The Lutheran church has been blessed to have Compline – Prayer at the Close of the Day – included in its service books.  While I don’t know how many congregations gather to pray Compline on a regular basis, it is a salutary practice to consider.  With the recent introduction of Treasury of Daily Prayer, laypeople may be more inclined to pray Compline, if not in a group setting, at least in private prayer before going to bed.

Michael Brown with The Minnesota Compline Choir offers these thoughts from a brief essay on Compline:

Compline is the last in a continuous cycle of daily prayers and worship known as the Divine Office of the Church, to which Matins and Lauds (morning prayers) and the more familiar Vespers (evening prayer) also belong. In the text of the Compline service the act of going to sleep at the end of the day is analogous to the eternal rest that we find in Christ when we die. As we confess our sins, examine our consciences, and offer the actions of the day to God, we are assured that God continually watches over our lives, even as we sleep.

Counter to the current movement in church growth, with trends toward “contemporary” services, the Compline service preserves ancient traditions of simplicity, restfulness and timelessness of text and tune.

Compline is a restful service — whether chanted or spoken — and a fitting conclusion to the end of the day.  It is a service that spans generations and Christian denominations.

If this has piqued your interest in the Compline service, consider listening online to either The Minnesota Compline Choir of St. Paul, MN or The Compline Choir at St Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle, WA.

Both of these groups have a weekly Compline service available for on-demand listening, download, or subscription via a RSS feed reader.  The Seattle group also has an option as an iTunes podcast.  You will notice these services are more elaborate than Lutheran Service Book with more “propers”, but you will recognize much of the same “ordinary” text and music.

“Guide us waking, O Lord, and guard us sleeping that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep we may rest in peace.”

Thanks for reading Compline – Prayer at the Close of the Day.