the series of prayers that are said throughout the day in the orthodox church are known as the hours or the daily office we always begin and end the day with a special prayer that's set upon waking and after compliment immediately before falling asleep these two sets of prayers are only two pages long each and these are a good place to start if you're just starting out with a prayer rule as each of them only requires a few minutes building off of that we have in the back of the book under the occasional prayers we have sets of morning and evening prayers which are traditionally added especially in the slavic tradition while in the greek tradition small compliment is more traditionally read in the evening we then come to what's known as the lesser hours the midnight 1st 3rd 6th 9th and compliment these are more or less shorter services that are set at different times throughout the day known as the canonical hours they're quite simple with only a few variable parts that are ever changed those wanting to expand their prayer rule beyond just the morning and evening prayers might consider one or more of the hours at different times of the day the first of the so-called lesser hours is the midnight office which is traditionally said in the middle of the night before matins there are three forms of this service weekday saturday and sunday and this service is a meditation upon the last judgment i'm going to skip over matins and come back to that the first hour is traditionally said after matins and celebrates the sunrise and the creation of the world and it's nominally red at seven o'clock in the morning the third hour commemorates the descent of the holy spirit and is nominally read at nine o'clock in the morning the sixth hour commemorates the crucifixion of our lord jesus christ and is said at noon and i will come back to typica in a moment the ninth hour commemorates the lord's death on the cross and is traditionally set at three o'clock p.m these four lesser hours require around 10 to 15 minutes each to read and then finally the last of the lesser hours is little compliment which is a meditation on sleep in the remembrance of death there is also a longer form known as great compliment which is said during lent and other fasting seasons now coming back to some of the ones i skipped over the office of typica or the typical psalms is similar to the lesser hours with sections of psalms and hymns from the divine liturgy this service is traditionally read by laymen at home when they're not able to attend the divine liturgy on sundays or feast days vespers is the major evening service of the orthodox church and it is traditionally sung shortly before sunset it consecrates the evening the coming night and the next day meditating on christ as the light and the creator of the world when vespers is read simply but prayerfully it requires perhaps 15 to 20 minutes and when it's sung more elaborately up to 30 minutes or the full service with a priest around 40 minutes and matins known in greek as orthros is the major morning service and it's the longest and the most complex of the daily services in the monasteries it's traditionally timed so that the service ends shortly after sunrise but in parishes it's almost always sung in the mid-morning hours there are several different forms of matins that are used depending on the festive rank of the day and the day of the week the way to determine this will be explained shortly because of the great complexity of matins and the sheer volume of hymns the service requires when it's sung in full we have somewhat simplified it for this book which will also be explained but even in this simplified form matins may require up to an hour to read simply and longer if some more elaborately besides these the normal forms of the services we have the lenten offices during great lent the hours and as well as vespers and matins have additional portions that are added to reflect the penitential nature of this of the season and then finally we have the pascal offices which are located towards the back of the book under the section for pasca and these are completely different from the ordinary offices and they're shorter in keeping with the joyful season of bright week which is the only time that they're used so these constitute the daily office and in future videos i will explain more in more detail how these services are put together