Daily Office: My Favorite Bible Reading Plan

Happy Feast of the Circumcison

Today is the Feast of the Circumcision of Jesus. This is the eighth day of Christmas, the day when our Lord would have been circumcised and officially given his name, “Yahweh Saves.” It is the day the Church recognizes the first time our Lord received a wound that comes from being born a man under the Law of God. Jesus would receive many wounds in his life as a consequence of being human. This wound of circumcision, however, is unique in the sense that it is the first wound tied specifically to being a fulfillment of the Covenant. Ultimately, it points us toward his crucifixion, where the wounds inflicted on Jesus fulfill the requirements of the Law once and for all.

Happy New Year

This is also a secular holiday, where we recognize the new calendar year. Every new year, the entire world celebrates the new, fresh start. Often, we think about things we’d like to accomplish in the fresh year. Gyms fill up and people who go all year long wonder how long it will take before they don’t have to fight for a machine. Many Christians also think of their spiritual disciplines. There are many plans to read the Scriptures that begin on January 1 and are designed to take readers through the Holy Scriptures in a year.

These plans are helpful and desired. What a gift to have a plan to read Sacred Scripture, hearing God’s Holy Word to us throughout the year. I wanted to commend to you the historic, Anglican plan for reading and praying through Holy Scripture every year. It is the Bible reading plan that my family has found the most success of any in reading large volumes of Scripture: The Daily Office.

The Daily Office

This was my first New Year after beginning saying prayers in the Saint Bernard Breviary. This is a book that set the Psalter and most of the prayers to chant. It was really satisfying to finish the year’s reading last night and move my bookmark to the first page again. I thought it an incredible, visual picture of the way that we attempt to shape our lives and communal prayers around the sequential reading of Holy Scripture.

This bookmark is at “Day One” readings for the Daily Office. You can plainly see that, even with a hymnal, the entire Office set to chant, and the Psalter, the vast majority of the book is simply the Holy Scriptures, set to be read in a daily pattern. Someone praying Morning and Evening Prayer will read through the 90 percent of the Old Testament and a large chunk of the Apocrypha this year. She would read the New Testament twice through (with the exception of Revelation, only read once), and the Psalter either 6 or 12 times through. My family has found no better way to immerse ourselves in God’s story, and there is something so beautiful about communally reading and praying the Scriptures together with the entire Church.

I want to encourage you to give it a try this year. Try regularly praying the Office and reading Holy Scripture according to this schedule. The Daily Office Lectionary is the most important, unique contribution of the Anglican Communion to the church catholic, and it reflects our desire that the entirety of Scripture is to be read regularly and sequentially. Our Sunday lectionary readings are more thematic and based on the Church calendar, which is a great gift to us, but it is a gift that assumes that Scriptures are being read regularly and sequentially in Morning and Evening prayer throughout the week. The picture above is a realistic picture of how the prayer service goes, because if you pray the Office for 25 minutes this evening, more than 2/3 of the time will be simply reading the Scriptures and Psalms aloud.

If you decide to give the Daily Office a try this year, I have two pieces of advice for you:

1- Start Small: Don’t try to be a hero. If you think you’ll only be able to pray once a day this year, go with the two year cycle. Our lectionary intentionally does two sets of sequential readings, one in the morning and one in the evening. This is to let you choose to do it in a two year cycle if you only pray once per day. In Year One, you will read the morning prayer readings, and in Year Two, you’ll read the evening prayer readings. Start with what you can manage to pull off with regularity.

2- Don’t catch up: Seriously, don’t catch up. If you miss a day here and there, don’t try to do double the next day. Everyone misses a day here and there (priests included!). Bible reading plans fail for most people because people get so behind that they think it worthless to pick it up again. If you miss January 2 readings, pick up the plan on January 3. I promise, you’ll be fine. You’re not trying to merely check off a box, you’re trying to develop a new, sustainable rhythm. Take it easy on yourself and don’t pile it on.

I am praying many of my people at Saint John’s will give the Daily Office a try this year. There has been no better way for my family to be immersed in praying the Scriptures together.

Resources for Daily Office

Daily Office Podcast: Great for if you need to pray Morning/Evening Prayer on the go

Daily Office Online: There’s a mobile app for apple, you can just use the webpage if you’re an android user like me. This has all the readings and prayers in one spot every day.

If you’re doing this with your prayer book and need help navigating the book, reach out. I’d love to help!