With the advent of The Alternative Service Book 1980, it was felt that the time was right for the daily cycle used by the Society to reflect that authorised for use in the Church of England. This had been the custom of the Society until 1970. As a result, a completely new edition of The Daily Office SSF was published in 1981 and the hope was then expressed that it would be used for at least ten years. The basis of the revision was to provide enriching optional material to that provided in The Alternative Service Book 1980 and to supplement it rather than to supplant it. Accordingly, The Daily Office SSF contained four daily offices, of which Morning and Evening Prayer followed the order and text used in The Alternative Service Book 1980, with additional, optional material. Equally, the collects and canticles used in The Alternative Service Book 1980 in daily offices could be found in The Daily Office SSF, plus a large number of other collects and prayers from a variety of sources and other canticles from scripture. The book was reprinted in 1986.
The Daily Office SSF came to be used in far more places and by far more people than had ever been envisaged and, in 1989, a revision of the text was authorised, in the light of increased liturgical knowledge, advances made in other parts of the Church and not least in the use of language. Early in 1990, the Society was approached by some individual members of the Liturgical Commission, who had heard of the proposed revision, and a joint Advisory Panel was formed. As a result, different worshipping groups and individuals used new material experimentally. There was a desire to meet the expressed needs of a wider public – both groups and individuals – who were articulating a longing for a form of daily prayer to enrich their common worship at the Sunday Eucharist. The decision was made, therefore, to publish the book in two very slightly differing versions. So one edition is called Celebrating Common Prayer and is the non-Franciscan edition; it contains its own Calendar and its own supplement with a simple form of celebrating the Office. The SSF edition continues to be called The Daily Office SSF and has its own Calendar, with a special emphasis on the Religious Life, and its own supplement with material more distinctively Franciscan.
The book was prepared by the Committee on Liturgy of the Society in the Province assisted by the Advisory Panel, a list of whose names appear below. The debt of gratitude that is owed to them is immeasurable. They offered various texts, many of which have been altered in the course of discussion and experimentation, and it would be difficult to attribute particular texts to one individual (this has only been done where the work of a member of the Advisory Panel has appeared in another publication and with the psalm prayers). The Society is most grateful to them for their contribution.
The members of the Advisory Panel were:
The Very Revd David Stancliffe, Provost of Portsmouth, a member
of the Liturgical Commission and Chairman of the Advisory Panel;
The Revd Dr Christopher Cocksworth, Chaplain to the Royal
Holloway and Bedford New College, London University;
The Revd Paul Collins, Tutor in Theology and Liturgy, Chichester
Theological College;
Father George Guiver CR, Vice-Principal of Mirfield Theological
College;
Sister Hilary CSF, Provincial Secretary of the Community of Saint
Francis;
Brother James SSF, Guardian of Alnmouth Friary;
Sister Joyce CSF, General Secretary of the Community of Saint
Francis;
The Revd Canon Dr Martin Kitchen, Adviser in In-Service
Training, Southwark;
Ruth McCurry, Trustee of the Church Urban Fund and Religious
Publisher, Mowbray;
The Revd Charles MacDonnell, Vicar of Hayle, Cornwall;
Sister Margaret SAS, Community Liturgist, Society of All Saints,
Oxford;
The Revd John Michael Mountney, Team Rector of Parmentergate,
Norwich and Warden of the Julian Shrine;
The Revd Canon Michael Perham, Precentor of Norwich Cathedral
and a member of the Liturgical Commission;
The Revd Dr Paul Roberts, Tutor, Trinity Theological College,
Bristol;
The Venerable David Silk, Archdeacon of Leicester, Prolocutor of
the Convocation of Canterbury and, until 1991, a member of the
Liturgical Commission;
The Revd Dr Kenneth Stevenson, Rector of Holy Trinity,
Guildford and a member of the Liturgical Commission;
and Brother Tristam SSF, General Secretary of the Society of
Saint Francis, consultant to the Liturgical Commission and Editor
of the book.
Also, the Rt Revd Alec Graham, Bishop of Newcastle and Chairman of the Doctrine Commission, the late Brother Barnabas SSF (Professor Barnabas Lindars) and Brother Colin Wilfred SSF read the texts prior to publication (and many unpublished ones) and offered much constructive criticism and comment.
The Society appreciates the generous help and support given by the Rt Revd Colin James, Bishop of Winchester and Chairman of the Liturgical Commission, Mr David Hebblethwaite, Secretary to the Commission and Mr Robin Brookes, Publishing Manager and Copyright Administrator at Church House, Westminster.
The Society is indebted to Stephen Bampfylde and Anthony Saxton, of Saxton-Bampfylde International, for hosting meetings of the Advisory Panel and for their generosity in giving the project their financial support and particularly to Miss Annabel Lightfoot of that firm, for her good offices.
The Society is also grateful to Charles Mortimer Guilbert, Custodian of the Standard Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church in the USA, for use of The Psalms and other material from that book, on which no copyright is claimed. The psalms have been adjusted to comply with British orthography and usage and inclusivised in reference to human beings.
