Lauds — Morning Prayer

The first hour of the day, said at daybreak — before the day has said anything to you. A psalm that watches for the dawn, and an old man's song at the birth of his son. About eight minutes.

This is one form, not the whole Office. The Church's morning hour rotates its psalms over four weeks. What is here is the shape and the psalm that has always belonged to it — enough to pray this morning. The three-minute version is Morning & Evening Prayer.

The opening

Every hour of the Office begins here.

Psalm 62

The morning psalm — to thee do I watch at break of day. It has opened this hour on Sundays since Benedict.

A pause

Quiet, for as long as you want it. The day ahead, before it starts.

The Benedictus

Zechariah, who had been struck dumb for doubting, at the naming of his son John. Said at this hour, every morning, by the whole Church — as the Magnificat is at evening.

The Our Father, and the morning collect

And the sign of the cross. The hour ends, and the day begins.

What it does

It gets there first. The psalm is somebody awake before light, watching for it — for thee my soul hath thirsted — and it says the thirst before anything has been given. Then the Benedictus, which is a man who could not speak for nine months and whose first words when his tongue was loosed were not about himself but about what God was about to do.

The collect asks for one thing, and it is the practical thing: that we may not fall this day into any sin. Not the week. The day. The hour does not plan your life; it hands you the next sixteen hours and asks that they be kept.

Where it came from, and what happened after

Christians prayed at dawn before there was a rule for it; by the fourth century a morning office is assumed everywhere. Benedict fixed it at daybreak in his Rule around 530 and gave it the Benedictus as its canticle, and the name Lauds — praises — comes from the three psalms that ended it, 148, 149 and 150, which are nothing but praise.

Unlike Vespers, it was never much a lay hour; it happened at an hour laypeople were milking or sleeping. So most Catholics have never been to it, and it is the least known of the four on this site. It is also the one that most reliably changes a day, because it is said before the day has had its say.