Understanding the calendar VB - The monthly cycle from August to January

In the last post in this series on how the calendar for the Office works I started looking at the monthly cycle in the Office.

In this post I want to continue this, focusing particularly on the practical application of  the Office history we looked at in the last post on compiling your personal Ordo.

The Sunday cycle of readings: August to November 

I noted in the last post that the earliest surviving Order of readings for the Roman Office started from Easter and Pentecost, and then shifted to a cycle tied to the calendar month for the rest of the year.

That system, however, was gradually pushed back and reorganised as the seasons of Advent and Epiphanytide solidified.

In the 1962 Office, the remnant of the earlier cycle relates mainly to the Matins readings for August to November, and the Saturday Magnificat antiphons that foreshadow them.

In essence, each Sunday during this period ushers in a new set of readings for Matins used in the first Nocturn of Sunday.  

The actual number of Sundays in a given month, though, varies from year to year.

For this reason, the breviary also includes a set of rules on which Sundays to skip if necessary, generally arranged to maximise the number of Scriptural books sampled.

You can find these rules (which differ for each month) in the Diurnal in the 'temporale' section.

For August, for example, it says:

If the first Sunday falls between August 1 and August 3, then the month has five Sundays.  If however the first Sunday falls between August 4 and 7, then the month has four Sundays only and the Antiphon assigned to the fifth Sunday is omitted. (MD 450*)

Ordo for August 2018

If we apply the rubrics for August Sundays  to 2018, we find that the first Sunday falls on August 5, so the month has only four Sundays in this year.

Accordingly, we can assign them in our Ordo as follows:

Sunday August 5: First Sunday of August (Matins first nocturn readings are from Proverbs 1: 1-22)
Sunday August 12: Second Sunday of August (Ecclesiastes 1:1-17)
Sunday August 19: Third Sunday of August (Wisdom 1:1-13)
Sunday August 26: Fourth Sunday of August (Ecclesiasticus/Sirach 1:1-16)

The readings and antiphon for the Fifth Sunday of August (from Ecclesiasticus 5:1-16) are not used this year.

In the Roman Office, this reading cycle is carried through to weekdays as well, but in the Benedictine Office, these only kick in from November.

Our Ordo for August is still incomplete though, as we still lack the readings for the Third Nocturn of Matins, the Gospels, collects and canticle antiphons for the Sundays, determined by the cycle of Sundays dependent on the date of Easter.

Advent

If we move to December though, the two Sundays cycles reunite by shifting totally to a calendar month basis. 

For most of the year, the Sunday cycle depends on the date of Easter, which varies each year: one the date of Easter is ascertained you count backwards a set number of days to calculate the start of Lent and the pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima; count forward to get the date of the Ascension and Pentecost, and then the number of the Sunday after the Octave of Pentecost.

By contrast, the cycle of Sundays of Advent is linked to the calendar month: Advent always starts on the Sunday closest to 30 November and ends on 23 December.

That means the number of days in Advent varies each year.

Just when and how the liturgy for the season of Advent developed remains the subject of vigorous academic debate.

However it happened, the net result is that Advent in the Benedictine Office is easily the most complicated part of the year in the Office, because it involves three different overlays that interact in different ways each year:

• a fixed date system for the 'Class II' days of December 17-23, with the O antiphons used at Vespers;
• psalm antiphons for the day of the week from 17-23 December, and otherwise for the week of Advent; and
• Matins readings and canticle antiphons for each of the four weeks of Advent.

I'll come back to some of the issues around the Ordo in Advent in the next part of this series, on the cycle of the liturgical year.

Epiphanytide

The end of Advent in December is determined by a fixed date feast, viz the Nativity and its Vigil.

Thereafter a series of fixed day feasts combine with the Octave of Christmas to take us into January.

And that month works the opposite way to December: the start of the cycle of the Sundays after Epiphany is determined, as the name suggests, by a relationship to a fixed date feast (ie the first Sunday after January 6), but its end is determined by the resumption of the Sunday cycle related to Easter, in the pre-Lenten season of Septuagesimatide.

There is a complicated history behind this.

The season after the feast of the Epiphany developed in the period up to the eighth century to add an Octave to the feast of the Epiphany, and ends forty days after Christmas with Candlemass on 2 February.

But at the same time that this cycle was firming up, the Lenten and pre-Lenten cycle was being gradually being pushed back, eventually settling on starting with Septuagesima Sunday, whose date potentially cuts across the symmetry of a forty day Christmas season.

The organic development of the liturgy is not always neat and tidy!

Feasts and days tied to calendar months - Ember Days

The final dimension of the calendar month cycle that needs to be taken into account in compiling our Ordo relates to feasts and special days in the calendar that are tied to months rather than fixed dates.

One simple example of this, with a relatively recent origin (instituted in 1925) is the feast of Christ the King, which in the 1962 calendar is tied to the last Sunday of October.

