Morning prayer

“ It is very hard for us to realize the feelings with which the first dwellers on the earth looked upon the Sun, or to understand fully what they meant by a morning prayer or a morning sacrifice. Perhaps there are few people who have watched a sunrise more than once or twice in their life; few people who have ever known the meaning of a morning prayer, or a morning sacrifice. But think of man at the very dawn of time. ”

“ You may count them like a rosary and make each one a prayer.
A moment in the morning—a moment, if no more—
Is better than an hour when the trying day is o'er.
'Tis the gentle dew from heaven, the manna for the day;
If you fail to gather early—alas! it melts away.
So, in the blush of morning, take the offered hand of love,
And walk in heaven's pathway and the peacefulness thereof.
—Arthur Lewis Tubbs. ———
AN INVITATION TO PRAYER
Come to the morning prayer,
Come, let us kneel and pray;
Prayer is the Christian pilgrim's staff
To walk with God all day. ”

“ When thou wakest in the morning, let it be thy first thought to raise thy mind to Him, offering to His glory all thou shalt do or suffer that day, praying Him to assist thee by His grace. Then make thy other morning acts of devotion, acts of thanksgiving and of love, prayers and resolutions to live that day as though it were to be the last of thy life. ”

“ The mornings open with a reverent, fervent-sounding prayer of words; and then the days come after piling up petitions of ends, aims, tempers, passions and works, that ask for anything and everything but what accords with genuine religion. The prayer of the morning is that the son, the daughter—all the sons and daughters—may be Christians ”

“ On the morrow I was astir even before the morning call to prayer. 'Prayer is better than sleep'—I listened to the familiar cry of the muezzin. But while again I prayed I felt that a good deed done may count more for a man at the gates of Paradise than the record of many prayers. ”

“ If there should be a man or woman of the character that has been spoken of this morning, that wishes to go away from this people, I wish they would go. Every honest Latter-day Saint has felt and prayed, and his prayer has been in the morning, at noon, in the evening, and at midnight, that God would sweep his vineyard and purify it and prune it of all the dead branches, that they may be burned and blown away by the wind, like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor. ”

“ Offer up the morning prayer, not coldly from custom, but from a heart-felt thankfulness to God, Who has protected you during the night, and call upon Him feelingly to bless your doings through the day. ”

“ The time given to prayer by the average preacher scarcely counts in the sum of the daily aggregate. Not infrequently the preacher's only praying is by his bedside in his nightdress, ready for bed and soon in it, with, perchance, the addition of a few hasty snatches of prayer ere he is dressed in the morning. How feeble, vain, and little is such praying compared with the time and energy devoted to praying by holy men in and out of the Bible! How poor and mean our petty, childish praying is beside the habits of the true men of God in all ages! ”

“ But for us, beloved brethren besides the hours of prayer observed of old, both the times and the sacraments have now increased in number. For we must also pray in the morning, that the Lord’s resurrection may be celebrated by morning prayer....Also at the sun-setting and decline of day we must pray again. For since Christ is the true Sun and the true Day, as the worldly sun and day depart, when we pray and ask that light may return to us again, we pray for the advent of Christ, which shall give us the grace of everlasting light. ”

“ Now the common popular criticism upon the Evening Prayer of the Church is that it repeats too slavishly the wording of the Morning Prayer. If this is an unjust criticism we ought not to let ourselves be troubled by it. On the other hand, if it is a just criticism it will be much wiser of us to heed than to stifle the voice that tells us the truth. It might seem to be straining a point were one to venture to explain the present very noticeable disinclination of Churchmen to attend a second service on Sunday, by connecting it with the particular infelicity in question ”

“ Only they ought to take care in general that Morning Prayers be always read before, and Evening after Noon. And it is very expedient that the same hours be every day, as much as it is possible, observed in the same place, that people knowing it beforehand, may order their affairs so as to be ready to go to the Church at the hour of prayer.
But notwithstanding this great care that our Church hath taken to have daily Prayers in every parish, we see by sad experience, they are shamefully neglected all the kingdom over ”

“ David says, "In the morning will I direct my prayer unto Thee and will look up." [Footnote: Ps. v. 3.] "When I awake I am still with Thee." [Footnote: Ps. cxxxix. 18.]
"In my morning prayer," said a Christian man, "instead of thinking of my own needs first, I like to think of the fulness there is in Christ for me." Let us resolve to put "God first," even if we have only time for one text of Scripture. "God first," even if it is only a minute or two for prayer. A Christian said once, "I must see the face of God before I see the face of man." The manna was gathered early every morning. ”

“ The days mentioned in the rubric as days on which the Confession of our Christian Faith, commonly {99} called The Creed of Saint Athanasius, is to be sung or said at Morning Prayer, instead of the Apostles' Creed, are 13. Four of these days are in the Easter and Ascension groups of days; when the doctrine of our Lord's Divine and Human Natures is most taught. The other nine days are chosen so as to fall, one in each of the nine months, between June and February. So the Praise Service ends, with the Highest Thoughts of God and His Being. ”

“ Once a fortnight we go to morning prayer at eleven and sit up in a sort of private box with a room behind, whither we can retire unobserved when the sermon is too long or our flesh too weak, and hear ourselves being prayed for by the black-robed parson. ”

“ May it shine continually to drive away all darkness. May Christ, the Morning Star who knows no setting, find it ever burning—he who gives his light to all creation, and who lives and reigns for ever and ever. ”

“ Impressed with this truth, you will be more zealous in saying your morning prayers, and throughout the day will more frequently raise your mind to God; you will never neglect to attend public worship; you will never lie down to sleep without having in prayer bewailed the faults of the past day. ”

