Daily Liturgical Prayer: Origins and Theology

Daily Liturgical Prayer: Origins and Theology. By Gregory W. Woolfenden. Liturgy, Worship and Society series. Aldershot, Hampshire (UK), and Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate Publishing, 2004. xii + 326 pp. $29.95 (paper).

Woolfenden begins this study, originally a Ph.D. thesis, by acknowledging his indebtedness to Robert Taft, whose 1986 study The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West has been the standard scholarly treatment of the divine office, and Paul Bradshaw, "who has shown that we have little concrete evidence for what we would now recognize as a daily office before the fourth century" (p. xi). In light of these earlier works, one might question the need for a new study. Woolfenden explains that his intention is to develop a theology of daily prayer from the rites themselves.

Throughout the study, Woolfenden's theology is evident. He argues that the liturgical day is reckoned from evening to evening and that the evening and morning offices, along with nighttime vigils, have a strong paschal emphasis as they mark the passage from darkness to light. In the evening, the congregation begins the night enlightened by the light of Christ, seeks God s protection through the coming night, and anticipates the eternal light. Vigils during the night await the return of light, and the morning office then gives thanks for the new light of day, resurrection, and new creation.

Woolfenden explores these themes in each chapter, surveying biblical and patristic symbolism, then evidence from ancient church orders. The remainder of the book, save a final summary chapter, takes a historical and geographical approach, with six chapters devoted to offices in the Christian East and three examining Western offices. Each chapter shows the historical development of offices in a region, considering structure as well as Scripture, other texts, and the symbols and ritual actions that comprise the community's prayer. Prayer at evening, through the night, and in the morning is Woolfenden's primary interest; he also touches on the minor hours during the day.

Although Woolfenden discusses distinctive features of the offices in each region, he approaches the material synthetically, underscoring commonalities and concluding that there is a single theology evident in daily prayer, both East and West, until the late Middle Ages. In his effort to tease out this theology, Woolfenden sometimes ignores or explains away divergent evidence. For example, when discussing the church order Apostolic Constitutions, in which the order of offices is sometimes evening, then morning, and elsewhere begins with morning, Woolfenden comments, "The order of the offices in book 8 (evening first and then morning) may well be significant" (p. 31). His explanation, however, points only to his own theological perspective.

In another attempt at synthesis, Woolfenden argues that daily prayer is a renewal of baptism. Yet his summary draws upon widely disparate practices, for example, the use of paschal vigil canticles in Morning Prayer and the West Syrian interpretation of incense as cleansing rite. Here Woolfenden works primarily at the level of meaning, citing few texts that refer to the waters of baptism. The meanings he cites, particularly death/resurrection and new life, are not uniquely baptismal, and so the connections that he finds between baptism and daily prayer are primarily implicit.

The strength of this book is its careful, scholarly study of the content of daily offices as they developed in the Christian East and West. Woolfenden proposes that his identification of fundamental principles for daily prayer can serve as the basis for contemporary reform. Though I question whether the material can be synthesized as neatly as Woolfenden concludes, his theological perspective offers much food for thought, and lie covers the historical and geographical material in sufficient detail to permit the reader to draw her own conclusions.

RUTH A. MEYERS

Seabury-Western Theological Seminary

Evanston, Illinois

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