Understanding the calendar IIIB: Levels of days, Our Lady on Saturday

So far in this series on how the calendar affects the Office I've focused on the hours and days of the week.

The next step, though, is to start looking at how the weekly cycle interacts with the other cycles of the Office.

And this requires an understanding of the level and types of 'days' and feasts.

To this end, I thought it might be helpful to progressively work through the process of building an 'Ordo' or set of instructions on how to pray the Office each day.

Constructing a personal Ordo

The first thing to do in thinking about your Ordo is, as I've suggested in the last couple of posts, to start with the 'ferial' Office each day, or the Office as it is said outside of special seasons, and on days where there are no feasts or special days that affect the Office.

The starting point for a Wednesday might look something like this:

Wednesday 

Matins: All as for Wednesday in the psalter
Lauds: All as for Wednesday in the psalter
Prime: All as for Wednesday in the psalter
Terce to None:  All as for Tuesday to Saturday in the psalter
Vespers: All as for Wednesday in the psalter
Compline: All as in the psalter every day

Levels of days and feasts

In order to take account of feasts and special offices, however, you need to know that each day and feast of the year has a ranking.

The Class of a day or feast is important because where two different feasts or days clash, their respective rankings determine what texts are used.

In the 1962 calendar there are basically four levels of feasts and days:

• Class I (solemnities);
• Class II;
• Class III; and 
• Class IV (ordinary weekdays and memorials).  

For those used to the 1970 calendar, or wanting to understand how the the 1962 calendar aligns with earlier versions, the table below provides rough equivalents.

1969 (OF/NO)	1962	Pre-1962
Abolished	Memorial	Simples, 1955 commemorations
Memorial (optional or obligatory)	Class III	Greater doubles, Doubles, 1955 simples, semi-doubles
Feasts	Class II	Doubles Class II
Solemnities	Class I	Doubles Class I

The defaults

In the 1962 calendar, the default ranking of a day of the week is Class IV.

And the default ranking of Sundays is Class II.

So we can now add those rankings to our default Ordo, as follows:

Sunday - Class II

Monday - Class IV

Tuesday - Class IV

Wednesday - Class IV

Thursday – Class IV

Friday - Class IV

Saturday - Class IV

Office of Our Lady on Saturday

On Class II Sundays, and Class IV Mondays to Fridays without feasts, the standard texts for the Office (collect at hours other than Prime and Compline aside) will be those of the day of the week.

On Class IV Saturdays, however, the default is to use the Office of Our Lady on Saturday from Matins to None (the texts for the day hours can be found in the Diurnal on pages (129) and following).

The impact of the Office of Our Lady on the Office is summarised in the table below:

	Lauds (and Vespers)	Prime	Terce to None
Antiphons for the psalms	For Saturday throughout the year	Of Our Lady	Of Our Lady
Psalms	Of Saturday
Hymn	Of Our Lady	All as for Prime throughout the year	Of Terce, Sext and None throughout the year
responsory	Of Our Lady		na
chapter			Of Our Lady
versicle
collect

Accordingly, the default set of instructions for a Saturday might look like this:

Saturday Class IV - Office of Our Lady on Saturday

Matins: Invitatory antiphon, hymn, reading(s), collect and chapter of Our Lady on Saturday; psalms and antiphons of Saturday in the psalter.
Lauds: Psalms and antiphons of Saturday, rest from the Office of Our Lady on Saturday.
Prime: Antiphon of Our Lady on Saturday, rest of Saturday in the psalter.
Terce to None: Antiphon, chapter, versicle and collect of Our Lady on Saturday, rest as for Tuesday to Saturday in the psalter.
Vespers: As for Saturday in the psalter.
Compline: As in the psalter.

Note that in older sets of rubrics (still used by some monasteries), the Office of Our Lady on Saturday started on Friday night with I Vespers.

Which feast or day has priority?

In the next part of this series we will start looking at how the fixed day feasts of the calendar affect our Ordo.

Understanding the Calendar Part IIIA - Days of the week

If you are saying the Office, the first thing you have to decide is which particular 'hour' of the day you are going to say, and find the appropriate standard, fixed texts in your Office book.

Accordingly, in the last two parts of this series on the calendar I have looked briefly at the daily cycle of hours, and noted that there are some texts that for all of the hours, there are some texts that stay the same each day, regardless of feasts or seasons (a few special days apart), and not all of these are repeated each day in many Office books.

The next thing you need to know (unless you are saying Compline only) is the day of the week, since some texts change with the day.

The psalms of the day of the week

The key moving part for days of the week are the psalms, and the antiphons attached to them.

In his Rule, St Benedict specifies that all 150 of the psalms should be said each week, and sets out his preferred allocation of psalms to particular hours.

