How to pray at home when we cannot go to Church?

Many of us are confined at home, our parishes have drastically reduced services in which we cannot  participate, so we find ourselves in the situation that, if we want to pray some of the Church services, we have to do it ourselves, at home. 

Today I’ll try to answer some questions on how to do just that. 

Question 1: is it ok to miss all these services and pray at home without liturgies and the Eucharist? In the life of St Mary if Egypt we find out that the monks in her time had a habit to go into the desert during Great Lent and pray in isolation, without liturgy for 40 days and they would get back on Holy Week to pray together again and celebrate Pascha. St. Mary of Egypt also stayed for years without Holy Communion. So no, this is not normal, we have no choice in this, but we can use this time to exercise self prayer at home and maybe experience some of the hesychia or inner peace that the monks were seeking. 

Question 2: What Services can we pray at home? 

We can pray at home any of the daily services, except for the Divine Liturgy. That is Vespers, Compline (or Great Compline during Lent) Midnight Office, Matins, The Hours (1, 3, 6 and 9) and the Typica Service. With small modifications, which I will explain, you can pray these services yourself. 

Question 3: Where do we find the services? All daily services are found in the book called Horologion. All the daily services have fixed parts that are said every time without change but also have parts that change based on the day, liturgical season etc. The Horologion has all the fixed parts, while the others are found in the Anastasimatarion (resurrection hymns for Sundays), Menaion (for the saints), Triodion (during Lent) and Penticostarion (between Pascha and Pentecost). Confused enough? Don’t be,  because there is another solution! You can find all the services put together here https://www.agesinitiatives.com/dcs/public/dcs/dcs.html . AGES has done a wonderful job simplifying this for us. Your can still do it the old fashioned way, but you’lll have to have all the books. So…up to you….

Question 4: Ok, so can we get started already? Yes, sorry. So once we decide what service we are going to pray, let’s say it is morning and we’ll pray Matins, we print out the service for Matins of that day or read on the tablet or phone on the free AGES app. Next, we prayerfully stand in front of the icons and we start praying. 

Question 4: Do I have to sing the hymns? I don’t know all the melodies…No, you can just plain read with attentiveness and compunction of the heart. You can, of course sing some, if you know them. You are by yourself or with your family, anyway. Who’s going to judge you? 

Question 5: But the services have priest parts, can WE read those? No, the priest and/or deacon parts belong to the priest so we don’t say them.

All Reader’s Services begin and end with the exclamation: “Through the prayers of our holy fathers, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us. Amen…” we do NOT say “Blessed is our God…” or “Blessed is the Kingdom”!!!.
In place of the long litanies, “Lord, have mercy” is said twelve times; in place of the small litanies, “Lord have mercy” is said three times. The exclamations (endings after litanies that belong to the priest) are replaced by “Glory…now and ever… Amen.”

Everything else is pious reading.

Question 6: How about candles and censing? Excellent question! It is customary to have a candle and/or an oil lamp in front of the icons. The censing can be done at the appropriate time with a small hand censer (katzion). You can also use komboskini, prayer rope to stay focused.

That’s all, beloved in Christ! Now let’s pray!

Wait! How do we begin again?

Sigh…”Through the prayers….”