The much more ancient one is Ember Days.

Ember Days are sets of Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays days devoted to fasting and prayer that occur four times a year.

They have their own Matins readings, canticle antiphons at Lauds and Vespers, and collects, and are ranked as Class II days in the calendar.

Originally, Ember Days were tied to harvests; in the central middle ages the 'March' and 'June' Ember Days become connected to the flow of the liturgical year rather than the monthly cycle.

The September and December Ember Days, though, still reflect the older system.

In the 1962 Office, the September Ember Days are linked to the third week of September, and in the pre-1962 Rules, this meant they always occurred on the Wednesday after the feast of the Exaltation of Holy Cross.   A rather odd rule change means this is no longer always the case.

The December Ember Days are always placed in the third week of Advent, ensuring that they fall after the feast of St Lucy (December 13).

Next up...

Coming next, a look at the final Office cycle, that related to the date of Easter each year.

Ordo for the thirteenth week after Pentecost (Aug 19-25)

The notes below are designed to assist those wishing to say the Benedictine Office according to the officially approved 1962 books (noting that older books can readily be adapted to this end).

If you are new to the traditional Benedictine Office, I strongly suggest starting here.

Key to the abbreviations:

MD= Monastic Diurnal (MD, 2004 onwards editions)
AM =Antiphonale Monasticum 1934 (1995 edition).
LR=Liber Responsorialis (downloadable from CC Watershed) and the Nocturnale Romanum.

THE ORDO

Sunday 19 August - Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Class II

Matins: All as in the psalter with Nocturn I&II readings of the Third Sunday of August, Nocturn III of the Thirteenth Sunday; responsories for August

Lauds to Vespers: Canticle antiphons and collect, MD 472-3*/AM 604-5

Monday 20 August - St Bernard OSB, Class III

Matins: Invitatory and hymn of a confessor not a bishop; one reading, of the feast

Lauds and Vespers: Antiphons and psalms of the day, rest from the Common of a Confessor not a bishop, MD (78); at Vespers, Magnificat antiphon of a Doctor, MD [246]/AM 665; collect, MD [245]/AM 1020 ff

Prime to None: Antiphons from Common; Terce to None, Chapter and versicle from the Common

Tuesday 21 August – Class IV; St Bernard Ptolemy OSB, memorial [EF: St Jane Frances de Chantal]

All as in the psalter; collect, MD 473*/AM 604; for the commemoration at Lauds, MD [249]/AM 1022

Wednesday 22 August - Class IV; St Timothy, memorial [EF: Immaculate Heart of the BVM]

All as in the psalter; collect, MD 473*/AM 604; for the commemoration at Lauds, MD [250]/AM 1023

Thursday 23 August - Class IV [EF: St Philip Benizi]

All as in the psalter; collect, MD 473*/AM 604

Friday 24 August – St Bartholomew, Class II

Matins: Nocturn II &III readings of the feast, rest from the Common of Apostles

Lauds to Vespers: All as in the Common of Apostles, MD (9) ff except for the collect, MD [250]/AM 1024

Saturday 25 August – Our Lady on Saturday, Class IV [in some places/EF: St Louis]

Matins to None: Our Lady on Saturday with Matins reading of Sat 4&5 of August, MD (129) /AM 714 ff;

*For St Louis, MD 42**

I Vespers of the Fourth Sunday of August, MD 452*/AM 581-2; Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, collect MD 473-4*/AM 605

Understanding the calendar VA - Seasons and the monthly cycle in the Office Pt I

So far in this series I've looked at how the hours, day of the week and fixed dates affect the Office.

I now want to get to the issue that prompted this series, namely the monthly cycle.

This least appreciated cycle of the Office has a rich history, and so I'm planning to tackle this in two parts.

In this post, I want to provide a bit of an introduction to the monthly cycle by focusing on the 'ferial' character of the Office as St Benedict describes it in his Rule, and particularly look at the design of Matins.  While most people don't actually say Matins regularly, it is useful to understand since it has flow on effects to some of the day hours.

In the next part I will focus more on the days, feasts and seasons that are tied to calendar months and dates rather than Easter.

The monthly cycle and the history of the Office

We are used to thinking of the Mass and Office as being connected through the fixed Sunday cycle of the collects and readings.

But none of these connections are mentioned by St Benedict in the Rule, and in fact they almost certainly largely reflect rather later developments of the Office.

In particular, the Rule does not mention the use of collects in the Office at all (1).

Instead, the early Office had a much stronger relationship to the calendar year, and at least some of this flavour remains in the 1962 Office and calendar.

The length of the Night Office (Matins)

Consider first the design of Matins, where St Benedict specifies two broad 'seasons', with three readings and responsories each weekday from November to Easter (winter), but only a short verse and responsory for the rest of the year (RB 10).

The inspirations for this design seem to me to be twofold (2).