St Benedict makes it clear in the Rule that Sunday is always the first day of the week so far as the psalm cycle is concerned.  As Sunday always starts from I Vespers though (ie Saturday night), it also has a 'last' or eighth day character, as a special celebration of the Resurrection.

It is this allocation of psalms that forms the basis of the Diurnal (and other books used for the 1962 Office).

St Benedict actually employs three different patterns for the allocation of the psalms to hours:

• one hour, Compline, has only one set of psalms used everyday - perhaps reminding us of the unity of God, and our aim to join with this;
• three hours (Terce, Sext and None) have three sets of psalms they use across the week (for use on Sundays, Mondays, and Tuesdays to Saturdays) -  the number perhaps highlighting the Trinitiarian focus of these hours;
• the remaining four hours (Matins, Lauds, Prime and Vespers) have a set of psalms for each day of the week.

The day of the week cycle of psalms and antiphons is generally referred to as the 'ferial' Office - but in some cases, the psalms of the day can be displaced by special psalms for feasts, on which I will say more later in the series.

The days of the week at Matins, Lauds and Vespers

The other key 'moving parts' associated with the day of the week are the hymns of Lauds and Vespers, the New Testament canticle antiphons, and the invitatory antiphons at Matins.

In particular, note that for most of the year (special seasons and feasts aside), each day of the week has a specific hymn of the day at each of these hours.

At Vespers, the hymns (Saturday aside), traditionally ascribed to St Gregory the Great, remind us of the relevant day of creation, allusions to which can also be found in the psalms of the hour for each day.

How the hour and day cycles come together: the ferial Office

If you are learning the Office, I strongly recommend focusing on learning the default or 'ferial' hourly and daily cycles - the Office as it is said on days other than feasts or during special seasons - first, before you start worrying about seasons and feasts.

These quick reference sheets for each day of the week may be of assistance:

• Sunday;
• Monday
• Tuesday;
• Wednesday;
• Thursday;
• Friday;
• Saturday.

In the next part of this series we will look at how the rankings of days impacts on the weekly cycle.

Understanding the calendar IIB - The rationale for the hours and their structure

In the last part of this series I talked a bit about the hours, and when they are properly said.

In this part, I want to explore a little more the meaning behind them, and the effect that has on the hours.

Scriptural associations with the hours

I noted in the last post that some parts of the hours remind us of the time of day at which they are said.  At Prime to None, for example, the hymns are the same each day, chosen specifically for these references.

But in choosing the texts for each of the hours, St Benedict also built on a tradition that associated the physical hour of the day with times of prayer attested to in Scripture - in some cases reflecting apostolic and later traditions, but in many cases much more ancient ones.

Lauds and Vespers, for example, almost certainly reflect the hours when incense was offered in the Temple; Terce is associated with the hour of Pentecost.

These associations were well established by St Benedict's time, laid out by writers such as SS Cyprian, Basil, Cassian and many others. 

If you keep these in mind as you pray the relevant hour (summarised in the table below), you will quickly become aware of some of the resonances built into the texts of the hours.

HOUR	WHEN SAID	WHY
Matins (Nocturns)	In the night	Rise with Christ; keeping vigil for the second coming.
Lauds	First light	In the rising of the sun we celebrate the Resurrection of the Son.  Hour at which incense offered in the Temple.
Prime	Before work starts	Parable of the labourers in the vineyard – first labourers recruited.
Terce	Mid-morning, third hour	Christ condemned to death by Pilate; hour of Pentecost.
Sext	Noon	Christ ascends the cross; apostolic tradition - St Peter prayed at this hour (Acts 10).
None	Mid-afternoon	Christ dies on the cross; apostolic tradition - SS Peter and John prayed at the temple at this hour (Acts 3).
Vespers	Early evening	Our evening sacrifice of praise (Ps 140); last of the labourers recruited at the eleventh hour.
Compline	Before bed.	Preparation for sleep/death.

The structure and fixed texts of the hours

Because each of the hours has its own particular character, reflected in its particular structure and the fixed texts used at it (such as the hymns for Prime to None), if you are learning the Office, it is a good idea to focus on learning the basic structure of an hour first.

Focus particularly on which texts for each hour don't change - you can follow the links below to get more details on this.

There are effectively three groups of hours from the perspective of what changes and what doesn't in terms of the texts of the Office:

• Compline, which, Marian antiphon of the season aside, doesn't change at all and Prime, which changes only psalms and antiphons for days of the week, feasts and seasons; 
• Terce, Sext and None which has three sets of psalms, and can change antiphons, chapters, versicles and the collect; and
• Lauds and Vespers, which retain their basic structure, but can use special texts for virtually every part of the hour (the NT canticles; and Ps 66 and the Laudates at Lauds aside). 

In the next part in this series we will start looking at how the cycle of hours changes over the days of the week.
 

