Preces are, in liturgicalworship, short petitions that are said or sung as versicle and response by the officiant and respectively. This form of prayer is one of the oldest in Christianity, finding its source in the pre-Christian Hebrew prayers of the Psalms in Temple Worship. In many prayer books, the versicles, to be spoken or sung by the priest, and the following responses, spoken or sung by the congregation, are denoted by special glyphs:
Response: ℟, a letter R crossed by an oblique line — Unicode, HTML entity ℟
In Anglicanism
An example familiar to Anglicans is the opening versicles and responses of the Anglican services of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the Book of Common Prayer: This particular form has existed in all of the liturgical churches since well before the Reformation. The responses continue later in the service, after the Apostle's Creed. There are many musical settings of the text, ranging from largely homophonic settings such as those by William Byrd and Thomas Morley, to more elaborate arrangements that may even require organ accompaniment.
In the Roman Rite, the term preces is not applied in a specific sense to the versicles and responses of the different liturgical hours, on which those used in the Anglican services are based. In the Roman Rite Liturgy of the Hours, the wordpreces is freely used in the Latin text with its generic meaning of "prayers", but it has a specialized meaning in reference to the prayers said at Morning and Evening Prayer after the Benedictus or Magnificat and followed by the Lord's Prayer and the concluding prayer or Collect. They vary with the seasons, being repeated generally only at four-week intervals, and with the celebration of saints. In the most widely used English translation of the Liturgy of the Hours, they are referred to as Intercessions, and are very similar to the General Intercessions found within the confines of the Mass. An example is that of Morning Prayer on Thursday of Week 2 in Ordinary Time:
Pre-1962 Latin Rite
In earlier iterations of the Roman Breviary before 1962, however, the preces proper referred to a series of versicles and responses which were said either standing or kneeling, depending on the day or season in which the prayers were to be uttered. There were two forms, the Dominical or abridged preces, and the Ferial or unabridged preces. These were said, as in the Anglican communion, at both morning and Evening Prayer. Here follows the Dominical preces from the common Prime office, from an edition of the pre-1962 Breviary online. After which would follow the General Confession of sins. This form of prayer has ceased to be used in the Roman Rite, aside from some of the more traditional groups.
In the Mozarabic Rite the Preces or Preca are chants of penitential character used only in Lent. They are in the form of a litany, with a short response to each invocation
In the Catholic prelature of Opus Dei, the are a special set of prayers said by each member every day. It is also called "Prayers of the Work." The prayer was originally composed by Josemaría Escrivá by December 1930. It was the first common activity of the members of Opus Dei in history. Escrivá composed the prayer by putting together phrases that he took from established liturgical prayers, and from the psalms in accordance with what he preached in The Way , about "using the psalms and prayers from the missal" for prayer. The prayers have undergone several changes through time. The Preces, which is called "the universal prayer of the Work", is described by one journalist as including "blessing of everyone from the Pope to Virgin Mary to the prelate of Opus Dei". John L. Allen describes its contents as follows: "invocations to the Holy Spirit, Jesus Christ, the Blessed Virgin Mary, Saint Joseph, the Guardian Angels, and Saint Josemaría, then prayers for the Holy Father, the bishop of the diocese, unity among all those working to spread the gospel, the prelate of Opus Dei and the other members of the Work, and invocations to Saints Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Peter, Paul, and John ".
