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Summary
- Short prayers cover a peaceful night, nightmares, waking from a bad dream, worry, the end of the day, a child’s bedtime, loved ones far away and hearing God.
- Catholic Compline, as printed in the 1888 Manual of Prayers, has a hymn asking “Let dreams depart and phantoms fly,” and a closing prayer for the house.
- The Orthodox prayer of Antiochus, in Hapgood’s 1906 service book, asks for “sleep gentle and free from every vision of the Devil”; the prayer of Saint Ioannikios follows it.
- The 1928 Book of Common Prayer’s “Lighten our darkness” asks God to “defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.”
- God spoke in dreams to Jacob, Solomon and Joseph, while Job and Nebuchadnezzar were troubled by dreams; Ecclesiastes 5:3 says most dreams come from “the multitude of business.”
- Scripture tells believers to test dreams (Deuteronomy 13:1–3; Jeremiah 23:28), and Sirach warns that “dreams have deceived many.”
Bibliography (Click to show)
- Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (Genesis 28:12, 16; Deuteronomy 13:1–3; 1 Samuel 3:10; 1 Kings 3:5; Job 7:13–14; 33:15; Psalm 4:8; 91:5; 139:12; Proverbs 3:24; Ecclesiastes 5:3; Isaiah 26:3; Jeremiah 23:28; Daniel 2:1; Joel 2:28; Matthew 1:20; 2:13; 27:19; Ephesians 4:26). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
- The Holy Bible, Douay-Rheims version, Ecclesiasticus 34:6–7. Project Gutenberg eBook no. 1581. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1581
- A Manual of Prayers for the Use of the Catholic Laity, prepared and published by order of the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore. New York: Catholic Publication Society, 1888. Guardian angel prayer, p. 54; The Office of Compline, pp. 69–75 (hymn translated by John Henry Newman, p. 73). https://archive.org/details/AManualOfPrayers1888/page/73/mode/1up
- Hapgood, Isabel Florence, trans. Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic (Greco-Russian) Church. Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin, 1906. The Office of Grand Compline, prayers of Antiochus and of St. Ioannikios, pp. 161–162. https://www.ponomar.net/data/hapgood.pdf
- Pokrovsky Church, Myshetskoye. “Молитвы на сон грядущим” (Prayers before sleep). https://hrammysheckoe.ru/molitvy-na-son-gryadushchim
- The Book of Common Prayer (Protestant Episcopal Church in the U.S.A.), Standard Book of 1928. Evening Prayer, “A Collect for Aid against Perils,” p. 31; Family Prayer, “At Night,” pp. 594–595. PDF facsimile: https://www.artisticdailyprayers.org/uploads/3/0/1/6/30164961/bcp1928std.pdf
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