Understanding the calendar Part IIA - The hours and the sanctification of time

A couple of weeks back I started a series on how the calendar for the traditional Benedictine Office works.  Apologies for the delay in continuing this, but herewith the next part.

I noted that there are five different cycles that interact to determine which texts are used in the Office, namely:

• the eight 'hours';
• the days of the week;
• the date;
• the month and 'natural' seasons; and  
• the week and season of the liturgical year, which mostly depends on the date of Easter each year.

This week some notes on the first of these.

In this post, I will mostly focus on the basics; in the next, I want to talk more about the spiritual meanings that underpin the 'hours' of the day.

The hours

The first key cycle in the Office relates to the time of day, and reflects the idea that the Office is about the sanctification of time, starting with the hours of the day and night.

The traditional Benedictine Office is made up of eight hours - Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, and in the night, Matins.

The number of hours is not random - in St Benedict's time different forms of the Office consisted of anything from two (the Egyptian monks of Skete) to twenty-four (some Syrian monasteries, the Sleepless monks of Constantinople, and at Agaune in the Swiss Alps) separate 'hours' each day.

Rather, there is a symbolism around the number of hours said: seven often stands for completeness in Scripture, represented for example by the seven days of creation; while the number eight stands for the life to come, since the Resurrection took place 'on the eighth day'.

The proper times of day for the hours

Each of the hours is properly said at a particular time of the day.

In his Rule, St Benedict was insistent that Lauds should be said at first light, and so prays in the dawn: the rising of the sun reminds us of the rising of the Son, and our hope of rising with him.

Adjusting your prayer start time with dawn over the seasons though, isn't practical for most people these days, but it is nice when you can time it appropriately.

The other days hours - Prime, Terce, Sext and None  - are all named after particular hours of daylight  and so are ideally said around an hour after dawn, at the third hour of the day (mid-morning), noon and mid-afternoon respectively.

Vespers is normally said as the sun is setting, and Compline before bed.

The daily solar cycle and the hours

All of the hours generally include psalms, hymns or other texts that can contain explicit references to the time of day.

The psalms of Lauds, for example, are full of references to light and the dawn, while the hymns of Terce, Sext and None all refer to the hour at which they are properly said.

You don't have to be too rigid though: St Benedict indicated that the actual timing of these hours (other than Lauds) can be moved around to suit the needs of the monastery, and more than a few monasteries say some of the little hours together.

Prayer through the day and night

Still, St Benedict did cite the psalm verses, 'Seven times a day will I praise you', and 'at midnight I rose...' (Ps 118), verses which he clearly saw as having both literal and symbolic dimensions, in the Rule as the basis for his liturgical schedule.

And there is a natural flow of the hours over the course of the day that is worth keeping in mind, since each of the hours includes texts appropriate both to the particular time of day.

For many people there may be a tradeoff between sticking to the ideal time, and actually saying (any or more of) the hours at all.

But you do not have to say all (or any) of these hours, unless you are a priest or religious - for most people Prime and Compline or Lauds and Vespers (ie mornings and evening prayer) are probably enough.

If you want to say more of the psalms each day, just say them - they don't have to be recited only in the context of the Office.

And at the other extreme, if you don't have time to say all of the hours, you could try just saying the opening verse of the day hours - 'O God come to my aid, O Lord make haste to help me' - at the times when the other hours would be said in a monastery.

Can you say the hours in blocks?

In the modern rubrics, those bound to say the Office (ie priests and religious) have to say all of the hours within a twenty-four hour period.

But the individual hours don't absolutely have to be said at a particular time (out of choir).

I sometimes get asked if you can say all of the hours in one block each day (or even do a Cardinal Woolsey, and say one day's hours immediately before midnight the other immediately after, thus disposing of two days of obligation in one go!).

Well technically you can, but it seems to me to rather defeat some of the key aims of the Office, such as ensuring that we 'pray frequently' (RB 4), and inject prayer into our lives throughout the day and night.

Can you 'anticipate' the hours?

The other possible way of arranging your horarium is to 'anticipate' the hours, that is, say them earlier than they would normally be.

In the 1962 rubrics, the only hour that can be said the day before is Matins, which can be said any time from 1400 hours onwards, provided that the previous days hours have already been said (and providing some adjustments to Compline are made).

During the Sacred Triduum, however, where Tenebrae includes both matins and Lauds, most places claim the benefit of long established custom, and celebrate both hours the night before.

The rationale for the time of the hours?

I'll say more on the rationale for saying the hours at their proper times next post.

In the meantime, comments and questions are welcome - do let me know if there is something you would particularly like me to cover.

Understanding the calendar for the office Pt 1 - Why are the Saturday Magnificat antiphons in a different place to the Sunday ones?!

Every year around this time the Diurnal (and other Office books) do something that seems quite inconvenient: it places the variable texts for Saturday Vespers (ie I Vespers of Sunday) in different places, so you have to go to one page for the Magnificat antiphon, another for the collect.

