aware of the special importance that Sunday has for Christians and of the Church’s understanding of Wednesday and Friday as days associated with the Savior’s sufferings and death. But unfortunately, even the very existence of the daily cycle of services isn’t so obvious to all parishioners, especially if they only go to church for the All-Night Vigil and Liturgy for Sundays and feast days. Meanwhile, the daily cycle of services is, one might say, the “liturgical clock” the Church has lived by day after day for many centuries. The daily cycle took shape in monasteries, though there was a time when laymen observed it daily as well.
As we said in the first part, the Church day begins in the evening (which we inherited from Old Testament tradition) and includes the following services: Vespers, Compline, Midnight Office, Matins, First, Third, Sixth, and Ninth Hours, and Typika. All of the unchanging parts of these services (that is, the psalms and prayers that are read and sung every day, regardless of the day of the week and calendar date) are found in the Horologion (Book of the Hours). The names of the services indicate the time that they are to be celebrated.1 These designations (for example, with the Hours) are given according to Byzantine time, which Athonite and several other Greek monasteries still live by in our day. According to Byzantine time, midnight is the time of sunset. In our latitudes, unlike in more southern countries where the Orthodox liturgical typikon was developed, the length of day and night in summer and winter varies greatly, but on average, “sunset” is typically understood as 6:00 PM (according to our standard hours), and sunrise—6:00 AM. Having made the necessary qualification about liturgical time, now let’s say a little about each of the services of the daily cycle and when they’re celebrated.
Services of the Daily Cycle
Vespers is the service that starts the liturgical day. That means it’s at Vespers that we first hear the hymns—stichera and troparia—dedicated to this or that saint or feast. The name of the service indicates that it’s to be celebrated in the evening,2 ideally so that the hymn O Gladsome Light (sung in the middle of Vespers) coincides with sunset. So generally speaking, Vespers should begin at about 5:00 or 6:00 PM, as is the case in most churches.
Compline is the second service of the daily cycle. According to the Slavonic name of the service (Povecheriye), the service should be celebrated after dinner, which in turn comes right after Vespers—which is how they do things on Mt. Athos, for example. There are two versions of Compline—Small and Great. Great Compline is served on weekdays in Great Lent and on the eves of Nativity and Theophany, and Small Compline throughout the rest of the year.
Compline isn’t as widely known as Vespers, since it’s typically only served a few times a year in parish churches. For example, the majority of parishioners probably know that the Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is divided into four parts and read during Great Compline in the first week of Great Lent. A wonderful hymn taken from the book of Isaiah—God is With Us—is also sung then, and it’s precisely because of this hymn that many recognize Great Compline as part of the All-Night Vigil for the Nativity of Christ and Theophany. Small Compline is much less well known. It’s read mainly in monasteries, although in Greece, for example, Small Compline is included in any Orthodox prayer book for laity, serving as the prayers before sleep.
Next comes the Midnight Office. As with Compline, this service has become almost exclusively a monastic service (save for the Paschal Midnight Office, also called Nocturns, before the procession on Pascha). Of course, the name indicates that it should be served at midnight, although this doesn’t refer to astronomical midnight, but rather the midpoint of our time of sleep—so according to standard time, at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning. By the way, in the Middle Ages, sleep, divided into two halves with a period of wakefulness between them, was a common practice not only for monastics, but also laymen. But in modern realities, Midnight Office is most often served in monasteries not at midnight, but early in the morning, combined with the following services (either with Matins or Liturgy).
The name Matins comes from the Old French matines, meaning morning. In theory, Matins should be served early in the morning, so that the Great Doxology, the key prayer of Matins, which is read or sung (depending on the rank of the service that day) almost at the very end of the service, falls at sunrise. Thus, ideally, Matins should begin about an hour and a half or two hours before sunrise, at about 4:00 or 4:30 AM. In reality, it’s served in churches either in the morning, at 7:00 or 8:00 or even later, or more often in the Russian tradition, the evening before, immediately after Vespers.
The very name of the Hours is due to the fact that they used to be served at specific times of day—namely, at the first, third, sixth, and ninth hours—that is, about 7:00 AM, 9:00 AM, 12:00 PM, and 3:00 PM. The First Hour became part of the daily cycle later than the others and has no particular theological meaning. In this sense, it adjoins Matins not only in terms of when it’s served but also in meaning. But already in early Christian times, the third, sixth, and ninth hours began to stand out from the other hours of the day as times associated with specific New Testament events. We know from the Acts of the Apostles that it was at the third hour that the Holy Spirit descended upon the Apostle (Acts 2:15); at the sixth hour, Jesus Christ was crucified on the Cross (Jn. 19:14); the ninth hour is the time of the Savior’s death (Mt. 27:46). In antiquity, Christians prayed at these hours, reciting the Our Father, and over time separate, albeit rather short services associated with each of these events were compiled. In addition to the psalms, which form the basis of any Orthodox service, each hour has a special troparion and kontakion and also the prayer of the given hour—and all of them are directly connected with the aforementioned Biblical events.