The early Egyptian Office: The first source is the early Egyptian monastic Office, popularised and advocated for in the West by St John Cassian.  This form of the Office seems to have had a fixed in format regardless of the time of year: it had twelve psalms at Vespers and twelve in the Night Office, in each case with a couple of (other) Scriptural readings.

Variable length Offices: Many other early Offices though, up until at least the eighth century, adjusted the length of the Night Office with the seasons, by a combination of shortening or lengthening the individual readings, adjusting the number of readings, and most importantly, increasing or decreasing the number of psalms said.

The monastic Office associated with St Augustine, for example, which may have represented the earliest Roman monastic practice, varied between 12, 15 or 18 psalms each night, as well as either two or three readings, according to the seasons (and hence the length of the night).

Similarly, a (non-monastic) Night hour in use in Rome and the surrounding region in the sixth century (described in the Liber Diurnis) had either 3 or 4 psalms, readings and responsories on weekdays, depending on the time of year, and nine of each on Sundays.

St Benedict's Office arguably represents something of a compromise between these two styles of Office.

Like the Egyptian monastic Office, St Benedict kept the number of psalms fixed regardless of the season, with twelve psalms said in the two Nocturns said each night, and another twelve to mark the number of hours of the day, from Prime to None.

Like the Roman and several other early offices, Sundays had a longer, more elaborate structure that remained the same regardless of season (although St Benedict does flag the possibility of shortening the readings if the monks sleep in: RB 11).

But St Benedict also offered a concession to the variable Office model by cutting the length of the weeknight readings drastically for the part of the year when the nights are shorter (in the Northern Hemisphere).

Summer and winter chant tones/hymns at Lauds and Vespers

Seasons are also marked in the Office in other ways, most notably the hymns of Lauds and Vespers.

On Sundays, the Office actually has different hymns for use at Sunday Matins and Lauds from October onwards.

And on the other days of the week, different chant tones are used for summer and winter at Lauds and Vespers.

While the particular hymns we use now are mostly not the ones St Benedict would have used himself (the Vespers hymns, for example, are traditionally attributed to St Gregory the Great, c540-604), the use of different hymns depending on the time of year goes back to at least St Benedict's time.

It is documented for Gaul in the Office described by one of St Benedict's early sixth century contemporaries, Caesarius of Arles, for example, and also reflected in a collection of hymns almost certainly taken to England with the mission dispatched by St Gregory the Great.

The Matins reading cycle

The other key element of Matins governed by the calendar year cycle is the readings.

In St Benedict's time the Sunday cycle of Gospel readings was much more fluid and developed than it was to become later, and the earliest surviving Matins lectionaries reflect this.

'Ordo XIV', which probably describes sixth and seventh century Roman practice, for example, prescribes a cycle where all if the canonical books of Scripture were read in the course of the year.

Although the cycle was reformed somewhat later on, probably in the eighth century, the cycle laid out in this document still underpins the Scriptural reading cycle (and the responsories) used at Matins in the 1962 Office in the First Nocturn on Sundays and ferial 'winter' weekdays outside of Lent and Advent.

The reading cycle starts with the first seven books of the Bible in the lead up to Easter, and then moves to Acts and the last books of the Bible (the Catholic Epistles and Revelation) during Eastertide.

After for period after Easter, the books to be read are listed by reference to the season (Kings and Chronicles were originally read up to Autumn for example, before being cut back at the end of July in the eighth century reform) or month.

Over time the cycle has been formalised into set readings for each night; shortened, so that only selections are used rather than the whole of Scripture read; and displaced altogether on weekdays in some seasons.

Nonetheless it is this cycle that dictates that from August onwards, the First Nocturn readings at Matins are linked to the week of the calendar month rather than the Sunday liturgical cycle.

And since the weeks Matins readings are foreshadowed each week in the canticle antiphon for Vespers, this means that the cycle of antiphons for I Vespers of Sunday doesn't match up to the cycle of collects from August to November each year.

Notes

(1) The hours as described in the Rule end generally  end with the litany (ie  Kyrie Eleison...) and Our Father.   The eighth century Roman Office as described by Amalarius of Metz also lacked collects, though the surviving books suggest that collects were used in some places in Rome fairly early on.  Some early forms of the Office certainly used collects (though not necessarily the Sunday ones), but their use seems mainly to have been limited to clerics.  

(2) This is my take on the subject, but whether or not these developments were instigated by St Benedict himself, or were largely anticipated in the Roman Office before him remains a subject of debate.  There are two datapoints for the use of a variable, rather than fixed weekly cursus for Rome before St Benedict: the Rule of the Master (though its dating and location continues to be subject to debate); and the 'Cautio Episcopi', which we know reflects actual practice, as the protests of clerics at one of Rome's tituli at the imposition of a Night Vigil on them has survived.  It is possible of course, as at least one study has noted recently, that the Roman Office in at least one of the basilicas had already moved to a fixed weekly psalm cursus before St Benedict.  But most if not all of the evidence and methodology relied on by Callaewaert and other twentieth century liturgists to argue this case has arguably been undermined by more recent work. 

