Compline (Night Prayer)

Join us in the Chapel at 9:00 PM for Sung Compline (school year only)

What is Compline?

The Church, through the Liturgy of the Hours, an important part of her public prayer, sanctifies each hour of every day of our lives. She indeed makes all time holy. Among the Hours, the Office of Compline has a distinct importance. It is the Church's last prayer of the day, her prayer before retiring. It embraces the experience of the whole day which has passed and, at the same time, the experience of sleep, the abandonment of self to unconsciousness, which is, for us, a daily anticipation of death, of the passage from this life to the life which is to come.

-Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, Foreward to The Office of Compline (Ignatius, 2010).
 

Why do we sing Compline at St. Augustine's?

The sung celebration of the Divine Office is the form which best accords with the nature of this prayer. It expresses its solemnity in a fuller way and expresses a deeper union of hearts in performing the praises of God. That is why…this sung form is strongly recommended to those who celebrate the Office in choir or in common.

-Instruction on Music in the Liturgy, Musicam sacram (1967), §37.

The deep, sober beauty of the chanting of the psalms provides an oasis of calm and peace in the often hectic and frenzied pace of people today.

-Introduction to The Mundelein Psalter (Hillenbrand, 2007), 43.
 

Links for Each Night

NIGHT BEFORE SUNDAY or SOLEMNITY
[Fully English Version]

SUNDAY or SOLEMNITY
[Fully English Version]

MONDAY

TUESDAY

WEDNESDAY

THURSDAY

FRIDAY