Our worship is shaped by a simple threefold pattern. At its heart is the Eucharist, celebrated Sunday by Sunday (and on many occasions in between) as the foundational act of worship centering on the elements of bread and wine offered in a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. The sacrament itself is fundamentally the same whenever and however it is celebrated, but its most regular observance, weekly throughout the year, is reflected in the way large sections of Anglican Books of Common Prayer have always been structured, with provision of “proper” (that is, distinctively assigned) collects and lessons for each Sunday from the beginning of Advent through the final Sunday before the next Advent (“Proper of Time”) and followed by a similar section for fixed saints’ days on which the celebration of the Eucharist is particularly appropriate (“Proper of Saints”). The ‘liturgical year’ thus established is rooted in the great events of Holy Week, from Palm Sunday through Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Eve; and the proper liturgies for those days—among the notable strengths of our current Prayer Book—culminate in the Paschal liturgy beginning with the Great Vigil of Easter.

The second element in this pattern is the set of daily, non-sacramental services called in the abstract the divine, or daily, office (from the Latin officium, duty). This consists, concretely, in our Prayer Book, of Morning Prayer, Noonday Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline. These services center on praise (psalms and canticles), prayer (fixed collects and particular intercessions), and the reading of Scripture in considerable, and generally consecutive, chunks (lectio continua) in the major offices of Morning and Evening Prayer. The quotidian nature of these offices is the distinctive thing about them; the regular, largely verbal, nourishment they supply complements the bread of heaven and cup of salvation in the Eucharist.

The traditional generic name for the third category arises from when it is used: occasionally, hence, Occasional Offices, called “Pastoral Services” in our Prayer Book. The occasions in question are the life-defining ones—Marriage, Reconciliation of a Penitent, Anointing of the Sick, and Burial of the Dead—occasions on which Christian liturgies express, and in some cases (Marriage, Ordination) create, specific relationships with divine grace. Incomparably the greatest of these is Baptism (with its Episcopal completion in Confirmation), and the ancient tradition of the church is that this sacrament is normatively enacted within the context of a Eucharistic celebration. Other occasional services may also be celebrated within that context—ordinations always are, funerals often, weddings sometimes. Additional liturgies for special or unusual occasions, like Thanksgiving for the Birth or Adoption of a Child, Blessing of Animals, or House Blessings, accommodate particular needs.

Taken together, all of these types of services—Eucharist, daily office, occasional liturgies—provide a complete liturgical context for the Christian life. Other patterns of worship (including those characterized by resolute avoidance of any fixed pattern) have their own benefits—a greater role for spontaneity, for example; but it is one of the main strengths of our tradition that we are able to worship according to such a richly varied, sustaining, and (we trust) God-pleasing pattern.