Weekday Evening Prayer, a 40 year Tradition at St. Anne’s
Evening Prayer Ministry
Hello, I am Tom May and it’s truly a privilege for me to share my experience with our service of daily, weekday Evening Prayer, which St. Anne’s has observed for nearly 40 years, since 1987. I’ve been told we are the only parish in our diocese to have maintained such a long unbroken tradition. Our services are lay led, held virtually every weekday on zoom, through the link given on the parish website, and live in the church as held on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday. The virtual service enables participants to be present from wherever they happen to be--at home or away, in hospital or rehab, visible or not, muted or not, on phone or laptop, however is possible and comfortable.
Our service comes from the first section of our Book of Common Prayer as the 2nd of the Daily Offices, with Morning Prayer the 1st and Compline the 3rd. Office from its Latin root, means duty or prescribed form, in this instance, for prayers at the end of the working day. As consisting of psalms, seasonal prayers of praise, contrition, adoration, petition and thanksgiving, Evening Prayer is further structured by two great biblical canticles, the Song of Mary, the Magnificat, and the Song of Simeon, the Nunc dimittis, each following the two assigned biblical readings of the day. This ordering is the legacy of Thomas Cranmer, who elegantly and prayerfully combined the inherited, centuries-old monastic hours of Vespers and Compline into the uniquely Anglican format of Evening Prayer, among the other treasures of the 1549 Prayerbook. The prayers and readings richly reflect the principal seasons of our liturgical year: Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Eastertide, Pentecost, and ordinary time. As also seen in our church’s windows, this rhythm also follows beautifully Nature’s gradually cycling modulation of darkness into light.
We also follow the Prayerbook’s schedule of Feasts with Lesser Feasts and Fasts, beginning each service with the commemoration and collect of the day. I have been responsible for compiling these and learned so much along the way, trying always to include quotes from the life or writings of the saint of the day, ancient or contemporary, from desert fathers and mothers, theologians and martyrs, kings and patriots, professed religious and laity, Roman Catholics and Protestants, fleshing out with so many living examples the root meanings of “catholic” as universal and the “communion of saints”-- what we have just professed faithfully in the words of the Nicene Creed.
It was during Covid that zoom, facilitated by Howard Buskirk, enabled our long tradition of Evening Prayer to continue unbroken. A welcoming community of regular attendants developed, breaking out of the relative isolation of that period, providing mutual support, happy to be together and to pray together regularly. This has continued both online and in church. Clergy and laity, members and visitors attend as schedules and circumstances permit—one of our former clergy, Janice Gordon-Barnes, sometimes assists as a co-leader from The Villages in Florida. We welcome everyone; being together and praying together has deeply enriched our lives. We cordially invite you to join us wherever and whenever you can!
Tom May, Evening Prayer Leader