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Typika, in simple terms, is basically an abbreviated Liturgy. It includes psalms, the Beatitudes, the Nicene Creed, the Our Father—everything the choir sings in Liturgy, but without the most important part of Liturgy—the Sacrament of the Eucharist. In the Horologion, Typika comes after the Sixth Hour, although on some days it should be served after the Ninth. In ancient times, Typika was read by hermits who didn’t have the chance to go to Liturgy but communed from reserve Gifts in their cells. This was a widespread practice in Palestine. Nowadays, Typika is served only on the weekdays of Great Lent and the eves of the Nativity of Christ and Theophany, after the Royal Hours. Typika is also read (or sung, if possible) on Sundays by laymen in parishes that don’t have their own permanent priest—in “missionary” dioceses, for example.
In ancient monasteries, all the services were celebrated separately from each other, at their own specially appointed time, so that monastics would gather in church several times a day for short communal services, which brought their lives closer to fulfilling the commandment of unceasing prayer. Over time, the services began to be combined into evening and morning groupings, which persists in some places to this day. They serve the Ninth Hour and Vespers in the evening, then the brothers or sisters go to the trapeza for dinner, then they return to church to serve Small Compline. The morning services begin with the Midnight Office, followed by matins and the First Hour. The Third and Sixth Hours can either be read after the First Hour or separately later in the day.
Things are a little different in parishes. Compline and Midnight Office are largely a feature of monastic worship, and the Ninth Hour is also rarely read in parishes. All the other daily services are usually served in parishes like this on weekdays: In the evening, they service Vespers, Matins, and First Hour, and in the morning, they read the Third and Sixth Hours and serve the Liturgy. In many monasteries, probably even in most, Matins and First Hour are also served in the evening, after Vespers.3 Although there are churches where for one reason or another it’s difficult to have both evening and morning services on weekdays, so Matins and the First, Third, and Sixth Hours are served in the morning before Liturgy. Basically, there are various practices.
Using the Horologion in Home Prayer
Currently, the services are celebrated completely as called for in the Typikon only in certain monasteries. Although, it wasn’t that way in medieval Rus’; the Domostroy instructs that any literate Christian should read the full daily cycle of services with his family every day. But for the modern feeble man—feeble not so much physically as scattered and unable to hold his attention on any one thing for long—it seems far more appropriate to focus not on duration of private prayer but on frequency—to try praying not just twice a day, morning and evening, but throughout the day as well (and for those whose strength permits and who have their spiritual father’s blessing—even to pray a little at night). For instance, at a particular hour, you can read the most ancient prayers from the service of the daily cycle that correspond to that time of day. Ideally, you should have a printed Horologion with the necessary prayers bookmarked.
For example, you can read prayers from the Horologion like this:
At about 5:00 PM: prayers from Vespers: Psalm 140 (Lord, I call upon Thee…) and the prayer O Gladsome Light.
After dinner or together with your evening rule: prayers from Compline: Psalm 50 (Have mercy on me, O God…) and the prayer of Monk Antiochus: “And grant us, O Master, when we go to sleep…”
3:00 AM: the nighttime prayer from Midnight Office: Psalm 50 and the troparion “Behold, the Bridegroom comes at midnight.”
7:00 AM: prayers from Matins: Psalm 62 (O God, my God, unto Thee I rise early at dawn...), the Song of the Three Youths (Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the God of our fathers—one of the Biblical Odes. Though not found in the Horologion, it’s very beautiful and you can find it and print it out), and the Great Doxology (“Glory to Thee Who hast shone us the light. Glory to God in the highest…”). Also the prayer of the First Hour: “O Christ, the True Light…” In church, this is read by the priest, but it’s not exclusively a priestly prayer like those of the other Hours.
9:00 AM: from the Third Hour: Our Father, the troparion of the Third Hour: “O Lord, Who at the third hour didst send down Thine All-Holy Spirit…” and the prayer of the Third Hour: “O Master God, the Father Almighty…”
12:00 PM: from the Sixth Hour: Our Father, the troparion of the Hour: “O Thou Who on the sixth day and at the sixth hour…” and the prayer “O God and Lord of Hosts…”
3:00 PM: from the Ninth Hour: Our Father, the troparion: “O Thou Who at the ninth hour…” and the prayer “O Master, Lord Jesus Christ our God, Who art long-suffering in the face of our transgressions…”
I repeat, just in case, that all this is not a call to action, but only an idea, and that in any case, a Christian’s prayer rule should be agreed upon with his spiritual father. Moreover, this selection is based on my understanding of the antiquity of certain prayers and how they reveal the theological meaning of the services of the daily cycle; but this list may vary.
I’d like to note as a lyrical digression that there’s another option for short but frequent prayer throughout the day, and which doesn’t require any books at all—the Jesus Prayer. Just as it was relevant for illiterate peasants and was prescribed for them by the Domostroy in place of the daily cycle of services, so too—and perhaps even more so—it’s relevant for modern city dwellers whose minds are overloaded with all kinds of images and often unable to perceive the beauty of Church hymnography, but instead long for inner solitude. The Jesus Prayer is suited for this like nothing else. This is apart from my main topic—how a layman can bring his personal prayer rule closer in form to the Church’s prayer—but I’ll say that the Jesus Prayer draws a Christian closer to unceasing prayer even more than the daily cycle, and most importantly, is able like nothing else to fill his personal prayer with the main content of all liturgical texts—glorification and repentance.
In practical terms, this can be done in various ways—for example, if possible, you can take five or ten minute breaks throughout the working day, turn off your phone and put aside your tasks, and try to focus as much as possible on prayer during this short period. But again, I should note that for this, as for everything else, you should receive a blessing from your spiritual father.