Understanding the calendar Part IVC - Local feasts and alternative calendars

In the last couple of posts in this series on the calendar I have looked at how to incorporate feasts of the General calendar into the Office.

But as well as the generally applying feasts, there are a number of local feasts, feasts of the 'particular churches' that you need to take account of in the Office.

Local feasts

In particular, the rubrics allow for the following feasts to be added to the General Calendar:

• principal patron of the country, region or province as a Class I;
• principal patron of the diocese or territory;
• anniversary of the dedication of the Cathedral of the diocese;
• patron of the town or city;
• anniversary of the dedication of the church;
• titular feast of the church;
• patron saint of the congregation or monastery;
• feast of the monasteries founder (if canonised or beatified); and
• saints specified in the calendar of the monastery's congregation.

The need to customise your Ordo to incorporate the list of feasts above explains why even monasteries that use the 1962 General Calendar and books won't have identical calendars.

Similarly, each Oblate should add the relevant local feasts to their own Ordo.

In some cases these saints may not appear in the General Calendar at all.  In others, the effect of the local feast may be to elevate the level of the feast.

Where local feasts coincide with the feasts of other saints in the General Calendar, or with Sundays you will need to resolve the conflict between them.

Generally speaking, memorials are displaced by Class I&II feasts but can be celebrated in conjunction with Class III feasts; other conflicts are resolved using 'the two tables' at the front of the Diurnal.

If two feasts of the same rank conflict, there is a hierarchy of types of feasts that dictates which one is celebrated.

Alternative calendars

The Ordo I provide on this blog covers the feasts set out in the 1962 General Calendar and the Sunday cycle associated with it (which is very similar to the Roman EF Sunday cycle and calendar).

Not all monasteries who say the traditional form of the Office, though, use the 1962 General Calendar for Benedictines, as the other officially approved option is to use the revised Calendar of 1975 in conjunction with the traditional Office books and either the 1962 or 1970 calendar cycles.

This approach, however, require a lot of adaptation and supplementation of the printed chant books, and personally I'm an advocate for keeping things simple.

But if your monastery does adopt this approach, it may provide its own Ordo to Oblates, and there are a number of books around aimed at providing the supplementary texts necessary (such as the Clear Creek books available from Lulu).

Working out how to say a (local) feast

Finally, by way of a summary of what we have covered so far, a quick look at how to actually find the texts for the local feasts you have added to the calendar.

In many cases, working out how to say a local feast is fairly straightforward: texts for a number of additional feasts are included as a supplement at the back of the Diurnal, more can be found in other readily downloadable chant books such as the Antiphonale Monasticism, and your particular monastery may be wiling to provide you with the relevant texts.

But if you can't find any specific texts for a particular feast, you simply use the 'Commons' of the particular type of saint (to be found in the Diurnal and other Office books).

The general principles of how a feast impacts on the hours are summarised in the tables below.  Note though that there are exceptions to the rules!

LEVEL OF FEAST	EFFECT ON MATINS
Class III feast	Invitatory antiphon and hymn of the feast (or from the appropriate Common); reading (3) and responsory of the feast; chapter and collect of the (type of) feast.
Class I or II feast	Three Nocturns, with invitatory antiphon, hymn, antiphons, psalms, readings, responsories, Gospel and collect of the feast.

LEVEL OF FEAST	EFFECT ON PRIME
Memorial	Nil
Class I, II or III feasts	Antiphon of the feast (the default is antiphon 1 of Lauds) either specific to the feast or from the Common

   

LEVEL OF FEAST	EFFECT ON TERCE, SEXT AND NONE
Memorial	Nil
Class I, II or III feast	Antiphon, chapter, versicle, collect of the feast

LEVEL OF FEAST	EFFECT ON VESPERS	EFFECT ON LAUDS
Memorial	Nil.	After Collect of the day, say the canticle antiphon, versicle and collect of the memorial
Class III without proper antiphons	Psalms and antiphons of the day; chapter, responsory, hymn etc from the Common
Class III with proper antiphons	Psalms of Sunday or the Common; antiphons of the feast; chapter etc for the feast (from the proper of the feast or the Common)	Festal Psalms  (under Sunday) – Ps 92, 99, 62; Option of using festal canticle of the day of the week; chapter etc for the feast (from the proper of the feast or the Common)
Class II	All for the feast (or from the Common of Saints or season), including psalms of feast, Sunday or Common	Festal psalms; option of festal canticle; Chapter etc of feast, season or common
Class I	All for the feast (or from the Common of saints or season) with I Vespers the night before	Festal psalms; option of festal canticle; Chapter etc of feast, season or common

In the next post I'll move onto the most confusing of the calendar cycles, that of the calendar months.

