Prayer options for the stealth hermitess (and others) Pt IV - The Offices of the religious orders Pt 1

Some time ago I started a series entitled 'prayer options for the stealth hermitess (and others)'.  In previous posts I've covered:

• non-liturgical prayer and devotions;
• devotional forms of the Offices; and
• the currently permitted forms of the Roman Office (1962, 1970 and Little Office of Our Lady).

I promised to go on and talk about the liturgy of the religious orders, but when I started digging into this topic in more depth, I realised that there are actually some difficult issues around this topic, so I've hesitated to jump into this pond.  Nonetheless, here at long last I'm posting something on this topic.

I've split this into two parts: this first part looks at why you might want to say the Office of a religious order; the second part looks at the issues around the right to say these Offices.

Forms of the Office and the spirituality of the Order

Traditionally, most (though not all) of the religious orders had their own distinctive forms of the Divine Office.

The origin of this can probably be traced to the Carolingian era, where legislation required all secular priests (and canons) to say the Roman Office, and all monks to use the Benedictine form.  Prior to that time, monasteries seem to have either followed the usages of their region; said the psalms in numerical order using a combination of collective and individual prayer; or developed their own practices (of which St Benedict's Rule is by far the most developed).  The extent of the success of the Carolingian attempt to impose uniformity is somewhat debated, but regardless. over time it did, of course, unravel.

In some cases the rites used by religious orders were largely based on either the Roman or Benedictine psalm cursus, but added a rich panoply of particular texts and feasts, and often distinctive styles of chant.  Some orders, such as the Dominicans and the Bridgettines (being one of the few that has survived), had their own psalm orderings as well.

Over time these particular forms of the Divine Office were thought to be an integral element to formation in the spirituality of their respective Orders.  As Laszlo Dobszay has pointed out:

In the Middle Ages the members of different religious orders or secular churches jealously guarded their privileges to have a proper liturgy as a symbol and guarantee of their self-identity.  'The choir makes the monk' - said the old dictum, and we may add: this choir makes this (kind of ) monk. [1] 

In the case of the Benedictines, for example, there are arguably close connections between the purpose of the Office and its essential architecture, as well as between key themes in the Rule and the ordering of the psalmody.

St Benedict specifies, for example, that his monks say all of the psalms each week, aligning their work to the work of creation, and thanksgiving for it.  His numerical symbolism perhaps also points to the intercessory value of the Office: 150 psalms for the 150 days that it rained in order to destroy the evils of the world in the Great Flood; and a penitential load of 40 psalms each day for example.

There are also many key connections between the themes of the Rule, and the arrangement of the psalms in St Benedict's Office, as John Fortin, for example, has pointed toin relation to St Benedict's theme of God's constant scrutiny of us, and the ordering of Prime, inter alia. [2]  There are, in my view, many other such connections which appear to be under-appreciated by the Order (at least in the public literature I have been able to access).  These connections don't have to be explicit to have an effect: rather the implicit messages embedded in the forms help form a particular mindset.

For this reason, those attracted to the spiritualities of particular orders will naturally be interested in the liturgies particular to those orders.

The Romanising force

Just how important these distinctive liturgies are in shaping the spirituality of members of the religious orders, though, has long been debated.

In the case of the Benedictines for example, St Benedict's Office was early abandoned outright in favour of the Roman for the Triduum, for example, and a romanised version adopted for major feasts, with the use of special sets of psalms rather than the psalms St Benedict wanted used each day (the Rule suggests that only the antiphons and readings change).  In addition, St Benedict gives permission for other orderings of the psalms than the one he prescribed to be used, provided that all of the psalms are said in the course of a week, and that permission has been used both in the past (and far more extensively in our own time).

In the case of other orders, the most famous is probably the Discalced Carmelites, who adopted the Roman Rite wholesale instead of that of their own order in the seventeenth century.

Abandonment after Vatican II 

Still, the whole process accelerated dramatically after formal permissions was given for Orders to experiment with their liturgies in 1968.

Since Vatican II most religious orders have actually abandoned the particular Offices of their Orders in favour of the 1970 Roman Liturgy of the Hours, or in the case of the Benedictines, Office's of each monasteries own devising.

While some Orders initially made only relatively minor changes, in most cases, the old rites were quickly abandoned and formally suppressed, or extremely restrictive conditions were placed on their use (such as a requirement to obtain a rarely granted special permission).

In the case of the Benedictines, the 1963 breviary was never (as far as I know) formally suppressed.

