The Orthodox daily cycle and prayer rule
Vespers, Matins and the hours in church, and a personal rule kept at home.
The liturgical day begins at sunset, so Vespers opens it and Matins greets the morning; monasteries keep the full cycle of hours, parishes a portion. At home, many Orthodox follow a personal rule: set morning and evening prayers from a prayer book, said standing before the icons, often with a candle or oil lamp lit.
The daily cycle runs Vespers in the evening, Matins in the morning and the lesser hours between, and in monasteries it is kept in full. Parishes usually keep Vespers on Saturday and Matins before the Sunday Liturgy, with the rest observed at festivals.
Alongside it sits the prayer rule, which is personal. It is a set of prayers a person commits to say morning and evening, and it is normally given or adjusted by a confessor rather than chosen alone.
The rule is expected to be modest and kept, rather than ambitious and abandoned, and spiritual fathers are known for shortening them.
Does it have a text?
The services and the standard morning and evening prayers are fixed texts. Hapgood's 1906 translation carries much of the cycle and is out of copyright; nothing from it is published here yet.
When it comes up
Other forms of prayer in Orthodox
- The Divine Liturgy — The central Orthodox service, sung throughout and almost entirely fixed.
- The Jesus Prayer — A single repeated sentence at the centre of Orthodox contemplative practice.
- Prayer with icons — Prayer before images that are venerated rather than worshipped.
- Orthodox supplication and blessing services — Short services asking for help, healing or blessing outside the main liturgy.
- Orthodox prayer for the departed — Memorial services for the dead, kept at set intervals after a death.
This page describes a practice. It does not tell you how to perform it, or whether you should. Practice varies by region, community and household far more than a page like this can carry, and nobody credentialed in the tradition has signed anything here. The full dossier names its sources.