Getting ready for Advent - The Office in Advent

Advent starts this weekend, so I thought a quick run through some key features of the season might be in order.

The eight days before Christmas

Although Christmas was celebrated quite early in Rome, it was originally Epiphany, and not Christmas that seems to have been regarded as the more important feast.

All the same, a lead up week to Christmas was added by at least the sixth century, featuring the use of the Ó antiphons' (sung with the Magnificat) each day.

Each of the texts refers to key prophesies of Christ, mostly from Isaiah.  There is, however, another level to them, as they have been arranged so that if you work backwards, the first letter of each one together forms two words, viz Ero Cras, or tomorrow I will come.

During this most intense period of Advent, there are special sets of antiphons for the psalms for each day of the week, as well as Benedictus antiphons at Lauds specific to December 21 and 23.

Christmas also has a Vigil attached to it, like many of the greater (and older feasts).

The three (or four) weeks of Advent

At some point though (and just when is a matter of some debate), the season of Advent was extended back to start on the Sunday nearest to 30 November.

Each of the four weeks of Advent (though the fourth, as this year, sometimes only consists of the Sunday itself) has a special set of antiphons for the psalms, which are used at Saturday Vespers (I Vespers of Sunday), Sunday Lauds, and then throughout the week at Prime to None.

The season also has its own hymns, short responsory and versicle at Lauds and Vespers which replace those in the psalter section of your Office book), as well as special canticle antiphons each day, to be found in the temporale, or óf time' section of your Diurnal or other book.

Unlike Lent though, the collect is usually that of the Sunday (except for the three Émber days' and of course on any feasts),

Ribbons at the ready!

The key trick to saying the Office during Advent is to remember that you need to keep track of, and keep a ribbon on:

• the normal texts used at each hour' (psalter section of the book);
• the fixed texts that displace some of the normal parts of the hours used throughout Advent, particularly at Lauds and Vespers (the Ordinary of Advent);
• the particular week of Advent, as well as what day in that week it is (antiphons for the little hours, canticle antiphons for each day, collect); 
• texts used on particular dates, from December 17 onwards (canticle antiphons); and
• texts used on particular days of the week from December 17 onwards (antiphons for the psalms for use on Monday, Tuesday, etc).

The Ordo provided here should help with all that though!

Getting ready for Advent 2B - Reading an Ordo Part II

Continuing my series getting ready for Advent, and the new liturgical year, I want to continue on with some further comments on using an Ordo.

And in the process, I'll talk about what texts to ignore or adapt in older Office books!

An ordo and the default, or ferial texts.

A key point to keep in mind in using the Ordo, including the one provided on this blog, is that they typically only tell you what is different from the ordinary, ie what appears for the relevant hour and day of the week in the psalter section of your book.

This means that:

(1) If the Ordo is silent, you should use the default texts set out in the psalter section for the particular day and hour you are proposing to say.

(2) If the Ordo provides page numbers for a part of the hour, unless indicated otherwise, these displace the ones normally used at a particular hour.

An example: 1 Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent

For First Vespers of Advent (the Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent) for example, the Ordo might read:

1 Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent: Antiphons, chapter, responsory, hymn, versicle, Magnificat antiphon, and collect, MD 1*/AM 186 ff.

What this is telling you is that the parts of the hour of Vespers not mentioned - the opening prayer, psalms, Magnificat and closing prayers (other than the collect)  - are as normally said for Saturday Vespers.

The table below spells out what this means in practice.

VESPERS	‘Default’ texts	1 Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent
Opening prayers	MD 1	MD 1
Antiphons and psalms	Saturday - MD 249 ff Ant 1 (Regnum tuum)+Ps 144+Ant 1 Ant 2 (Laudabo)+Ps 145+Ant 2 Ant 3 (Deo nostro)+Ps 146+Ant 3 Ant 4 (Lauda)+Ps 147+Ant 4	Antiphons of Advent 1, MD 1,  with psalms of Saturday, MD 249 ff  Ant 1 (In illa die)+Ps 144+Ant 1 (of  Advent 1)  Ant 2 (Iucundare)+Ps 145+Ant2  Ant 3 (Ecce Dominus)+Ps 146+Ant 3  Ant 4 (Ecce veniet)+Ps 147+Ant 4
Chapter	O altitudo, MD 254	Fratres, MD 1*
Short Responsory	Magnus Dominus, MD 254	Ostende nobis, MD 2*
Hymn	O lux beata Trinitas, MD 254	Conditor alme, MD 2-3*
Versicle	Vespertina oratio, MD 255	Rorate caeli, MD 3*
Antiphon for the Magnificat	Of the following Sunday of the year	Ecce nomen Domini, MD 3*
Magnificat	MD 209	MD 209
Antiphon for the Magnificat	Of the following Sunday of the year	Ecce nomen Domini, MD 3*
Closing prayers	MD 210	MD 210
	Collect of the week or day	MD 1*

Knowing the ferial Office

At Vespers, as the example above illustrates, almost every part of the hour can be festal, but at the other hours, fewer things change - at Prime, for example, only the antiphon.