So why does it do that?

I thought this might be a good place to both answer that question, and explain more broadly the different cycles of the calendar that determine what is said at each hour and day.

Why do Saturdays and Sundays after Pentecost have different places in the Diurnal?

Going back to Saturday Vespers, for a moment though, the short answer is that from August, the Scriptural cycle for the first Nocturn of Matins, to which the Magnificat antiphon generally refers, shifts from being dependent on the number of Sundays after Pentecost, to dependent on the calendar month.

The collect though, continues to depend on the number of the Sunday after Pentecost.

As the number of Sundays between Easter and the first Sunday of August differs each year, the Saturday Magnificat antiphons and collects do not always line up.

There can never be less than three Sundays after Pentecost and before August though, so although the Diurnal puts the collects in a separate place from the Second Sunday after Pentecost onwards, other Office books, such as the breviary and the Antiphonale Monasticum, make the split at that point.

All too complex?

Let's go back to first principles!

The cycles in the Office

The key to understanding how the Office works is to appreciate that there are essentially six different cycles at work in the Office, consisting of:

• the hours, each of which have some fixed texts generally said every day at that particular hour;
• the day of the week, which dictates changes to either the psalms and a few other texts (antiphons, responsories), and in some cases the chants used (for example the hymn tune used for Compline changes on Saturdays and Sundays);
• the date - feasts which have fixed dates;
• the month.  There are days and offices that are fixed to particular days of the week in particular calendar months (such as Matins readings for the Office of Our Lady on Saturday, the September Ember Days and Matins reading from August to November); 
• the week and season of the liturgical year, which mostly depends on the date of Easter each year; and 
• 'winter' and  'summer', which dictate the number of readings said at Matins on ferial weekdays (three from November to Easter; one the rest of the year), and which hymns are used at Matins and Lauds (and chant tones at Vespers) are used, with the switch occurring in October. 

Each of these cycles can contribute to what is said each day, with a set of rules dictating which ones take precedence.

In the next post in this series I will start looking at how these cycles work and interact.

Brush up your rubrics for Advent - The canticle antiphons and collects in Advent

In the previous part of this series I talked about how the canticle antiphons and collects usually work; today I want to work on the canticle antiphons and collects of Advent.

Advent days and dates

The first thing you need to know is that during Advent, the antiphons for the Benedictus at Lauds and the Magnificat at Vespers are different each day, being either of the Advent day (eg Monday in the First week of Advent, Tuesday in the first week of Advent, etc) or of the date (unless, of course, displaced by a feast).

The trick is that between December 17 and 23, the Lauds canticle is generally (subject to two key exceptions) of the Advent day (not date), while the Vespers canticles of the Advent day are displaced by those of the date (viz the O antiphons).

So this year (2017) for example, at Lauds on Monday 18 November, the canticle is of Monday in the Third Week of Advent (Egredietur virga).

The O antiphons

At Vespers, however, you have to ignore the Magnificat antiphon set down for the Monday in the third week in your book and instead use the O antiphon of the date, O Adonai.

• The Great O's as they are known, can be found in the Diurnal on page 35-6*, or in the Antiphonale on page 208-11.  In other books, look after the Third Sunday of Advent.

The O antiphons are ancient indeed, known to St Benedict's contemporary Boethius, and all have essentially the same melody, so are easy to learn, and there are numerous recordings of them available on youtube.

Lauds canticles

Although Lauds mostly sticks to canticles of the Advent day, it does have some canticles of the date as well, namely for December 21 (Nolite Timere, used in the commemoration of the day as it is the feast of St Thomas) and December 23 (Ecce completa).

The table below summarises the source of the canticles between December 17 and the end of Advent - and of course don't forget that the first word of the O antiphons working backwards spells out Ero Cras - tomorrow I will come!

	Lauds	Vespers
Dec 17	Of the Advent day (2017: Third Sunday of Advent)	O Sapientia
Dec 18	Of the Advent day (2017: Monday in the third week of Advent)	O Adonai
Dec 19	Of the Advent day (2017: Tuesday wk III)	O Radix Iesse
Dec 20	Of the Advent day (2017: Ember Wednesday of Advent)	O Clavis David
Dec 21	Of the Advent day (St Thomas – for the commemoration of the Advent Day, Nolite Timere)	O Oriens
Dec 22	Of the Advent day (2017: Ember Friday of Advent)	O Rex gentium
Dec 23	Of the date – Ecce completa est	O Emmanuel
Dec 24	Of the Vigil of the Nativity	Of I Vespers of the Nativity

The collects

The collects for Advent follow the normal pattern, generally being of the Sunday each week (except at Prime and Compline).

The key exception is the three Ember days (Wednesday, Friday and Saturday in the third week of Advent), which each have their own collect.

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.