Getting ready for Advent pt 2

In my last post I suggested starting to get ready for Advent now, as it is a  particularly intensive time in the Office.

In this post, I want to continue on that theme, and highlight some of the key things you need to be aware of or remind yourself of.

The two parts of Advent

First, Advent essentially falls into two parts - the days up to and including December 16, which are Class III days; and the days between December 17 and 23, which are Class II.

First, throughout both parts of Advent, the 'Ordinary of Advent' is used, so make sure you are familiar with what is in it!

Aside from the Ordinary, it is important to keep in mind that unlike Lent and some other special seasons, the default collect throughout Advent is that of the Sunday of the relevant week of Advent, not of the day.  The exceptions are for feasts, the Ember Days of Advent, and the Vigil of the Nativity.

Thirdly, unlike Lent, Class III feasts are not reduced to commemorations.  Instead, when a feast occurs, the Advent day is 'commemorated' at both Lauds and Vespers, by using the canticle antiphon for the relevant hour and day of Advent, the versicle for Lauds or Vespers which is of the season, and the collect (of the Advent week).  You can find more detailed notes on this here: how to make commemorations of the Advent day

Fourthly, there are canticle antiphons for each day of Advent.  During the first part of Advent, these are of the day of the Advent week.  This pattern continues for Lauds during the second part of Advent, with the exception of two antiphons that are specific to the date (21 and 23 December), but at Vespers, the (O) antiphons are of the date for December 17 to 23.

Finally, when it comes to the antiphons for the psalms, during the first part of Advent, Prime to None use the antiphons of the relevant Advent Sunday.  When the days are Class II, there are specific special  antiphons for each day of the week.  If you want to know more about antiphons, and particularly singing them, try these two posts: Antiphons in Advent Pt 1 and Antiphons Pt 2.

Want to know more?

For those wanting to know more, or needing more help, you can either get a full Ordo from Lulu, use the shorter notes on the Ordo page on this blog, and/or refer to the notes I've previously written on this topic.

For notes on the individual hours in advent, follow these links:

• Matins
  
• Lauds
• Prime and Compline;
  
• Terce, Sext and None;

And for quick reference guides with page numbers to the Diurnal try these links:

• Sundays in Advent
  
• Advent weekdays
  
• Weekdays December 17-23

Getting ready for Advent - Part I

This is my annual reminder that the most complicated time of the year for the Office, Advent, is rapidly approaching, so its time to start getting ready!

This post is primarily for those relatively new to the Office - I'll say more for those more advanced in the next.

Get your Ordo now

The first key step is to make sure you have an Ordo at hand that you can use.

At a minimum, an Ordo will tell you what liturgical day is celebrated on each date, and how to resolve any conflicts between competing days and feasts (such as between Sundays and feasts, or competing days and dates in Advent).

Each year, the changing dates of  'moveable feasts' and seasons (stemming from the date of the first Sunday of Advent and Easter) interact with the calendar year cycle causing what the Diurnal calls occasions of  'concurrence' or 'occurence'.  

For the coming year, I've found  over sixty of these, and nine of these occur in December.

You can of course, sit down and work these out for yourself with the aid of the 'two tables' in the Diurnal, and a copy of the rubrics (since there are always some issues that aren't actually covered by the two tables).  But you will need to have your wits about you if you choose that path!

A short version of the one I produce can be found at the page links on this blog - click here for December. Alternatively you can purchase a more detailed version which tells you exactly which texts you should use, and providing page numbers for them in the Diurnal and Antiphonale (if you are chanting the Office).

You can purchase it Lulu: 

• in paperback form or
  
• PDF (ebook).
  

Make sure you know the structure of the hours thoroughly

Secondly, make sure you are very familiar with the different parts that make up each hour.

In the period of the calendar we are currently in, time after Pentecost, most of the texts you need, Sundays aside, can be found either in the psalter section of your Diurnal, supplemented by the section for feasts of saints.

During Advent, however, a lot of the texts in the psalter section are replaced by others, and on some days they may come from several different places.