This means that in saying the hours, particularly when it comes to the special seasons of the year, and on feasts, you need to have a good understanding of what the normal parts of the hour are and the order they are said in, as well as how different levels of feasts can affect the hour.

To help you on this, I've reposted some quick guides to the day hours, with page number references to the Monastic Diurnal, over at the Learn the Benedictine Office Blog.

Navigating older books

If you are using an older Office book, I'd suggest taking the quick guides, and drawing up your own set of page numbers for the psalter section in it.

In general, if you follow the directions in the Ordo about what parts of the Office change for a particular feast, the texts you are looking for will generally be there.

The key things to watch out for in using older books for the day hours are that:

• only part of the antiphon may be given before the psalm - but in the 1962 rubrics they are always said in full before and after the psalm(s); and
• older books may include additional material such preces in the psalter section, and additional commemorations elsewhere - that are no longer used.

In the case of Matins, although I haven't done a comprehensive comparison, as far as I've found there are generally very few changes in the texts for particular feasts between older books and the 1962 breviary.  The main exception is feasts that have been upgraded in various ways, such as the Assumption and Immaculate Conception, but even in these cases the 1962 breviary generally provides an option to use the older version of the feast,

The key change relates to Class III feasts, which often represent a downgrade from a three Nocturn Office to a two Nocturn one.  In this case, the feast is normally marked, in the 1962 rubrics, by:

• an Invitatory antiphon and hymn (taken from the Common of the type of saint or of the feast);
• a single reading (usually identical to the Roman 1962) and  responsory (either of the feast or of the type of saint;
• Nocturn II chapter (typically that of Sext) and versicle (typically that of Terce) of the type of saint; and 
• collect of the feast.  

Getting ready for Advent Part 2A - Reading an Ordo, Pt 1

Today, the second part in my series on getting ready for Advent.

This post and the next are also by way of general preparation for the incoming Ordos for the new liturgical year, since they look at how to use an Ordo effectively. 

Alerting you to go look...

Ordos work by providing an alert to you, a reminder that you need to look at a part of your book other than the psalter section.

For First Vespers of Advent for example, this year on Saturday 2 December, the Le Barroux Ordo says ' - Vesp. de Dom. seq.', meaning Vespers of the following Sunday.

This means you need to look in the 'temporale' or 'of time' section of your book to see what is there by way of instructions for 1 Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent. 

Names of feasts and Offices - and finding them in older books

The Ordo I provide on this blog generally goes a couple of steps further.

First, for Saturdays and 1 Vespers of major feasts, I generally try to include a more detailed reference to the relevant Office you are looking for, such as '1 Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent'.  

This meant to be a reminder that the texts will not all be of the relevant day of the week.

It is also intended to aid those using other/older books for whom the page numbers I provide won't line up.  

And it provides a cross-check in case there is an error in the page references I've provided!

Note though, that feasts and Offices can masquerade under different names in different books.  

While I generally describe Saturday Vespers as I Vespers of the Sunday, for example, consistent with the 1962 breviary, some older books describe it is as 'Sabbato ante Dominicam 1. Adventus' (Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent), and continue this convention throughout the year.

Accordingly, you need to become familiar with the terminology of the particular Office book you are using, and work out how it translates to whatever Ordo you are using.

Using the page numbering systems as a cue

I also provide page numbers for the relevant sections of the Monastic Diurnale and the Antiphonale Monasticum.

As I noted in my previous post, the page numbering systems employed by the Diurnal (and the page sections in the Antiphonale) give you a cue as to what section of the book you need to look in to find the relevant text.

Imagine you are using an older breviary, for example, and are looking for the feast of St John the Evangelist (December 27).

In principle this could appear in the sanctorale (it is after all the feast of a saint).  

In fact however it is normally placed in the temporale with the rest of the feasts of the Christmas octave.

If you didn't know this you could work it out by looking at the numbering system used for the Monastic Diurnal reference.  For Lauds, for example, the entry will be:

Lauds: Festal psalms with antiphons, chapter, responsory, hymn, versicle, Benedictus antiphon and collect of the feast, with a commemoration of the Octave, MD 90*/AM 255 ff.

The MD entry - number+ asterix  - tells you it is in the temporale section of the book.

Missing feasts

It is also worth noting that if you are using an older breviary, some feasts of the 1962 calendar may not be there at all (such as Christ the King, for books prior to 1925).  

