In the Christian monastic tradition, the community gathers at regular intervals throughout the day to pray together. This pattern is known as “the Daily Office,” with the word “office” meaning “duty.” Compline (pronounced COMP-lin) is the final prayer service of the day, prayed just before bedtime. The word is derived from the Latin completorium, meaning “completion,” since Compline completes the daily cycle.
With gratitude for the blessings of the day that has passed, the community asks God for “a quiet night and perfect end”—prayers before sleep leading naturally into contemplation of our own final falling asleep, our sleep in death. Compline can be small act of spiritual preparation for death, a reminder that death inevitably follows life, just as the night follows the day.
At the heart of every monastic office is a selection from Psalms, the ancient songbook of the Hebrew people, whose profound poetry has inspired Jewish and Christian communities for centuries. In addition to the psalm appointed for the day, the service consists of readings from Holy Scripture, a hymn, a canticle (almost invariably the Song of Simeon, known as the Nunc dimittis), a confession of sin, and other chanted elements. It is the practice at Saint Mark’s that the congregation stands during the recitation of the Apostle’s Creed. Towards the end of the service there are a series of longer prayers called “collects” (pronounced COLL-ects), which address the needs and concerns of the community.
At Saint Mark’s, Compline also includes a short choral work at the opening of the service, called the “orison,” and a more substantial choral anthem appropriate to the day at the end of the service.