If you get a copy of the Ordo, you will find summaries of the structure of the day hours there, or you can consult the notes on the Learn the Benedictine Office blog.

Make sure you are familiar with the Ordinary of Advent and where it slots in

The particular challenge for Advent is that the texts for the hours are a mix of the Ordinary of Advent'; psalm antiphons for the week or day of the week in the period 17-23 December; and canticle antiphons for the day of the Advent week and/or date.  

And that's before taking into account some the feasts that fall in Advent, which usually require a 'commemoration' of the Advent day.

I would also suggest looking now at the section of the Diurnal with the 'Ordinary of Advent' (MD 9*), near the beginning of the Diurnal, and making sure you know where to substitute in these texts.

Start learning/revising the chants!

Finally, the Office is meant to be sung!

If you are new to chant, it is best to start slowly, but it is pretty easy to learn at least one or two of the hymns.

A very useful site for this purpose, is called Liber Hymnarius - you can find the file for the Vespers hymn, Conditor alme siderum) here. The words for the last two verses are different to the Benedictine Office version, but the rest aligns, and should be enough to get you going!

More anon.

St Martin of Tours and the missing monastic saints of the Office

Shield, on the medieval city walls of Aigues-Mortes, depicting St-Martin dividing his cloak with the beggar.
Source: Wikicommons, photo by Ad Meskens

I want to draw your attention to one of the oddities of the Benedictine sanctoral calendar, namely its longstanding decidedly un-monastic focus.

St Martin, as I've written previously is a wonderful saint, and one certainly worth celebrating.

Feast rankings

The ranking of the feast as Class II in the 1960 monastic calendar though, is something of an oddity, since St Martin is the only non-Benedictine monastic saint to be accorded this level of feast in the 1960 monastic calendar, and the feast is ranked only as a Class III one in the Roman calendar.

All of the other feasts of monastic saints of the same rank (duplex majus) in the previous versions of the calendar - such as those of St Basil the Great and St Augustine - were downgraded to Class III feasts rather than Class I or II, when translated into the 1960 calendar.

The rationale for the reduction of feasts to Class III is, I think, fairly obvious and understandable.  In the Roman Office, whose calendar the Benedictine has largely mimicked since Trent, there was a huge incentive to add more feasts, since festal Matins in the Roman Office was significantly shorter than the ferial version, with nine psalms said rather than twelve.

In the Benedictine Office, though, the effect of higher level feasts is diametrically opposite: the length of the already relatively long Night Office more than doubles.  Instead of one or three readings, Matins of Class II feasts has twelve readings and responsories, as well as an extra Nocturn made up of three canticles, two extra hymns (the Te Deum and Te decet laus) are added, as well as a gospel reading.

Why then did St Martin escape the reforms?

Monastic saints in the Benedictine calendar

In general the monastic calendar gives pretty short shrift to most monastic saints, Benedictine or otherwise. 

Although the key later medieval founders of religious institutes are generally well-presented in the calendar, many key earlier monastic saints are missing altogether.  St Pachomius, for example, was only added to the monastic calendar (as a memorial) in 1960; St John Cassian, though long listed in the martyrology (and present in some of the earliest, such as that associated with St Bede) for July 23, still does not feature in the calendar at all.

Even Benedictine saints are sparsely represented in the General Calendar - very few of the Order's wealth of saints are actually included at all, and even where they are, there are cases where they are actually ranked lower than in the Roman calendar.

St Benedict aside, the only monastic saints ranked Class II (or above) are St Scholastica (St Benedict's twin sister), St Gregory the Great (author of the Life of St Benedict) and, in the case of woman's monasteries only, St Gertrude the Great.

Trent and local traditions

This lack of emphasis on monastic saints did not actually originate in 1960 or even 1913, date of the previous major cull of the Benedictine calendar, though those purges certainly exacerbated the problem.

Rather, as far as I can see, the issue is a longstanding one, dating back, as far as I can see to the post Tridentine breviaries, which, as part of the counter-reformation purge of saints and imposition of a uniform calendar, largely wiped out a great wealth of monastic feasts and local cults to be found in medieval calendars.