But monasteries were instead generally 'encouraged' (ie forced) to 'update' their Office in line with the principles set out in the Thesaurus Liturgiae Horarum Monasticae of 1977.  The Thesaurus included some four new psalm schemas (and recognised that others could also be devised) aimed at facilitating the elimination of Prime (in line with the Roman Office), removing the repetitions in the psalter, and spreading the psalms over longer periods.

Some did, of course, cling to the traditional Benedictine psalm cursus, and until relatively recently that effectively meant continuing to use the older chant books even if not the older calendar.

In 1981  however a new psalter (Psalterium Monasticum) came out, causing many monasteries to move to the neo-Vulgate, and in 2005 Solesmes produced the first of a set of new liturgical books adapted to the modern Roman calendar and the various alternate psalm schemas.  And for reasons I don't really understand, even where monasteries like Solesmes actually do use the traditional psalm cursus, they have tinkered with lots of other elements of the hours, for example changed the placement of the hymn.  Perhaps it doesn't really have an impact, but you have to ask, why do it?

The problems with the reforms

As the reforms have progressed, however, some have come to appreciate just how integral the older forms of the liturgy are to their charism, and have observed the consequences of its abandonment.

A recent post over at Rorate Caeli by Peter Kwasniewski, for example, has recently pointed to the problems posed by the watered down version of the faith propagated by the suppression of so much of the psalter in the 1970 Liturgy of the Hours.

The problem is all the more acute for Benedictines, where the liturgy arguably plays such a central role in the charism.  Abbot Phillip Lawrence of Christ in the Desert Monastery, for example, has observed that:

Today very few follow these chapters of the Rule, especially with regard to the structure of the Divine Office. Unless we understand them well, we will begin to lose a truly Benedictine life, which has at its heart the praying of the Divine Office. There is no way that one can follow this structure of Rule of Benedict and not be aware of the truly important place of the Divine Office in the daily life of the monk and the amount of time that Saint Benedict presumed that a monk would spend in public prayer.

Indeed, some monks in monasteries once claimed to be Benedictine have taken to styling themselves as ‘a monk of  x monastery’, rather than 'OSB' perhaps in recognition of the distance they have moved from the original charism.

Turning of the tide?

Even as the erosion of the charisms of the various orders has gathered pace though, a series of legislative provisions, starting from Pope John Paul II's 1984 Indult for the Traditional Latin Mass, and most particularly Pope Benedict XVI's Summorum Pontificum (2007) and Universae Ecclesiae (2011) reopened the way to these older forms of the Office.

In addition, some of the more traditionally inclined within the Orders have gone to some trouble, in recent years, to make their traditional liturgies more widely available, and even actively promoted them to the laity.

For the Benedictines, of course, there is the St Michael Abbey's reprint of the Collegeville Monastic Diurnal (as well as the French-Latin and Italian-Latin versions of the Diurnal), daily podcasts of the Office by the monasteries of Le Barroux and Norcia, many youtube videos, and a number of recent recordings released by monasteries.

The Carthusians have placed most of their Office books online.

For the Dominican's, Fr Augustine Thompson and friends provide links to online versions of the 1962 books, Ordos, and supporting material.

You can also obtain the breviaries of many other Orders secondhand, or through recent reprints.

Offices of the religious orders and tradition

Interest in the older forms of the Office of religious orders is not just confined to those who are Oblates, third order or equivalent members of the religious orders.  These older rites have acquired another attraction for the laity more generally, namely their consonance with ancient traditions of the Church.

The reasons for this in my view, are simple: the damage to the Divine Office really started with the reforms of St Pius X, which radically restructured the psalm cursus among many other changes.

Some defend these reforms on the grounds that "the weekly recitation of the entire Psalter had become more or less impossible, both because of the proliferation of feasts over ferial days, and because of a huge burden of psalmody well-suited for monastics but not for seculars."[3]  Personally I think a severe pruning of the calendar, and reduction in the level of some feasts would have done the job.

As it is, as Dobszay has persuasively argued, in my view, that the 1911 reforms eliminated a number of the most ancient and beautiful features of the Office, including several near universal features between Eastern and Western, secular and religious versions of the Office, such as the daily use of the three Laudate Psalms (Psalm 148-150).[4]

The even more drastic reforms of the 1970 Liturgy of the Hours, which cut vast chunks of the psalter out of the Office altogether; eliminated several of the hours and bowdlerised others (most notably the transformation of the Night Office into a day 'Office of Readings'); and spread the psalms over four weeks, has created a new constituency for a more traditional diet.  This is, I can't help thinking, a case of the sensus fidelium at work, for as we all know, lex credendi, lex orandi.