Scriptural texts are a combination of as many as eleven different translations of the Bible, as well as reference to original texts, and it would be impossible to give a specific attribution each time; however, the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version have probably made the most notable contribution to the texts finally chosen and thanks are expressed to the publishers, Oxford University Press.
The Society is grateful to the following for permission to reproduce material, some of which is copyright:
Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA;
New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA;
© The Central Board of Finance of the Church of England.
The following are used with permission:
Prayers and canticles from The Alternative Service Book 1980
(ASB): prayers with the attribution 3; The Calendar*;
Benedicite and Pascha nostrum are modern versions of Prayer
Book texts; Salvator mundi* from a 19th-century original by
Dr Henry Allon;
Adaptation to prayers in The Alternative Service Book 1980 made in Making Women Visible, Church House Publishing, 1988, with the additional attribution 5;
Prayers from The Book of Common Prayer as proposed in 1928, the copyright of which is administered by the Central Board of Finance, with the attribution 6;
Prayers from The Promise of His Glory, Church House Publishing & Mowbray, 1991, with the attribution 7;
Prayers with the attribution 2, adapted from The Book of Common Prayer, the rights in which are vested in the Crown, are reproduced by permission of the Crown’s Patentee, Cambridge University Press;
The English translations of The Lord’s Prayer (adapted by ASB), The Apostles’ Creed, Gloria in excelsis, Benedictus, Te Deum laudamus, Magnificat and Nunc dimittis prepared by the International Consultation on English Texts, copyright © 1970, 1971, 1975; revised by the same group, now known as the English Language Liturgical Consultation, copyright © 1988;
© The Venerable David Silk: prayers from Prayers for Use at the Alternative Services, Mowbray, copyright © 1980 and 1986, with the attribution 28; the lectionary in both the Temporale and the Sanctorale is recognised as the work of Archdeacon Silk, who adapted it for this publication;
The Venite (page 191) from The Psalms, A New Translation for Worship, Collins Liturgical Publications, © English Texts 1976, 1977 David L. Frost, John A. Emerton, Andrew A. Macintosh;
Geoffrey Chapman, an imprint of Cassell Publishers Ltd: translations by © James Quinn SJ of the hymns Tantum ergo* and O salutaris*;
© Janet Morley: a prayer from All Desires Known, SPCK, 1992, with the attribution 26;
Order of the Holy Cross (New York): translation of the hymn Rerum Deus tenax vigor*;
Order of Preachers, Blackfriars, Oxford: translations of the hymns Nunc sancte, nobis Spiritus* and Die parenti temporum*;
The Anglican Office Book Committee: translation of the hymn Rector potens, verax Deus*;
Portsmouth Cathedral: for the use of several of the ’prayers of light’, which began life there. The number which precedes each item in the list of sources or authors below is used throughout the book to ascribe the material to which permission relates or to which acknowledgement is made; the numbers in the text are slightly inset from the right margin. A text accompanied by the symbol * indicates that minor alterations have been made.
| 1 | Society of Saint Francis
|
| The Church of England | |
| 2 | The Book of Common Prayer |
| 3 | The Alternative Service Book 1980 |
| 4 | Lent, Holy Week & Easter |
| 5 | Making Women Visible |
| 6 | The Book of Common Prayer as proposed in 1928 |
| 7 | The Promise of His Glory
|
| Individual Churches in England | |
| 8 | Durham Cathedral: collects for Bede & Cuthbert |
| 9 | Lincoln Cathedral: collects for Edward King & Hugh |
| 10 | Saint Alban’s Abbey: collect for Alban |
| 11 | Saint Oswald’s Church, Durham: collect for Oswald |
| 12 | Keble College Chapel, Oxford: collect for John Keble
|
| The Anglican Communion | |
| 13 | Anglican Church of Canada, Book of Alternative Services |
| 14 | Episcopal Church of Scotland, Book of Common Prayer (1929) |
| 15 | ECUSA, Book of Common Prayer (1979) |
| 16 | Church of the Province of Southern Africa, Liturgy 75 |
| 17 | Church of Ireland, Alternative Prayer Book 1984 |
| 18 | Church in Wales, Book of Common Prayer |
| 19 | Church of South India – adaptation from the Malabar Liturgy
|
| Individuals | |
| 21 | The Revd Paul Gibson |
| 22 | Sid Hedges |
| 23 | The Revd Christopher Irvine |
| 24 | The Revd Canon Michael McLean |
| 25 | The Revd Charles MacDonnell |
| 26 | Dr Janet Morley |
| 27 | The Revd Canon Michael Perham |
| 28 | The Venerable David Silk |
| 29 | The Very Revd David Stancliffe |
| 30 | The Revd Dr Kenneth Stevenson |
| 31 | The Revd Michael Vasey |
If any copyright has been unwittingly transgressed, or a necessary gratitude gone unexpressed, the Society offers its apologies and will rectify any such oversight in future editions.