Ordo for the twelfth week after Pentecost (Aug 12-18)

The notes below are designed to assist those wishing to say the Benedictine Office according to the officially approved 1962 books (noting that older books can readily be adapted to this end).

They provides notes on the variable parts of the Office only, so should be read in conjunction with the Learn to Say the Benedictine Office notes provided elsewhere on the blog.

Key to the abbreviations:

MD= Monastic Diurnal (MD, 2004 onwards editions)
AM =Antiphonale Monasticum 1934 (1995 edition).
LR=Liber Responsorialis (downloadable from CC Watershed) and the Nocturnale Romanum.

THE ORDO

Sunday 12 August – Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost, Class II

[Note: St Clare is not marked in the Office this year]

Matins: Nocturn I&II readings and responsories for the Second Sunday of August; Nocturn III readings and Gospel of the Twelfth Sunday

Lauds to Vespers: Canticle antiphons and collect, MD 471-2*/AM 602-3

Monday 13 August - Class IV; SS Pontianus and Hippolytus, memorial [EF: SS Hippolytus and Cassian]

Collect, MD 472*/AM 603; for the commemoration at Lauds, MD [228-9]/[AM 1010]

Tuesday 14 August – Vigil of the Assumption, Class II           

Matins: All as in the psalter, except for three readings and collect of the Vigil; responsories of the preceding Sunday

Lauds to None: All as in the psalter with collect of the Vigil, collect, MD [229]/AM 1011

I Vespers of the Assumption, MD [230]/AM 1011 ff

(Note that there is a choice of Office: the ‘new’ Office composed after the formal declaration of the dogma, MD [230] ff, or the older version, MD [238] ff)

Wednesday 15 August - Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Class I

Matins: All of the feast, with three Nocturns, LR 373 ff

Lauds: MD [233]/AM 1013 ff or MD [241] ff – Festal psalms with texts of the feast

Prime to None: Antiphons etc of the feast

Vespers: All as for I Vespers except for Magnificat antiphon

Thursday 16 August - Class IV [EF: St Joachim]

All as in the psalter; collect, MD 472*/AM 603

Friday 17 August - Class IV [EF: St Hyacinth]

All as in the psalter; collect, MD 472*/AM 603

Saturday 18 August – Office of Our Lady on Saturday, Class IV; St Agapitus, memorial

Matins to None: Our Lady on Saturday with Matins reading of Sat 3 of August, MD (129) /AM 714 ff; for the commemoration at Lauds, MD [245]/AM 1019

I Vespers of the Third Sunday of August, Magnificat antiphon, MD 451*/AM 581; collect of the Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost, MD 472-3*/AM 604

Understanding the calendar IVB - Fixed date feasts and Sundays

In the last post in this series on the calendar, we looked at how the General Calendar of feasts fixed to particular dates of the year interacts with the Office for ordinary (Class IV) days of the week.

I want to devote one more post to the detail of how to resolve conflicts between days of the week and fixed date feasts, looking at the case of Class II Sundays.  

If you work through these two posts, you will understand the general principles of how it works, and hopefully will be able to use the tables in the Diurnal to resolve the other situations in which these conflicts arise for yourself!

Sundays

Sundays have always been celebrated with more solemnity than other days in the Office.  St Benedict, for example, gives Sunday Matins an extra 'Nocturn', includes the reading of the Gospel and two extra hymns in it.

He also stressed that the psalm cycle started afresh each Sunday.

Over the centuries, however, the proliferation of feasts and rules for them that equated many feasts with Sundays meant that the texts of the core Sunday cycle was often displaced by feasts.

This situation was changed by reforms of Pope Pius X in 1913 which gave Sundays a privileged position in relation to feasts of the same or even higher rank, and can mean that a particular feast isn't celebrated at all in a particular year, or that its celebration is muted in various ways.

It can also mean that even though the Sunday is displaced by a feast, it is still remembered in the Office as a 'commemoration'.

Resolving conflicts - the two tables

You might expect that the rules on which feast or day are celebrated would be pretty straightforward: Class I feasts would trump Class II feasts or days, Class II feasts could trump Class II feasts and so on.

Unfortunately, while broadly true, it is not quite that straightforward, as we have already seen from the case of Saturday night Vespers, where when the Sunday is displaced by a feast, it is still 'commemorated' in the closing prayers of the hour.

There are a range of options as to what can happen when a feast falls on a Sunday, ranging from the feast being transferred to another day, the Sunday or the feast being commemorated, or the feast completely overriding the normal Sunday Office.

In the last post, we started looking at the 'two tables' contained in the front section of the Diurnal, which cover cases of 'occurrence and 'concurrence'.