People are instinctively interested in the the Benedictine Office, in particular, whether they are attached to Benedictine spirituality or not, I think, simply because that form of the Office has nearly 1500 years of history behind it (and of course many of its elements go a long way further back than that).

There are, however, some interesting issues around just who is entitled to use these Offices (at least for liturgical purposes), and I'll talk about that a bit more in the next post in this series soon.

Notes

[1] Laszlo Dobszay, The Restoration and Organic Development of the Roman Rite, 2010, pg 73.
[2] John D Fortin, “The Presence of God: a linguistic and thematic link between the doctrinal and liturgical sections of the Rule of Saint Benedict”, Downside Review 117 (1999) 293
[3] Peter Kwasniewski, The Omission of the "Difficult" Psalms and the Spreading-Thin of the Psalter, Rorate Caeli, 15.11.16, summarising Cekada.
[4] Laszlo Dobszay,  “Critical Reflections on the Bugnini Liturgy: The Divine Office”, 1983 PDF available from http://musicasacra.com/literature/

Prayer options for the stealth hermitess (and others) - Part III. The Divine Office

So far in this series I have canvassed the non-liturgical options around prayer.  

In this post I want to talk about liturgical prayer in the form of the Divine Office.

The importance of liturgical prayer

The Divine Office plays little part in the lives of most modern Catholics.  

Yet it should.  

All forms of prayer can be good and effective.  But liturgical prayer has a higher status than other forms of prayer.  Dom Fernard Cabrol, first abbot of Farnborough, writing in 1915, explains it this way:

Private prayer has a personal value, varying according to the degree of faith, fervour, and holiness of he who prays.  The Church's prayer has always, in itself, and independently of the person praying, an absolute value.  It is a formula composed by the Church, and carrying with it her authority...Liturgical prayer is superior to all others not only because it is the Church's prayer but also because of the elements of which is composed...this prayer holds the first rank on account of its efficacy, or the effects it produces in the soul. (Introduction to Day Hours of the Church, vol 1)

And contrary to most of the emphasis of the last couple of centuries, the Mass is not the only thing that constitutes liturgy.  Rather, the Divine Office, the 'Work of God', is intended to extend and support the effects throughout our day and week.

The importance and value of the Office is still upheld by the Church today, at least on paper. The 1983 Code of Canon Law for example says:

In the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church, hearing God speaking to his people and recalling the mystery of salvation, praises him without ceasing by song and prayer and intercedes for the salvation of the whole world. 

In practice, though, it has all but disappeared.  This is something we need to change!

Early history

The Divine Office has an ancient history: fixed times of prayers has Jewish roots, and was certainly practised in primitive form in the very earliest days of the Church.  

Many of the Fathers point to the references to prayer at the third, sixth, ninth hours and in the night in Acts as the origins of this tradition.  

Certainly very early Church documents indeed attest to the idea of regular prayer at set times: in the first century Didache mentions praying the Our Father three times a day, while the fourth bishop of Rome, Clement (died 99 AD), wrote of prayer at the appointed times and hours for example.

The Office in the life of the Church

Early Church documents clearly assume that the laity as well as the clergy would pray at set times through the day and night.  That doesn't mean, though, that anyone has ever expected the laity to say all 150 psalms in a week at the Office, or say all the formal hours of the Office - far from it.

The tradition as far as I can see, has always been for the duty of praying the whole Office to be entrusted to monks and nuns (and to some degree the clergy), with laypeople joining in where possible and sensible.  In the later Middle Ages in England, for example, parish priests were certainly expected to say Lauds and Vespers publicly on Sundays, and many joined in with this.  But when it came to Matins (Vigils), if the people said it at all, they used one of the many short Offices, such as that of Our Lady.

All the same, the Office in many varied forms was an integral part of the life of the Church (including the laity) for many centuries, with more 'books of hours' produced prior to the Reformation, than any other single book.

The decline in the use of the Office

All that changed with the Council of Trent, when the need to combat the spread of heresy led to much tighter controls over the liturgy and devotions more generally.

One of the key changes made at that time was the restriction of the delegation to pray the Office liturgically to priests and religious.  The effect of this was that the laity could only take part in the Office when it was led by a priest or solemnly professed religious.

Several other factors also probably contributed to the decline in the popularity of the Office.