Instead, the Breviaries of Paul V and Urban VIII largely mirrored the Roman calendar, albeit with a few supplemental feasts and approvals for saints particular to congregations and monasteries.

St Martin and St Benedict

The reason for the prominence given to St Martin in the 1960 calendar presumably goes firstly to the fact that St Benedict dedicated a chapel to the saint at Monte Cassino and secondly to his status as a soldier-saint (given the soldiers of Christ imagery in the Benedictine Rule).

The connection between the two saints seems to have continued in Rome as well, since one of the four monasteries, almost certainly Benedictine, that supported St Peter's basilica in the mid seventh century, was dedicated to St Martin.

St Martin's prominence in a 1960s era calendar though, is a little surprising since St Benedict's reason for dedicating a chapel to him was probably to highlight his own adoption of St Martin's (very un-PC) activist missionary approach, which included converting pagan temples, as St Benedict also did at Monte Cassino, into monasteries and churches.

St Martin, though, was an extremely popular saint throughout the middle ages, and an influential model referred to in many early rules and monastic texts, almost displacing (or at least equaling references to St Antony) in the West.  

Martinian monasticism

Missionary activity aside though, St Martin's form of monasticism seems to have been very different in character to that promoted by St Benedict.

Although RB 1980, written some forty years ago now, could claim that the monastic life as lived in late antiquity was pretty much the same everywhere, few historians would accept that today.

Rather, historians are rediscovering, for late antiquity, the existence of what modern catholics would call distinct charisms - quite diverse forms of monastic life founded on very different theological and spiritual principles.

Where St Benedict, for example, advocated manual work, and encouraged his monks to try and support themselves as far as possible, St Martin's monks followed an entirely different branch of monastic theology, and did no manual work at all (the exception was that junior monks only were allowed to copy manuscripts).

Similarly, when it comes to the liturgy, the two approaches seem to have been very different.  

St Benedict followed St Augustine in urging that prayer be frequent (RB 4), short but fervent (RB 19) rather than literally continuous.   St Benedict's Office probably took up somewhere between four and eight hours a day; by contrast St Martin's seems to have been very long indeed, swallowing up most of the monastic day and night.  

Indeed, even once Cassian's advocacy for a twelve psalm maximum for an hour of the Office had spread to Tours, the 567 Synod of Tours rather creatively reinterpreted the 'Rule of the Angel' as setting a minimum number of psalms rather than a maximum 'out of honour and reverence' for St Martin! 

Influences on St Benedict?

On the face of it, then, if you were thinking about which (if any) pre-Benedictine monastic saints merited Class II status in the Benedictine calendar, I for one would be inclined to place St Basil the Great and St Augustine higher on my list.  

That said, the life of St Martin is certainly an inspiring one, both as a model of charity, of determination to confront, combat and convert both pagans and Arian heretics, and as a monastic founder.

Book Review: A Companion to the Monastic Breviary

I want to alert readers to a new resource for the Benedictine Office, released today, which will be very useful for those using the Benedictine Office, because it provides an English translation of the (1960) rubrics published in the 1963 monastic breviary.

The volume adds to the treasury of resources to support the Benedictine Office such as the Diurnal, providing, for the first time, a full, good, clear English translation of the rubrical materials of the Monastic Breviary of 1963, as well as some brief supporting notes on the individual hours.  

Companion to the breviary

The details of the book are:

Cameron Ackerman & Gerhard Eger, A Companion to the Monastic Breviary General Rubrics. General Rubrics of the breviary The year and its parts According to the Monastic Breviary of 1963 Translated from the Latin with commentary and instruction on the hours, Libri Sancti Press, Saint Louis: 2023, $12 US.

It can be obtained from Libri Sancti Press.

The book will be a very useful addition to the libraries of regular users of the Diurnal, Antiphonale or breviary who lack the necessary Latin to read the original text (which can be found both in the breviary and on the Divinum Officium website).  The supporting notes also bring together some material that will be of interest to readers.