Concurrence, it was noted, is about resolving which set of texts to use at Vespers when there are two competing possibilities, such as when Vespers of a feast potentially clashes with Saturday Vespers (I Vespers of Sunday).

The concurrence table also tells us what to do when a Class I feast (ie a feast that has first Vespers) occurs on a Monday (it tells us that a commemoration of the Monday feast is said at Sunday Vespers).

In this post, though, I want to focus primarily on the question of 'occurrence', when feasts of the General Calendar coincide with a Class II Sunday.

Sundays override memorials and Class III feasts and vigils.

Let's start with the simplest case, the two lowest rankings of days set out in the General Calendar: memorials (not covered in the table), Class III feasts, and Class III vigils.

These rank below Sundays, and so are not  celebrated when they coincide with a Sunday in a particular year.

In the August 2018 Ordo that we have been constructing then, we need to note that two of the memorial listed for August in the General Calendar are not celebrated this year - August 5's Our Lady of the Snows, and St Clare on August 12. 

Class II feasts and vigils

When it comes to Class II days, Sundays ranked Class II generally have priority over Class II feasts and vigils.

Sundays completely override Class II Vigils.

Accordingly if the Vigil of St Lawrence (August 8) falls on a Sunday in a particular year, it is not marked in the Office at all.

Class II feasts, though, even when they do not form the main Office of the day are still remembered in the Office through a 'commemoration' at Lauds.  In 2018, for example, the feast of St Martin in November coincides with a Sunday, and so is reduced to a commemoration.

The key exception to the priority of Sundays over Class II feasts is for 'feasts of Our Lord'.  When these fall on a Sunday, they completely replace the Sunday, with no commemorations of it.

In 2017, for example, the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord coincided with a Sunday, so even though the feast is ranked Class II, it had a first Vespers, and the Office of the feast was used without any commemorations of the Sunday.

Class I feasts and Class II Sundays

Class I feasts do have priority over Class II Sundays.

When this happens though, except in the case of Feasts of Our Lord, the importance of the Sunday cycle is emphasized by its remembrance through commemorations at both Lauds and Vespers.

In summary

The table below summarises the rules discussed above.

If a Class II Sunday coincides with a…	Office is of…	Vespers impact
Memorial	Memorial is not marked in the Office	Not affected.
Class III Feast or Vigil	Feast or vigil is not marked in the Office	Not affected
Class II Vigil	Vigil is not marked in the Office	Of the Sunday
Class II Feasts other than those of Our Lord	Of the Sunday with commemorations of the feast at Lauds	Of the Sunday
Class II  Feasts of Our Lord	Feast, with I Vespers and no commemoration  of Sunday	I&II Vespers of the feast
Class I	Of the feast with commemorations of the Sunday at Lauds and Vespers (unless feast of Our Lord)	I&II Vespers of the feast

Adding in local feasts

In the last two posts we've looked at fixed date feasts of the General Calendar of 1962.

In the next post I will to look at other sources of fixed date feasts.

Understanding the calendar Part IVA - The fixed date feasts of the general calendar

So far in this series on how the calendar works in the 1962 Benedictine Office in the 1962 Office I've looked at:

• the daily cycle of 'hours' and the rationale for them;
• the days of the week; and the ranking of days and feasts.

This week I want to look at how to take account of the feasts that occur on fixed dates through the year.

In this post I will look at feasts that occur on weekdays; in the next we will look at the rules for Sundays; and the third I will look at adding in local feasts, as well as alternative calendars.

Some of what follows will be very familiar to some, but new to others.  

Either way, it is important to make sure you thoroughly understand it, as even if you normally follow an Ordo, there are some local feasts that you will need to add in to your Office, and that requires you to apply these principles to them.

The base 'Ordo'

In the last post I noted that feasts and days can be ranked from Class I to Class IV, with the 'default' ranking of days such that Monday to Saturdays are Class IV; and Sundays (which start from I Vespers of Saturday) are Class II.

The base texts for these days are contained in the 'psalter' section of your Office book, supplemented by the texts for Saturdays Office of Our Lady (in the section with 'Commons of feasts').

So your starting point 'Ordo' looks something like:

Sunday - Class II

All as in the psalter for a Sunday

Monday - Class IV

All as in the psalter for Monday

Tuesday - Class IV

All as in the psalter

Wednesday - Class IV

All as in the psalter 

Thursday – Class IV

All as in the psalter

Friday - Class IV

All as in the psalter

[I Vespers of Our Lady on Saturday]

Saturday - Class IV; Office of Our Lady on Saturday

Matins to None:  All as for the Office of Our Lady on Saturday
Vespers: Of Saturday (=I Vespers of Sunday)
Compline: As in the psalter

The general calendar of 1962 for Benedictines 

The next step is to overlay this with the feasts fixed to particular calendar dates.

The calendar contains two main types of feasts: the cycle based around the life of Our Lord, as well as the various Marian feasts; and those of the saints.

