The midnight office

Last month I recounted my youthful discovery of the discipline of daily prayer, also known as the daily office. According to this pattern, whose origins almost certainly extend back to God’s people of the old covenant, the entire day is divided up into approximately three-hour intervals punctuated by the several prayer offices. The number varies between five and seven, and sometimes more.

However, one of these offices puzzled me, because it occurred in the middle of the night when I assumed most normal people would be sleeping. If we are sleeping an average of eight hours per night, wouldn’t rising to pray in the middle of this period be a huge disruption? Perhaps that’s why the daily office was relegated to the monks, who were accustomed to cultivating heroic disciplines for the sake of their Saviour.

Preindustrial patterns

More than ten years ago, I learned something that solved the puzzle. Pre-industrial populations did not sleep a full eight hours. Their sleep patterns were biphasic or even multiphasic. Without the artificial lighting now ubiquitous in our communities, there was no nightlife as we know it. Depending on the time of year, our forebears would go to bed early and sleep for around four hours. They would then wake up for about two hours and then return to bed to sleep for another four hours. This was followed by a normal workday. In warmer climates, some of these sleep hours were reserved for the hottest part of the day, a pattern many of my Cypriot relatives still practise and one that I’ve personally found easy to adjust to.

Saints at midnight

These hours in the middle of the night were often reserved for prayer, known as the midnight office. No one was particularly heroic for praying at this time, as they were already awake. There are several biblical references to people being awake at midnight to pray. “At midnight I rise to praise you, because of your righteous ordinances” (Psalm 119:62 NRSV). “About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them” (Acts 16:25).

Others engaged in less exalted pursuits at that hour: “But Samson lay till midnight, and at midnight he arose and took hold of the doors of the gate of the city and the two posts, and pulled them up, bar and all, and put them on his shoulders and carried them to the top of the hill that is in front of Hebron” (Judges 16:3).

Every so often I find myself awake at night and unable to get back to sleep quickly. When I was younger, this was a cause for anxiety. But it’s likely a vestige of a more natural sleep pattern. So why not use such times for prayer? That’s what I’ve been doing more recently. Give it a try.