TOWARD THE NEXT EDITION OF THE SAINT JAMES OF JERUSALEM PRAYERBOOK

An Update from the Ancient Church of the West

As we enter another season of holy labour within the Ancient Church of the West, I am grateful to share that we are now working diligently on the next edition of the Saint James of Jerusalem Prayerbook. After a full year of daily use across our missions, parishes, and monastic houses, this beloved volume has proven itself not only as a treasury of ancient devotion, but as a living wellspring shaping the piety, rhythm, and ethos of our communities. What began as an effort to restore the oldest prayers of the Church to the people of God has matured, through practice, correction, and prayer, into a text of remarkable clarity and spiritual fruitfulness.

With this new edition, our aim is refinement and expansion. The structure and core remain unchanged, but we are deepening its usefulness by providing additional materials for both daily and weekly devotion: expanded morning and evening offices, practical helps for family prayer, enrichments for fasting seasons, and fresh resources for the faithful who desire to anchor their lives more intentionally in the ceaseless worship of the Kingdom. These additions are not novelties, but an organic compounding of the most ancient traditions of the Christian Faith, drawn together from our experience of pastoral and monastic life, shaped by the practical needs of the Church and of young people, grounded in our ancient patrimony, and rendered in the noble liturgical English of the 1928 Book of Common Prayer.

What sets this prayerbook apart is not its aesthetic presentation nor its modern convenience, but its deep origin. It is truly a work built upon the bedrock of the oldest recorded prayers of the Christian tradition. Every litany, hymn, and oration is drawn directly from sixth- and seventh-century manuscripts, which are the earliest complete Liturgikon and Euchologion known to the Church. These venerable texts were then carefully compared with, and enriched by, the historic Antiochene, Syriac, and Celtic uses, ensuring that the prayerbook reflects the breadth of the undivided Church, not merely a single regional expression. What emerges is something unique to the Ancient Church of the West: a unified, coherent, authentically Western Orthodox embodiment of the ancient apostolic worship that shaped our fathers in the faith.

Our hope is to have a beautifully crafted printing ready by next Spring. It is our desire that the physical form of the book - from its typography, ornamentation, to its profound sense of permanence - will match the spiritual depth of its contents, offering the faithful something worthy of both home and sanctuary, of family prayer and liturgical procession.

As we continue this work, I humbly ask your prayers. The labour of restoring the ancient worship of the Church is not simply editorial; it is ascetical, pastoral, and ecclesial. We undertake it not for ourselves, but for all who seek to pray with the same voice and substance as the earliest Christians, who shaped their lives around the holiness of God, the beauty of His worship, and the eternal rhythm of the Kingdom.

May this labour, by God’s grace, be for the upbuilding of His Church, and may it help all who pray from this book to walk more deeply in the light of Christ.