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.

In a short article I recently acquired, Kevin Hildebrand reflects on the import of these familiar words.

We are by nature sinful and unclean. Therefore we ask with the psalmist, “O Lord, open my lips,” as we cannot open our own dead, sinful lips. Only with lips that have been touched with the words of absolution, drenched with the waters of Holy Baptism, and quenched with the Blood of the chalice can we then say with confidence, “and my mouth will declare your praise.”

** An excerpt from “The Organ Also Sings: Some Brief Thoughts to Introduce an Organ Reading Session” in the 2004 journal of the Good Shepherd Institute – Singing and Preaching the Close of the Year: “Zion Hears the Watchmen Singing)

Our praise is a result of the great gifts God gives us through His word and sacraments. Thanks be to God!

Thanks for reading O Lord, Open My Lips.

“. . . The Lutheran cantor viewed the use of his artistic gifts primarily as a summons from God to preach the Gospel. He did not consider himself an individual artist who was to receive honor and acclaim through his own doing. He regarded his work as existing only for the reason of purposeful union with God and the church.” (Key Words in Music [1978 ed], editor Carl Schalk, page 47)

While the sinful flesh can revel in the accolades heaped on him by others, the Christian, fulfilling his vocation in faith, looks with utter dependence on what God has done for him.

Please keep your parish musicians in your prayers as they serve your congregations with the Gospel.  Lutheran Service Book has a prayer for church musicians and artists:

God of majesty, whom saints and angels delight to worship in heaven, be with Your servants who make art and music for Your people that with joy we on earth may glimpse Your Beauty. Bring us to the fulfillment of that hope of perfection that will be ours as we stand before Your unveiled glory; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. (136)

Thanks for reading The Kantor "Attitude".