Topic summary
Canonical hour
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Canonical hours.
Judaism and the early church
Early Christians prayed the Psalms (Acts 4:23–30), which have remained the principal part of the canonical hours. By AD 60, Didache was recommending that disciples pray the Lord's Prayer three times a day; this practice found its way into the canonical hours as well. By the second and third centuries, such prominent Christian writers as Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian wrote of the practice of Morning and Evening Prayer, and of the prayers at the third, sixth and ninth hours.