Nonetheless, there are some things about the nature of the monastic rubrics that it may be helpful to know, in order to appreciate what the book will and won't help you with.

Pictured supplied

What the rubrics cover

First, it is worth knowing, I think, that these particular rubrics, whether in English or Latin, are a fairly arcane, technical set of instructions.  They are essentially a mix of five different kinds of material.  

The hours and their parts

The most important material for most users will surely be the descriptions of  the hours and their parts, and how this changes with different types of days, seasons and feasts.  

However, the material is fairly brief, not always comprehensive (see below) and most of it is replicated in various ways in the body of the breviary (or Diurnal).  

Reference material

The second category is useful reference material.  Some of this is relevant only to monastic communities (such as instructions on vestments and so forth), but there are certainly rubrics that the average user of the office should ideally read at least once, and then might wish to have on hand to consult as necessary.  This includes things like the rules around anticipating Matins, and when to make the sign of the cross, bow and so forth (most of which is optional in private recitation but good to know and do if possible).  

The Ordo

Mixed into these essentials is a lot of material on the order of precedence of feasts and days which is important only if you are putting together an Ordo (rather than just using one).  The material is important for monastic communities, but not necessarily for the average user of the Diurnal or breviary. And even then, in the vast majority of cases just consulting the 'two tables' (of occurrence and concurrence, also contained in the Diurnal) is generally an easier way of finding the answer! 

For the nerds!

The final category is a lot of material that will be of interest to liturgical nerds only.  

Most people will not, for example, want to learn how to calculate the date of Easter manually, or be rushing to find an updated table of Dominical Letters, Golden Numbers, and Martyrology Letters, since these are not needed for the purpose of actually saying the Office.  Instead, the tables containing the dates of fixed and moveable feasts each year (updated in the first edition of the Farnborough Monastic Diurnal to 2066) or an Ordo will do the job for you. 

Personally I would have been inclined to leave out the year and its parts, and perhaps included instead some of the other decrees and decisions included in the breviary, such as the terms of the original approval for them, the indult for priest oblates to say the Benedictine Office and so forth.  But maybe these can be included in the next edition!

The nature of rubrics...and the problems of this set of them!

The second thing you need to know about the rubrics is that, no matter how well translated, they do not constitute a particularly user friendly document, and often require some additional context to understand.  

Finding what you are looking for: the case of commemorations

First, key provisions are often scattered through the text.  

One of the most frequent queries I receive, for example, concerns commemorations (when can you do them and how). But the instructions on Memorials and Commemorations are spread across four separate sections (rubrics 5, 72-73, 100-108, and 239-248).   

Some of these separations of material can be outright misleading if you are not attuned to the technicalities of the language. Rubric 15, for example, states that Sundays of the First Class take precedence over all other feasts, with the sole exception being the Feast of the Immaculate Conception.  Read on further, though, and you will find another exception, namely the Vigil of the Nativity (rubric 30), in a separate section, one presumes, because a Vigil is not a feast! 

Contradictory provisions

There are also a few instances where the rubrics as written are internally inconsistent, contradictory or clearly incorrect. 

A good example of this concerns Prime, where rubric 161b states that "The psalms are always said as found in the Psalter throughout the week." But in fact this is not the case during the Triduum.

Gaps and missing context

The biggest problem, though, is that there are several gaps in the rubrics, or places where further explanation is warranted. 

The top of the list in my view, is this one: 

"166.  On Easter and Pentecost Sundays and on the days within their octaves, everything is done as indicated in the Breviary."

The festal canticles

Similarly, you will look in vain for instructions on when the Benedicite (Sunday Lauds canticle), festal weekday or ferial canticles should be said.  