The feasts of saints are generally linked to the date of their heavenly birth, that is their death on earth, though in some cases for various reasons their feasts are moved to other dates.

Most Office books contain a table listing out all of the feasts attached to particular dates, arranged by month.

The version in the Diurnal, which you can find starting on page xi, is the officially approved 1962 calendar for the Benedictine Confederation (I'll come back to the question of alternate calendars and when they are permitted in due course).  

The listing for the first half of August can be translated as looking like this:

1 August - Class IV; The Holy Maccabees, memorial
2 August – Class IV; St Alphonsus Mary de Liguori, memorial
3 August - Class IV
4 August - St. Dominic, Class III
5 August – Class IV; Dedication of the Church of Our Lady of the Snows, memorial
6 August - Transfiguration of Our Lord, Class II
7 August - Class IV; SS Sixtus II, Felicissimus and Agapitus, memorial
8 August - Class IV; St Cyriacus, memorial 
9 August – Vigil of St Lawrence, Class III
10 August - St Lawrence, Class II
11 August - Class IV; St. Tiburtius, Memorial
12 August – Class IV; St. Clare, memorial 
13 August - Class IV; SS Pontianus and Hippolytus, memorial 
14 August – Vigil of the Assumption, Class II           
15 August - Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Class I

Not all of these feasts are necessarily observed every year, as the extent to which the monthly calendar interacts with the weekly cycle is governed by a series of rules ('rubrics').

Let's take a look at some of the key ones for Class IV (week) days.

Memorials on Class IV days

A good starting place is memorials, the lowest level of feasts of saints.

The key rule is that Memorials do not displace Class IV days, but are celebrated in conjunction with them by making a 'commemoration'* of the feast of the saint at Lauds (only).

If we were putting together an Ordo for August 2018, then just looking at the memorials for the moment, we find that the first day of August in 2018 was a Wednesday.

In the last post I gave as template for a Class IV Wednesday.  To that we just need to add an instruction to observe the memorial:

Wednesday 1 August - Class IV; The Holy Maccabees, memorial 

Matins: All as for Wednesday in the psalter
Lauds: All as for Wednesday in the psalter, with a commemoration of the Holy Maccabees.
Prime: All as for Wednesday in the psalter
Terce to None:  All as for Tuesday to Saturday in the psalter
Vespers: All as for Wednesday in the psalter
Compline: All as in the psalter

or we could simply say:

All as for Wednesday in the psalter, with a commemoration of the Maccabees at Lauds.

Exactly the same principle applies to the memorials listed for August 2, 7, 8, 11, and 13 August, which fall on weekdays this year.

The actual texts you need to make these commemorations (ie add the antiphon, versicle and collect after the collect of the day in the closing prayers) are contained in the 'Proper of the Saints' section of the book (in the Diurnal, the pages with page numbers in square brackets).

For the memorial of the Holy Maccabees, you can find them on pages [209-10] of the Diurnal, page 988 of the Antiphonale Monasticum, or pages [76-7] of the 1962 Monastic Breviary.

 

Feasts and weekdays

The second category to consider is the Class I, II and III feasts of the calendar that fall on weekdays in any particular year.

Again the key principles are very simple: 

1.  Higher level feasts (Class I, II or III) displace lower level weekdays (Class IV).

2.  Class I feasts normally start from I Vespers, ie the day before the feast (note: there are special rules for when two feasts occur in a row, and for Saturday Vespers, and I'll come back to these).

3.  All other levels of feasts affect the Office from Matins to Compline only.*  

*Note: In pre-1962 Calendars, the equivalent to Class II feasts started with I Vespers, and some monasteries retain this practice. 

Let's start by overlaying the General Calendar for August with the days of the week in 2018, leaving aside Saturdays and Sundays for the moment.

On Monday August 6, the feast of the Transfiguration, as Class II, displaces the default Class IV day.  

And the same thing occurs on Friday August 10 with the feast of St Lawrence.

Because the Feast of the Assumption is Class I, though, it also affects Tuesday 13 August, displacing its Vespers.

The actual way and extent to which a weekday's texts are displaced, depends on:

• the hour concerned.  At Prime, for example, only the antiphon can change; at Matins, Lauds and Vespers, 'festal' psalms sometimes displace those for the day of the week;
• the level of feast; and
• whether or not the feast has its own ('proper') antiphons, or just uses those for the type of saint concerned (ie Commons of Apostles, Martyrs, etc).

You can find notes on the way feasts impact on the normal texts of the day in the notes on each hour linked to in the Learn the Office page on this blog.

The simplest approach, though, is to follow the Ordo notes provided on this blog, which basically tells you which things change because of the feast, and where to find the relevant texts.

Vigils and weekdays

The August calendar also provides an example of another type of 'day' in the calendar to take account of, namely Vigils, in this case relating to the feasts of St Lawrence and the Assumption respectively.

