NEWS FEATURE: Fixed-hour Prayer Moving Out of the Monastery

c. 2000 Religion News Service UNDATED _ The admonition is a simple one: “Pray without ceasing,” Paul advises in the New Testament book of Thessalonians. For centuries, Christians have honored that call to prayer through the practice of fixed-hour prayer _ the recitation of psalms, hymns, scripture readings and prayer at specific times of the […]

c. 2000 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ The admonition is a simple one:

“Pray without ceasing,” Paul advises in the New Testament book of Thessalonians.


For centuries, Christians have honored that call to prayer through the practice of fixed-hour prayer _ the recitation of psalms, hymns, scripture readings and prayer at specific times of the day. Though long a hallmark of monastic life, fixed-hour prayer has begun to move beyond monastery walls as the modern lay community revisits the ancient practice.

“There is a move now away from generic spirituality to a more rooted spirituality that we’re seeing all over the country,” said Phyllis Tickle, a contributing religion editor at Publishers Weekly. The first volume of her book of fixed-hour prayer, “The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime” (Doubleday), debuted in March. “I think it’s just a normal progression. We went from hedonism into the self-help movement and from that into New Age and the spirituality movement. Now people want to reach back into the past.”

As early as the 1st century, Christian worshipers, many of them still rooted in their Jewish liturgical tradition, incorporated fixed-hour prayer _ also termed “the divine offices” or “liturgy of the hours” _ into their daily routines. They typically prayed five times a day at three-hour intervals from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. The prayers _ which were sometimes extended into the evening and at midnight _ began with an invocation and call to prayer, followed by hymns and scripture readings from Psalms and other books of the Bible.

“It’s about the need to invite God to come and join you so that fixed-hour prayer becomes a meeting of the Creator and the creature,” said Tickle, who prays at least three times a day. “Ultimately the divine office is a place where time stops and God and humanity sit down together _ you stop as a creature of God to acknowledge the Creator, asking nothing at all. You’re offering that which is in many ways most difficult to offer, especially in Western culture _ time.”

Tickle has followed the routine for about 30 years, since she was a student at East Tennessee State University studying Latin and Greek.

“I began to realize I did not have the spiritual strength or wisdom or maturity I needed for life,” said Tickle. “I needed to have input, not from preachers or organized religion or Sunday School teachers, but from the spirit itself. I needed to open up communion with God and the way to do that was prayer and scripture reading.”

Adhering to a schedule of fixed-hour prayer is no easy task in the modern world, said Tickle, a fact she soon discovered while trying to squeeze prayer in between classes and meetings.

“A few times I’ve had to pull of the side of the highway on the way to a meeting or something to do a noon prayer,” she acknowledged. “Sometimes I’ve had to excuse myself to go pray in the ladies room. But I began to feel self-conscious about disappearing in the middle of meetings,so instead of trying to excuse myself at the stroke of 12 to go pray I simply read the offices at 11 o’clock or waited and did it at one.”

Still, she cautions against tampering too much with the hours of prayer.

“I try to rigidly stick to the schedule because that means other Christians are praying with you and you keep the cascade of prayer going,” said Tickle. “If you get too loose you’re praying in isolation. When I monkey with my time too many days in a row I get cross _ there’s no rhythm to my day.”


The fixed scheduled was a bit off-putting for Hastings Masterson, 26, who began the practice just three months ago.

“I was a little overwhelmed by it _ I wasn’t sure if I could do it every day,” admitted Masterson, who lives in Spring City, Pa. “It took me four years to get to the point where I was ready spiritually to accept it into my life. But then I decided I wanted that discipline in my life so I could grow spiritually, so I knew it was time to start doing it .”

Now she prays three times a day, and has even recommended the practice to several friends.

“For me, this is the perfect way to slow down and re-gather myself every few hours,” said Masterson. “After I’ve read my prayers I have a renewed sense of energy and spirit, it gives me a presence of mind. Just like some people go out for a candy or a cigarette or a candy bar or something to get re-energized, this is something I can do to re-group for a while.”

Masterson said she first learned of fixed-hour prayer from her mother, Bonnie Shannonhouse, who began the practice herself about seven years ago and now teaches others through Tapestry Inc., an organization she established about three years ago to coordinate day-long spiritual retreats nationwide and internationally.

Communicating with a higher power through prayer is particularly necessary in modern times, said Shannonhouse, who self-published in 1994 a prayerbook of early morning prayers, “The Little Hours,” and another one for children, “The Little Hours for Little People.”


“It brings about a discipline that individuals need,” she said. “The best thing to do with so much heresy these days is to stay with what Jesus himself did, and since Jesus himself stopped to pray at specific times of the day then I think we too can follow that example.”

Though until recently popular primarily among the liturgical traditions such as Roman Catholicism and Orthodox and Anglican Christianity, fixed-hour prayer is in many ways a bridge between faiths, said Shannonhouse, pointing out that denominations from Catholics to Southern Baptists have begun seeking comfort in the practice.

“I have run into Southern Baptists who are doing this, Pentecostals, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox _ it pulls people from all denominations,” she said. “I think that God is calling us back to a time when Christians were all one, because when fixed-hour prayer first began the Eastern and Western Churches had not split.”

The renewed interest in fixed-hour prayer is no accident, said Tickle. She said the practice was originally widespread in the lay community, and sees its revival among the modern laity community as evidence the practice is returning to its lay origins.

“The keeping of hours was originally practiced by the laity _ not church leaders,” said Tickle. “The laity had to give up the hours for purely logistical reasons _ the monks had all of the access to the materials like the prayer books. In Islam, fixed-hour prayer was never taken away from the laity. Every Muslim must keep the fixed-hour prayer, and we accept it and don’t even think it’s odd, but modern Christians have forgotten they did the same thing at one time.”

She said part of the reason she wrote her own book of fixed-hour prayer was to encourage lay people to adopt the practice.


“A lot of the older prayerbooks have terms that are positively daunting to the average person,” said Tickle. “I wanted to see the translation out of liturgical language into something perfectly understandable and accessible in contemporary English.”

Now in its second printing, “Prayers for Summertime” has been a hit with readers. A second volume of prayers for fall and winter will follow in September, and a Spring volume will be published in January of next year. Tickle said she’s convinced fixed-hour prayer’s popularity will not diminish any time soon.

“Together with the Eucharist service, fixed-hour prayer is the oldest form of spiritual discipline in the church,” she said. “I think it is so ingrained in Christian spirituality that it’s going to last right up until the trumpet blows. There will always be a hunger for it.”

DEA END DANCY

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