Brush up your rubrics (for Advent) Part III - How the canticle antiphons and collects work

I want to continue my series on getting ready for Advent today with a look at the antiphons for the Benedictus (Lauds) and Magnificat (Vespers), as well as the collects, work in the Office more generally.  In the next part I'll focus in on the peculiarities of the Advent set.

The normal pattern of canticle antiphons and collects

On normal days (Class IV ferias and Sundays) throughout the year, the antiphons for the two New Testament canticles follow the following pattern:

• at Saturday Vespers, the Magnificat antiphon is of the following Sunday, and usually reflects the first Nocturn Scriptural readings of Sunday Matins;

• on Sundays the two canticle antiphons usually refer to the Gospels said at (EF) Mass that day (and also read at Matins);

• on weekdays, the canticle antiphons are of the particular weekday, and are the same throughout the year and so included in the psalter section of the Diurnal, breviary and Antiphonale.

The collects

The Saturday and Sunday canticle antiphons throughout the year are found in the 'temporale' section of the Diurnal and other Office books along with the Sunday collect.  The table below summarises where the collects are taken from.  It shows that the Sunday collect is usually used from Saturday Vespers until Vespers the following Friday at all hours except Prime and Compline (which have their own fixed collects used throughout the year).  

On Saturdays (or Friday Vespers if you are following the Le Barroux rubrics, which still includes Vespers of the Office of Our Lady, abolished in the 1962 rubrics), the normal weekly collect is displaced by that for the Office of Our Lady on Saturday.

Collects during the year (outside of Advent and Lent etc)

DAY AND HOUR	THE COLLECT IS OF…	NOTES
Saturday Vespers	Of the following Sunday	Unless displaced by a feast
Sunday Matins & Lauds, Terce to Vespers	Of the Sunday	Unless displaced by a Class I feast
Prime every day	Always the same – Domine Deus omnipotens…	Subject to a few rare exceptions such as All Souls and the Triduum
Compline every day	Always the same – Visita quaesumus	Subject to a few rare exceptions such as All Souls and the Triduum
Monday to Friday Matins & Lauds, Terce to Vespers	Of the previous Sunday	Unless displaced by a feast or higher level day
Saturday Matins & Lauds, Terce to None	Collect for Office of Our Lady on Saturday	Unless displaced by a feast or higher level feast. In some monasteries, the Office of Our Lady starts with I Vespers on Friday night.

Where to find the antiphons and collects

Finding the canticle antiphons for Saturdays and Sundays can sometimes be a little tricky, as from the Second Sunday of Pentecost until the end of the liturgical year, they are typically on two different places in the 'temporale' (texts for the time of year).

This is because the First (and Second) Nocturn readings of Matins are not always 'attached' to the Mass cycle of Sundays of the year.  Instead, they follow an ancient cycle of Scriptural readings that originally enabled the entire Bible to be read in a year, with the readings from August to November being of the Sunday of the month rather than the Sunday Mass cycle.

In the Monastic Diurnal, the Saturday Vespers antiphons can be found (under the heading I Vespers) from pages 432* onwards; those for the equivalent Sundays from page 461*. 

In the Antiphonale Monasticum (AM), the Saturday antiphon sequence starts at the fourth Saturday after Penteocst, on page 575 (labelled 'Tempore post Pentecosten...antiphonae dicendae in sabbatis).  The Sunday sequence starts on AM 593.

Advent and the other exceptions

The key exceptions to the patterns described above are:

• feasts, where the canticle of the feast will normally displace the canticle antiphon and collect  that would otherwise be said (except at Prime and Compline);
• some special feasts through the year when the Benedictine Office is displaced by the Roman (such as during the Sacred Triduum and on All Souls) which affect Prime and Compline;
• higher level 'days', such as the four sets of Ember Days during the year, which have their own collects; and
• special seasons of the year such as Advent.

But more on this in the next part of the series.