The only relevant rubric reads as follows: 

  "In monasteries where the festive canticles are recited at Lauds, the ferial canticles are said only in the seasons of Advent, Septuagesima, Lent and Passiontide, the Ember days of September, and on vigils of the II and III class outside Paschaltide." (translation from the Companion)

This does not mean, however, that one should use the festal canticles on all days other than those when the ferial canticles are used listed. In fact the normal practice is to use the Sunday canticle (never actually explicitly described as festal in either the rubrics or the breviary), not the festal canticle of the day of the week, when the festal psalms are said, such as on Class I&II feasts.  

In this particular case, the reason for not spelling this out is presumably because the permissions to use the festal canticles were originally the subject of specific indults to individual monasteries and congregations, and there were actually two different schemas approved (the most common parallels their use in the Roman Office, but an alternative schema is also noted in the Monastic Diurnal).

A monastic audience

None of these problems with the rubrics, of course, are the fault of the translators and editors of this book.  

Rather, the issue lies with the original authors, who were writing not for those unfamiliar with the Benedictine Office, but for existing monasteries in order to explain the changes made to the calendar and rubrics from those they had previously used. 

Still, it would have been helpful, I think, to include some footnotes to assist the reader on these type of issues.

Who still uses 1960 (63)?!

Finally, it has to be said that there is a certain irony in making the 1963 rubrics (actually technically of 1960, when they were approved, or 1961, when they came into effect) available in English at this point, given that as each year goes by, fewer and fewer monasteries and individuals actually use them.  

Those trying to puzzle out the rubrics or calendar from monastic podcasts, for example, won't necessarily find what they are looking for in them since the traditional monasteries all employ greater or lesser variations to the 1963 rubrics (and calendar).   

Quite a few monasteries ignore some or all of the (silly or perhaps even sinister) changes made to the psalter section of the breviary (cutting out several verses of Psalm 13 and the Saturday ferial canticle, and changing the division points for psalms 9 and 106), and just sing them as they appear in the (pre 1962) Psautier Monastique or Antiphonale Monasticum.

More than a few monasteries have restored selected feasts expunged in the 1960 monastic calendar, as well as some rubrics from prior breviaries, such as the use of 1 Vespers for Class II feasts and the office of Our Lady on Saturday.

Some congregations, such as the Fontgambault group of Solesmes monasteries, including Clear Creek, have their own particular calendar and rubrics (in their case, a unique blend of the Novus Ordo sanctoral calendar; monastic feasts, including some suppressed in the 1960 general calendar; and the older temporal cycle.

And at least one monastery has reverted altogether to the pre-1960 calendar and rubrics.  

Why you need the rubrics!

Still, while individual monasteries have a certain freedom to devise their own rubrics and calendars, individuals do not, so having a set of the rubrics readily available as a reference document is a great step forward.

Moreover, the 1963 breviary is still, theoretically at least, normative for the Benedictine Order.  Accordingly, this volume will be particularly helpful for newer or emerging religious communities seeking to establish their own calendar, as well as for established communities interested in or considering a return to tradition. 

Image supplied

The Instructional and spiritual commentary

The second component of the book is labelled a 'an instruction and commentary', and provides a set of brief notes on the structure, history and associations of each of the hours of the Benedictine Office. 

There is a lot to like in this section, which seeks to draw together rubrical, historical and spiritual material, much of which is quite engaging.

And the notes read very well - the notes on Matins in particular nicely integrate the instructions in the Rule with other contextual material. 

But if the aim of the descriptions of each hour is to guide those new to the Office through the rubrics, it would have been useful, I think, to have included cross-references to the relevant sections of the rubrics (and ideally also to the relevant sections of the breviary and/or Diurnal).  

In addition, while I particularly liked the inclusion of material on the Scriptural and allegorical associations of the hours, it is hard to see why a twelfth century commentary by a canon (Honorius Augustodunensis) merits a quote for each hour on any objective criteria. 

Finally, some of the historical material (particularly the claimed 'newness' of Prime and Compline) has arguably been overtaken by more recent research. 

But these are minor quibbles - while this part of the book isn't a full 'how to say the Office guide', the notes are certainly worth a read.

Overall, this is certainly a book you will want to have in  your library, to dip into as needed.

Picture supplied