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.