“ We all feel that it is good for us to be here, and are surprised that it is so late, when, after another brief prayer, we are summoned to rise and receive the benediction—it seems to me that we should kneel to receive a blessing from such lips—and the morning services are over. ”

“ Morning prayers should comprise adoration of the Divine Majesty, thanksgiving for His protection during the night, and consecration of the day to God’s service. Each day, as it comes, may be the last one of our earthly lives. We should, therefore, try to keep it free from sin and fill it with good works, fruitful unto life eternal. ”

“ Prayer then loses every vestige of dread which it may once have possessed; we regard it no longer as a duty which must be performed, but rather as a privilege which is to be enjoyed, a rare delight that is always revealing some new beauty.
Thus, when we open our eyes in the morning, our thought instantly mounts heavenward. To many Christians the morning hours are the most precious 67portion of the day, because they provide the opportunity for the hallowed fellowship that gives the keynote to the day’s programme. ”

“ Morning or Evening Prayer may be used in place of all that precedes the Peace and the Offertory, provided that a lesson from the Gospel is always included, and that the intercessions conform to the directions given for the Prayers of the People. ”

“ The spirit of the Morning Offering of the Apostleship of Prayer is such that when in our daily round of duties — of prayers, works, and sufferings - we conduct ourselves in accordance with it, we not only sanctify ourselves but also become true victims in union with Jesus for all the interests that are most dear to His sacred Heart and for which He pleads unceasingly upon our altars. ”

“ And this is, I believe, one of the uses of prayer, that we put a thought into the mind, which can abide with us, secretly it may be, all the day; and that thus it is not a mere pious habit or tradition to have a quiet period at the beginning of the day, in which we can nurture some joyful and generous hope, but as real a source of strength to the spirit as the morning meal is to the body. ”

“ If we take that manual of worship with which as English-speaking Christians we are ourselves the most familiar, the Book of Common Prayer, and allow it to fall naturally apart, as a bunch of flowers would do if the string were cut, we discover that in point of fact we have, as in the case of the Bible, many books in one. We have scarcely turned the title-page, for instance, before we come upon a ritual of daily worship, an order for Morning Prayer and an order for Evening Prayer, consisting in the main of Psalms, Scripture Lessons, Antiphonal Versicles, and Collects. ”

“ Five prayers must be said daily: in the morning, just before [132] sunrise, at midday, during the afternoon, at sunset, and an hour and a half after the going down of the same. The call to prayer can be heard at these stated times, and it is curiously impressive to wake just as dawn is about to break, and to hear the long drawn-out wail of the muezzin from the minaret in the silence of the night. ”

“ I have noticed that the Christianity of a certain class of respectable people begins when they open their prayer-books at eleven o’clock on Sunday morning, and ends when they shut them up again at one o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Nothing so astonishes and insults Christians of this sort as reminding them of their Christianity on a week-day. ”

“ Form the habit of prayer immediately on awakening in the morning, Make Daniel and David the rule of life. Form habit of praying whenever doubt, difficulty, temptation, or trial arises, any hour of the day or night. ”

“ And the life of prayer works in a circle. The devotions of the morning give tone to those which come at noon and night, while the night prayers in turn determine the quality of the morrow's. Men usually wake in the temper of mind in which they went to sleep. It is all-important to gain a clear vision of God as the last conscious act before going to rest. ”

“ Have a fixed hour for rising in the morning; bless yourself with holy water, and as soon as possible recite devoutly your morning prayers. During the day make at least a short meditation or a spiritual reading. ”

“ And surely our clergy need not be surprised at the daily increasing distrust in the public mind of the efficacy of Prayer, after having so long insisted on their offering supplication, at least every Sunday morning at eleven o'clock, that the rest of their lives hereafter might be pure and holy, leaving them conscious all the while that they would be similarly required to inform the Lord next week, at the same hour, that "there was no health in them"! ”

“ As the morning is in many respects most favorable, you would do well to spend as much time as you can in your closet, before engaging in the employments of the day. An hour spent in reading God's word, and in prayer and praise, early in the morning, will give a heavenly tone to your feelings; which, by proper watchfulness, and frequent draughts at the same fountain, {70}you may carry through all the pursuits of the day.
As already remarked, our Lord, in the pattern left us, has given a very prominent place to the petition, "Thy kingdom come." This is a large petition. ”

“ Never retire at night without falling upon your knees before God in prayer. Always go to church at an early hour in the morning to offer to God the homage of your first and freshest thoughts. This was the custom of my father, and of all the pious people who surrounded him. With the first rays of the sun they praised the Lord, and exclaimed with fervor, ‘Condescend, O Lord! ”

“ The place and time of prayer are of less importance. Morning, noon and night, prayer is always fitting. However, it is well to be orderly, and to beget habits of prayer, and certain hours of the day should therefore be set aside for prayer, both in private and in the family. ”

“ Morning and evening prayer and grace at table should be earnestly recommended to all, because these are customs that have come down from the earliest times, and also because those who disregard them often come to neglect all prayer, or at least expose themselves to dangers or to the loss of precious graces. ”

“ Easter Even. The prayers denominated collects in our liturgy are those of the day, and the 2nd and 3rd at Morning and Evening Prayer respectively; the Prayer for all Conditions of Men, which is called also a collect; the prayer preceding the ten commandments, the prayer for the sovereign in the Communion Service, and the six occasional collects following it; the prayer following the Lord’s Prayer in the Confirmation Service; the prayer preceding the psalm in the Visitation of the Sick, that in the Communion of the Sick, and the prayer preceding the blessing in the Burial of the Dead ”

“ If, then, we wish to obtain from God the gift of perseverance, we must ask it from him continually and with importunity. We must ask it when we rise in the morning, in our meditations, in hearing Mass, in our visits to the blessed sacrament, in going to bed at night, and particularly when we are tempted by the devil to commit any sin. ”