The Night Offices: Prayers for the Hours from Sunset to Sunrise

The Divine Hours

by Phyllis Tickle

Phyllis Tickle's inspirational trilogy The Divine Hours TM was the first major literary and liturgical reworking of the sixth-century Benedictine Rule of fixed-hour prayer--an age-old discipline of saying prayers at certain times of the day. This highly regarded trilogy has become one of America's best-loved and most frequently consulted manuals for observing this ancient form of Christian worship.

Now, in The Night Offices , Tickle offers the perfect complement to The Divine Hours TM, bringing together prayers, psalms, hymn texts, religious poetry and other readings not included in the original trilogy, covering the offices for the hours from late evening (Compline) to early morning (Prime). Fans of the Divine Hours TM will recognize Tickle's simple, elegant format, her use of a modern calendar rather than a liturgical one, and the single ribbon in the binding, to track one's progress through the year. As in the trilogy, Tickle makes primary use of the Book of Common Prayer and the writings of the Church Fathers, and she draws all the scriptural readings from the Revised Standard Version . The book includes a set of Matins, Lauds, and Prime specific to each day of the week and varied only by month. Thus, the Monday reading for January would be used every Monday in January, but Monday in February would have new offices for it. The cumulative total, being 84 Matins, 84 Lauds, and 84
Prime (252 offices), fits neatly into a single, nightstand edition, a small, compact book that can be comfortably held in the hand.

Easy to use, poetically rich, with a superb sampling of devotional works, The Night Offices will be welcomed by a broad readership, Christian and non-Christian alike.

Genres: Prayer, Spirituality, Christianity, Theology, Devotional

460 pages, Hardcover

First published October 10, 2006

About the author

Phyllis Natalie Tickle was an American author and lecturer whose work focuses on spirituality and religion issues. After serving as a teacher, professor, and academic dean, Tickle entered the publishing industry, serving as the founding editor of the religion department at Publishers Weekly, before then becoming a popular writer. She is well known as a leading voice in the emergence church movement. She is perhaps best known for The Divine Hours series of books, published by Doubleday Press, and her book The Great Emergence- How Christianity Is Changing and Why. Tickle was a member of the Episcopal Church, where she was licensed as both a lector and a lay eucharistic minister. She has been widely quoted by many media outlets, including Newsweek, Time, Life, The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, C-SPAN, PBS, The History Channel, the BBC and VOA. It has been said that "Over the past generation, no one has written more deeply and spoken more widely about the contours of American faith and spirituality than Phyllis Tickle." A biography of Tickle, written by Jon M. Sweeney, was published in February 2018. Phyllis Tickle: A Life (Church Publishing, Inc), has been widely reviewed.

Reviews

[Ethan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A manual for the night offices of prayer throughout the year.

The author provides a prayer manual for each month of the year as well as some special events. Each month features three prayers per evening: midnight, the night watch, and dawn. Similar elements are maintained throughout.

Much of the prayers feature Scripture quotations or useful apocryphal material. There may be certain questionable theological or doctrinal material in some prayers but such are easily excluded.

A beneficial guide to structure one's prayers in the night.

[Jacob Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

I currently work as a night-shift hotel clerk. The liturgies Phyllis Tickle has assembled from traditional sources in this volume feel special because they are uniquely designed to be prayed during the very hours I am active. They are beautiful in their reflection and often refocus my mind and spirit in the dark hours of the night and offer me a vehicle for praying for the world around me as it sleeps.

[Pablo Reyes · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great Devotion

Great practice to set my mind on God when I randomly wake up at night or am traveling late at night. I have a go-to prayer for month and day of the week and time of the night to go.

It would be 5 stars except it contains a number of formatting errors.

[Naomi · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Night Offices have been a lovely companion over the past year, teaching me more about spiritual practice observing the monastic hours, and also bringing me into a place of deeper connection at what are often the loneliest and most painful times of day. Suitable for individual prayer and small group use.

[Allen Knight · Rating 5 out of 5]

Join with the body of Christ in the ancient tradition of divine hours, when the church joins in common prayer. (While I marked read, actually as a guide, I read this whenever I find the time and place for the night offices.)

[David Weller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book for daily office prayers during the night. I'm often up at midnight and 3:00am, and feel I need the hours for praising God at these times. The book covers the entire year; the offices follow the same format as the three-volume Divine Hours of the daytime.

[Michele Zuniga]

For the Wee Small Hrs

For those night owls who want a way to wind down the wee hours with words of comfort and grace, knowing there are others lying in the dark f knight whispering the same prayers.

[Darlene Hull · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love the rhythm of praying the hours, even though, as a Protestant, it's not really part of my culture. These books make it so easy! I love these books.

[Auspicious Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Praying the hours is a christian tradition that really works for me.