Vigils, like feasts, can be Class I (such as for Christmas), II (as for the Assumption) or III (St Lawrence) and simply displace or add texts to the celebration of the normal weekday Office.

On Class II&III vigils, the main effect is on Matins, where the readings are those of the Vigil; at the day hours, the only change is the collect (at the hours other than Prime and Compline), which is of the vigil.

Feasts and Saturday Vespers

Finally, to complete our consideration of feasts and weekdays, we need to look at feasts that fall on Saturdays.

For Matins to None, the rules for Saturday are exactly the same as for other Class IV weekdays.

Saturday Vespers, however, are normally celebrated as 'I Vespers of Sunday', and the rules for Sundays are slightly different to those for weekdays, as they have a higher priority than most feasts.

Let's look at the example of the feast of St Dominic in August 2018.

Normally on a Class III feast, Vespers would be of the feast.

But in this case, that would conflict with First Vespers of the Sunday, which is effectively considered to be Class II.

The key to working out potential conflicts between Sundays and feasts is the 'Two tables' in Diurnal (pages xxv - xxvii).

The second table, concurrence, deals with situations like the feast of St Dominic, and it can be read as providing these rules:

1.  If (II) Vespers of a Class III feast coincides with I Vespers of a Class II Sunday (ie Saturday Vespers), Vespers of the feast is not celebrated.

2.  If (II Vespers) of a Class I or II feast coincides with I Vespers of a Class II Sunday, Vespers of the feast is celebrated with a 'commemoration' of the Sunday.


So for Saturday August 5 our Ordo would read:

Saturday 4 August - St Dominic, Class III

Matins to None: Of the feast of St Dominic
Vespers and Compline: Of the Sunday

If the feast of St Dominic had been Class II or I, however, Vespers would have been of the feast with a commemoration of the Sunday (made exactly the same way a commemoration of a memorial is done).

Summary and Ordo for August 2018

The table below summarises the principles we've looked at so far for feasts and weekdays.

If a Class IV day coincides with a feast ranked…	Office is of…	Vespers impact
Memorial	The Class IV day (or Office of Our Lady on Saturday) with a commemoration at Lauds	Not affected.
Class III	The Class III feast	Vespers of the day is of the feast unless the feast falls on a Saturday, in which case Vespers is of the Sunday.
Class II	The Class II feast	*No first Vespers; if falls on a Saturday, Second Vespers includes a commemoration of the Sunday.
Class I	The Class I feast	Class I feasts normally have both first and second Vespers; if it falls on a Saturday, Second Vespers includes a commemoration of the Sunday.

*Note that some monasteries retain I Vespers for Class II feasts.

A good way to check your understanding is to put together some short Ordo notes for the days of August listed above (leaving aside the Sundays for now).

Once you've had a go, check it against the listing below.

Wednesday 1 August - Class IV; The Holy Maccabees, memorial

All as in the psalter for Wednesday with a commemoration of the Holy Maccabees at Lauds

Thursday 2 August – Class IV; St Alphonsus Mary de Liguori, memorial

All as in the psalter with a commemoration of St Alphonsus at Lauds

Friday 3 August - Class IV

All as in the psalter

Saturday 4 August - St. Dominic, Class III

Matins to None: As for the feast of St Dominic

Vespers: I Vespers of the Sunday

Monday 6 August - Transfiguration of Our Lord, Class II

Matins to Compline: Of the feast

Tuesday 7 August - Class IV; SS Sixtus II, Felicissimus and Agapitus, memorial

All as in the psalter, with a commemoration at Lauds

Wednesday 8 August - Class IV; St Cyriacus, memorial

All as in the psalter, with a commemoration at Lauds

Thursday 9 August – Vigil of St Lawrence, Class III

Matins: Readings and collect of the Vigil

Prime: As for Thursday in the psalter

Lauds, Prime to Vespers: As in the psalter, with collect of the Vigil

Friday 10 August - St Lawrence, Class II

Matins to Compline: Of the feast

Saturday 11 August - Class IV, Office of Our Lady on Saturday; St. Tiburtius, Memorial

Matins to None: Office of Our Lady on Saturday with a commemoration at Lauds

Vespers: I Vespers of Sunday

Monday 13 August - Class IV; SS Pontianus and Hippolytus, memorial

All as in the psalter with a commemoration at Lauds

Tuesday 14 August – Vigil of the Assumption, Class II          

Matins: As for Tuesday in the psalter with readings and collect of the vigil

Lauds: As for Tuesday in the psalter with collect of the vigil

Prime: As for Tuesday in the psalter

Terce to None: As for Tuesday in the psalter with collect of the vigil

Vespers: I Vespers of the Assumption

Wednesday 15 August - Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Class I

Matins to Vespers: All of the feast.

The next post looks at how Sundays interact with the General Calendar.