If so, it is worth looking at whether I've given a page reference for the Antiphonale Monasticum (or another supplementary book), in order to fill in some of the gaps in your book (the Antiphonale, for example, can be downloaded from CC Watershed, and Clear Creek Monastery has published an inexpensive supplement to it, available from Lulu).

Getting ready for Advent - Office basics 1: Finding your way around (Benedictine) Office books

We are rapidly coming up to the end of the liturgical year, and the start of the new, in the form of the season of Advent.

Accordingly, I thought this might be a good time to provide a quick refresher on some Office basics.

As I've had a few requests, I thought I would also provide some comments on using older Office books, such as older breviaries or editions of the Diurnal, in conjunction with the 1962 rubrics.

Time to brush up your rubrics

Advent is easily the most complex time of the liturgical year, and to say the Office in this period correctly requires a firm grasp of what parts of the Office change, and which don't, and where to find the various texts.

Today, a quick refresher on finding pages in the Diurnal (or other Office book).

The first challenge during Advent (and indeed throughout the year) is that you need to juggle page numbers in several different places in your book, and it is easy to get confused as to which section of the book you are looking for (or are in).

Page numbering in Office books

The Ordo published on this website includes pages references to the Latin-English Monastic Diurnal published by Farnborough Abbey, editions from 2005 onwards (as far as I know the latest edition hasn't changed anything, but please do let me know if I'm wrong about this!). 

It is important to note, however, that page number in the Diurnal, as for many breviaries, is not sequential throughout the book.  

Instead each key section of the book has its own numbering system, as follows:

Section	Key content	Page numbering system
Front material	Reference material such as Table of movable feasts, General Calendar and conclusions to the collects.	Roman numerals: i to xxx.
Proper of the Season	Texts that vary according to the liturgical and calendar seasons of the year.	Numbers with an asterix: 1* to 487*.
The Psalter	The psalms and standard ‘default’ texts for each hour and day.  This is the core of the book and is (broadly) organised around the order of the psalms rather than the order in which the various 'hours' of the Office are said.	Numbers: 1 to 269.
Proper of the Saints	Texts used on the feasts of saints, arranged by date.	Numbers in square brackets: [1] to [385].
The Common of Saints	Used for more important feasts that don't have their own special texts.  They are grouped by types of saints (apostles, confessors, etc).   The Office of the Dead, various other special prayers, as well as indexes, are included in this section.	Numbers in parentheses: (1) to (243).
Supplement	Texts for feasts that are celebrated in certain places only.	Numbers with two asterixes: 1** to 59**.

Using older Office books

If you are using an older edition of the Diurnal, or an older breviary, the page numbers will not be the same as those cited in the Ordo I provide here.

Instead of looking for page numbers, then, you need to focus on finding the texts for the relevant day, feast or type of text cited in the Ordo entry (Monday in the first week of Advent etc).  

If you are using a 1962 Collegeville Monastic Diurnal, this should be very straightforward.  

For earlier editions, though, there are few tricks to this (for example days in former octaves) which I'll come back to in due course, but the texts are generally all there (save for a few newer feasts).

Depending on how familiar you are with the books you are using (and whether you are juggling a chant book and a book with readings for Matins for example), you might want to create a little conversion table/index for yourself to remind you what the order of the sections is, and where to find the key texts you are looking for.

I've provided a listing for the key sections for a few books in my possession below by way of a starting point.

Section of the Office book	Monastic Diurnal	Monastic Breviary 1962 vol 1 (Advent to Pentecost)	Antiphonale Monasticum 1934	Monastic Breviary 1892 (English Congregation), Pars Hiemalis
Proper of the Season	Numbers with an asterix: 1* to 487*.	Numbers: 1 to 738.	Second section in the book – numbers: 181 – 618.	Second section in the book – numbers: 151 – 390.
The Psalter	Numbers: 1 to 269.	Numbers in parentheses: (1) to (254).	First section in book – numbers: 1 – 180.	First section in the  book – numbers, 1 - 150
Proper of the Saints	Numbers in square brackets: [1] to [385].	Numbers in square brackets: [1] to [213].	Third section in the book – numbers: 619 – 752.	Third section in the book – numbers: 301 – 604.
The Common of Saints	Numbers in parentheses: (1) to (243).	Numbers with an asterix: 1* to 389*.	Fourth section of the book – numbers: 753 – 1182.	Fourth section of the book – numbers in parentheses: (1) to (196).

Please contribute

Please do let me know if you find any errors in the page references, or other typos, or need anything clarified in this post.

And if you are using an older/other Office book for the traditional Benedictine Office not covered by the table above, please do consider sharing the order and page numbers for it via the comments box - others are probably also using it, and I'd be curious to know just when the ordering changed and how consistent or otherwise the number systems are!  If I get enough responses I will put them together in a supplementary table.