How to pray Compline
Ten minutes, the same short cycle every week, and it ends the day. If you are going to pray one hour of the Divine Office, pray this one.
Why this hour.
Compline — from completorium, the completion — is the final hour of the Divine Office, prayed immediately before sleep. It is the shortest of the hours, the least variable, and by a wide margin the easiest place for a layperson to begin.
Three reasons it works when other hours don't. It is brief enough to survive an exhausting day. It repeats on a simple weekly cycle, so you learn it by heart rather than hunting through a book. And it falls at a time almost everyone actually has — after the house is quiet, before you lie down.
It also has a particular character. Compline is the Church's prayer at the edge of unconsciousness, and it knows it. The texts are about darkness, protection, trust, and dying — the night as a small rehearsal for the last one. Praying it nightly changes how you go to bed.
The shape of the hour.
Structure
- Opening versicle and the sign of the cross.
- Examination of conscience — a brief silence, then the Confiteor or another act of contrition.
- Hymn.
- Psalmody — one or two psalms with an antiphon.
- Short reading.
- Responsory — Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit.
- Nunc Dimittis — the canticle of Simeon, with its antiphon.
- Concluding prayer and a blessing for the night.
- Marian antiphon — the Salve Regina, or the seasonal one.
Then the Grand Silence: in monastic houses, no speech until after the Office next morning. Kept even loosely, this is one of the more transformative small disciplines available to a layperson.
The psalms of the night.
What you will be praying
The Compline psalter is small and it repeats, which is the point — you are meant to end up knowing these by heart.
| Day | Psalm | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Sunday | Ps 91 | Under his wings. The great psalm of night protection. |
| Monday | Ps 86 | A plea from someone poor and in need. |
| Tuesday | Ps 143 | Morning mercy asked for from the middle of the dark. |
| Wednesday | Ps 31 | Into your hands I commend my spirit — the words Christ used from the cross. |
| Thursday | Ps 16 | My heart is glad; my flesh shall rest in hope. |
| Friday | Ps 88 | The bleakest psalm in the psalter. It does not resolve. |
| Saturday | Ps 4, 134 | Peace, and the night watch of those who stand in the house of the Lord. |
Psalm 88 on Friday nights deserves a note. It is the one psalm that ends in darkness with no turn toward hope, and the Church places it deliberately at the end of the day Christ died. If you pray Compline for a year you will meet it fifty-two times, and eventually on a night when you need it.
A text you can pray tonight.
Douay-Rheims.
Compline for Sunday
Set here in the Douay-Rheims, which is in the public domain and carries the older cadence many people find easier to pray at night.
Opening
Convert us, O God our Saviour.
And turn away thy anger from us.
O God, come to my assistance.
O Lord, make haste to help me.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
Examination of conscience
A pause in silence. Then an act of contrition — the Confiteor, or simply: Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.
Psalm 90 (91)
He that dwelleth in the aid of the most High, shall abide under the protection of the God of Jacob.
He shall say to the Lord: Thou art my protector, and my refuge: my God, in him will I trust.
For he hath delivered me from the snare of the hunters: and from the sharp word.
He will overshadow thee with his shoulders: and under his wings thou shalt trust.
His truth shall compass thee with a shield: thou shalt not be afraid of the terror of the night.
Of the arrow that flieth in the day, of the business that walketh about in the dark: of invasion, or of the noonday devil.
A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand: but it shall not come nigh thee.
Because thou, O Lord, art my hope: thou hast made the most High thy refuge.
There shall no evil come to thee: nor shall the scourge come near thy dwelling.
For he hath given his angels charge over thee; to keep thee in all thy ways.
In their hands they shall bear thee up: lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.
Thou shalt walk upon the asp and the basilisk: and thou shalt trample under foot the lion and the dragon.
Because he hoped in me I will deliver him: I will protect him because he hath known my name.
He shall cry to me, and I will hear him: I am with him in tribulation, I will deliver him, and I will glorify him.
I will fill him with length of days; and I will shew him my salvation.
Short reading
Thou art in us, O Lord, and thy holy name is invoked upon us: forsake us not, O Lord our God.
Jeremias 14:9
Responsory
Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.
Thou hast redeemed us, O Lord God of truth.
Keep us, O Lord, as the apple of thy eye.
Protect us under the shadow of thy wings.
Nunc Dimittis
Antiphon: Save us, O Lord, while waking, and guard us while sleeping; that awake we may watch with Christ, and asleep we may rest in peace.
Now thou dost dismiss thy servant, O Lord, according to thy word in peace;
Because my eyes have seen thy salvation,
Which thou hast prepared before the face of all peoples:
A light to the revelation of the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.
Concluding prayer
Visit, we beseech thee, O Lord, this dwelling, and drive far from it all snares of the enemy: let thy holy angels dwell herein, who may keep us in peace; and may thy blessing be always upon us. Through Christ our Lord. Amen.
May the almighty and merciful Lord grant us a quiet night and a perfect end. Amen.
Marian antiphon
Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this our exile show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary.
Then silence, until morning.
Practical.
Getting it to stick
Pray it at the same point in the evening rather than the same time on the clock — after the last child is down, after the kitchen is clean. Compline attached to an event survives a disrupted schedule; Compline attached to 9:40pm does not.
Pray it aloud if you can, even quietly. The Office is a spoken liturgy and it goes flat when it becomes silent reading.
If you live with someone, pray it together. It is short enough that people who would never agree to a prayer routine will agree to this, and it ends a day in a household differently than the day would otherwise end.
On the nights you are too tired: pray the responsory alone. Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit. That is a complete act of prayer and it takes four seconds.