Notes on the Office: Advent up to December 16

Advent starts this coming week, and is a particularly challenging time in the Office.

Where to put your ribbons....

the first thing to do to prepare is make sure you have your ribbons properly positioned!

In particular, you need to keep one ribbon on:

• the Ordinary of Advent (in the Proper of the Season section at the front of the Diurnal) for the relevant hour;
• the collect of the week (unless displaced by a saints feast or Ember Day); 
• the page for the canticle antiphons of the day of the Advent week at Lauds and Vespers;
• the saints section of your book; and
• the relevant parts of the psalter section of your book for the particular hour you are saying.

Key things to remember

On Sundays there are ‘proper’ texts for all hours, set out in the Proper of the Season (temporale) section of the Farnborough edition of the Monastic Diurnal (MD) or Breviary (MB) for the relevant Sunday.

Remember that at Lauds and Vespers, the chapters, hymns and other texts in the psalter section of your book are replaced by those for the season.  

And at Prime to None, the antiphons are of the week of Advent (ie the first, second, third and fifth antiphons of the previous Sunday's Lauds).

On feast days, a commemoration of Advent, consisting of the canticle antiphon (of the Advent day), versicle (of the season) and collect of the Advent week (in that order), is normally made at both Lauds and Vespers.