Morning Prayer (Matins) | Evening Prayer (Vespers) | Prayer at the Close of Day (Compline)

Proverbs 4 (Listen)

A Father’s Wise Instruction

4:1   Hear, O sons, a father’s instruction,
    and be attentive, that you may gain insight,
2   for I give you good precepts;
    do not forsake my teaching.
3   When I was a son with my father,
    tender, the only one in the sight of my mother,
4   he taught me and said to me,
  “Let your heart hold fast my words;
    keep my commandments, and live.
5   Get wisdom; get insight;
    do not forget, and do not turn away from the words of my mouth.
6   Do not forsake her, and she will keep you;
    love her, and she will guard you.
7   The beginning of wisdom is this: Get wisdom,
    and whatever you get, get insight.
8   Prize her highly, and she will exalt you;
    she will honor you if you embrace her.
9   She will place on your head a graceful garland;
    she will bestow on you a beautiful crown.”
10   Hear, my son, and accept my words,
    that the years of your life may be many.
11   I have taught you the way of wisdom;
    I have led you in the paths of uprightness.
12   When you walk, your step will not be hampered,
    and if you run, you will not stumble.
13   Keep hold of instruction; do not let go;
    guard her, for she is your life.
14   Do not enter the path of the wicked,
    and do not walk in the way of the evil.
15   Avoid it; do not go on it;
    turn away from it and pass on.
16   For they cannot sleep unless they have done wrong;
    they are robbed of sleep unless they have made someone stumble.
17   For they eat the bread of wickedness
    and drink the wine of violence.
18   But the path of the righteous is like the light of dawn,
    which shines brighter and brighter until full day.
19   The way of the wicked is like deep darkness;
    they do not know over what they stumble.
20   My son, be attentive to my words;
    incline your ear to my sayings.
21   Let them not escape from your sight;
    keep them within your heart.
22   For they are life to those who find them,
    and healing to all their flesh.
23   Keep your heart with all vigilance,
    for from it flow the springs of life.
24   Put away from you crooked speech,
    and put devious talk far from you.
25   Let your eyes look directly forward,
    and your gaze be straight before you.
26   Ponder the path of your feet;
    then all your ways will be sure.
27   Do not swerve to the right or to the left;
    turn your foot away from evil.

1 John 4:7–21 (Listen)

God Is Love

7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.

13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. 15 Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. 16 So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. 17 By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. 19 We love because he first loved us. 20 If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. 21 And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.

John 11:30–44 (Listen)

30 Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him. 31 When the Jews who were with her in the house, consoling her, saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there. 32 Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” 33 When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. 34 And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” 35 Jesus wept. 36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!” 37 But some of them said, “Could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also have kept this man from dying?”

Jesus Raises Lazarus

38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. 39 Jesus said, “Take away the stone.” Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, “Lord, by this time there will be an odor, for he has been dead four days.” 40 Jesus said to her, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” 41 So they took away the stone. And Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you have heard me. 42 I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around, that they may believe that you sent me.” 43 When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out.” 44 The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unbind him, and let him go.”

Morning Psalms

Psalm 12 (Listen)

The Faithful Have Vanished

To the choirmaster: according to The Sheminith. A Psalm of David.

12:1   Save, O LORD, for the godly one is gone;
    for the faithful have vanished from among the children of man.
2   Everyone utters lies to his neighbor;
    with flattering lips and a double heart they speak.
3   May the LORD cut off all flattering lips,
    the tongue that makes great boasts,
4   those who say, “With our tongue we will prevail,
    our lips are with us; who is master over us?”
5   “Because the poor are plundered, because the needy groan,
    I will now arise,” says the LORD;
    “I will place him in the safety for which he longs.”
6   The words of the LORD are pure words,
    like silver refined in a furnace on the ground,
    purified seven times.
7   You, O LORD, will keep them;
    you will guard us from this generation forever.
8   On every side the wicked prowl,
    as vileness is exalted among the children of man.

Psalm 146 (Listen)

Put Not Your Trust in Princes

146:1   Praise the LORD!
  Praise the LORD, O my soul!
2   I will praise the LORD as long as I live;
    I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.
3   Put not your trust in princes,
    in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.
4   When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;
    on that very day his plans perish.
5   Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,
    whose hope is in the LORD his God,
6   who made heaven and earth,
    the sea, and all that is in them,
  who keeps faith forever;
7     who executes justice for the oppressed,
    who gives food to the hungry.
  The LORD sets the prisoners free;
8     the LORD opens the eyes of the blind.
  The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down;
    the LORD loves the righteous.
9   The LORD watches over the sojourners;
    he upholds the widow and the fatherless,
    but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
10   The LORD will reign forever,
    your God, O Zion, to all generations.
  Praise the LORD!

Evening Psalms

Psalm 36 (Listen)

How Precious Is Your Steadfast Love

To the choirmaster. Of David, the servant of the LORD.

36:1   Transgression speaks to the wicked
    deep in his heart;
  there is no fear of God
    before his eyes.
2   For he flatters himself in his own eyes
    that his iniquity cannot be found out and hated.
3   The words of his mouth are trouble and deceit;
    he has ceased to act wisely and do good.
4   He plots trouble while on his bed;
    he sets himself in a way that is not good;
    he does not reject evil.
5   Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens,
    your faithfulness to the clouds.
6   Your righteousness is like the mountains of God;
    your judgments are like the great deep;
    man and beast you save, O LORD.
7   How precious is your steadfast love, O God!
    The children of mankind take refuge in the shadow of your wings.
8   They feast on the abundance of your house,
    and you give them drink from the river of your delights.
9   For with you is the fountain of life;
    in your light do we see light.
10   Oh, continue your steadfast love to those who know you,
    and your righteousness to the upright of heart!
11   Let not the foot of arrogance come upon me,
    nor the hand of the wicked drive me away.
12   There the evildoers lie fallen;
    they are thrust down, unable to rise.

Psalm 7 (Listen)

In You Do I Take Refuge

A Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the LORD concerning the words of Cush, a Benjaminite.

7:1   O LORD my God, in you do I take refuge;
    save me from all my pursuers and deliver me,
2   lest like a lion they tear my soul apart,
    rending it in pieces, with none to deliver.
3   O LORD my God, if I have done this,
    if there is wrong in my hands,
4   if I have repaid my friend with evil
    or plundered my enemy without cause,
5   let the enemy pursue my soul and overtake it,
    and let him trample my life to the ground
    and lay my glory in the dust. Selah
6   Arise, O LORD, in your anger;
    lift yourself up against the fury of my enemies;
    awake for me; you have appointed a judgment.
7   Let the assembly of the peoples be gathered about you;
    over it return on high.
8   The LORD judges the peoples;
    judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness
    and according to the integrity that is in me.
9   Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
    and may you establish the righteous—
  you who test the minds and hearts,
    O righteous God!
10   My shield is with God,
    who saves the upright in heart.
11   God is a righteous judge,
    and a God who feels indignation every day.
12   If a man does not repent, God will whet his sword;
    he has bent and readied his bow;
13   he has prepared for him his deadly weapons,
    making his arrows fiery shafts.
14   Behold, the wicked man conceives evil
    and is pregnant with mischief
    and gives birth to lies.
15   He makes a pit, digging it out,
    and falls into the hole that he has made.
16   His mischief returns upon his own head,
    and on his own skull his violence descends.
17   I will give to the LORD the thanks due to his righteousness,
    and I will sing praise to the name of the LORD, the Most High.