The Office is fundamentally meant to be performed communally and sung.  But the years after Trent favoured the 'low Mass' mentality deeply at odds with this.

The shift in Scriptural exegesis from the seventeenth century onward, from a focus on its spiritual meaning and in particular to seeing Christ in the psalms, to a focus on their historical and literary context instead, probably did not help.

Even so, in many places, attending Sunday Vespers at least was often regarded as nearly as mandatory as attending Sunday Mass.

Over time though, this tradition gradually fell away as priests in particular increasingly saw the Divine Office as an obligation that was rather burdensome to fulfil, rather than a source of spiritual fodder and solace.

 Rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem?

The twentieth century saw a string of 'reforms'  - from the Pius X psalter of 1911 to the Liturgy of the Hours of 1971 - ostensibly aimed at reviving the use of the Office.  Unfortunately, they have mostly had the opposite effect.

There was, though, one positive reform that came out of Vatican II, and that was the restoration of the right of the laity to pray the Office liturgically.

Vatican II's Sacrosanctum Concilium made some rather ambiguous statements on the subject of the laity praying the Office that could perhaps be interpreted a number of ways.

Subsequent legislation, however, including the General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours, and more particularly the 1983 Code of Canon law (in turn reflected in the Catechism of the Catholic Church) has made it clear that the laity are now officially deputed to pray the Divine Office on behalf of the Church, even when praying in small groups without a priest, or by themselves.

This a wonderful privilege.

Laypeople face a considerable challenge, though, in actually exercising this privilege in that few churches or even Cathedrals actually regularly offer the Office publicly (head to most and you more likely to find an evening Mass than Vespers!), the Office is not taught in schools or parishes; and the books for the Office are not easy to use.

The 1971 Liturgy of the hours 

The modern Liturgy of the Hours has the advantage for many, in being available in the vernacular.

But it is, as Laszlo Dobszay pointed out, a radically new product, not something in continuity with tradition: it abolished the characteristic structure of the Hours, abandoned the traditional principles for the distribution of the psalms and created something that is fundamentally a book to be read, not a communal office meant to be sung.

Older forms of the Office

The alternative is to use one of the older forms of the Office such as the 1962 Roman Breviary.

The problem is that, as far as I am aware, all of the pre-Vatican II forms of the Office still approved for liturgical use require it to be said in Latin - translations are available to assist in understanding only.

That means anyone wanting to say the Office has to commit to learning at least how to pronounce the Latin adequately, and study the texts sufficiently to have at least a general sense of what they mean.  

Even if you only plan on saying a few suitable hours - Prime and Compline for example, and perhaps Sunday Vespers (a more than adequate regime for most people) - that can be quite a few psalms to learn.

Little Office of Our Lady

One possible option that minimises the learning curve is the Little Office of Our Lady.  

The Little Office is not actually short - it takes as long to say or sing as the full Office. 

But the psalms (apart from Matins) are the same every day, reducing the amount of learning involved while still providing a very satisfying source of prayer.  In addition it has very few seasonal or festal variants, so does not require juggling ordos and finding texts from multiple places in a breviary.  Moreover, for those who really want to say all of the hours (at least occasionally), it offers a very manageable option for Matins (three psalms each day) with some variety to it.

Then too, prayer honouring Our Lady is attractive in its own right: the Little Office has its origins in eighth century Benedictine tradition, but seems to have spread rapidly.  For many centuries it was said by religious as well as the normal Office of the day.  In more recent times it was used as a form of prayer by many religious in simple vows and by third orders.  

The Baronius edition supplies the chants necessary to sing it, and there are resources available around the web to help you learn to say it.   It should be noted however that the Baronius edition is not actually formally approved for liturgical use in accordance with the requirements of canon law - so if you want to say it liturgically you would technically need to find a version that is, for example in a full breviary (the 1962 monastic breviary for example includes the Little Office).  Of course, whether this really affects the validity of the Office (as opposed to the liceity) seems to me doubtful..

1962 Roman Office

The Little Office though, does lack variety, and many eventually want to use a wider range of psalms.  The 1962 Roman Office is the next obvious step to consider.  

It has a lot of advantages for traditionalists, not least that if you learn it you might be able to persuade your priest to lead Sunday Vespers (there may b a question about whether use of another rite or use will satisfy his obligation to say the Office).  

There are guides on how to say it around, as well as Ordos such as the excellent one put out by the Latin Mass Society.  The Liber Usualis provides most of the chants necessary for those who want to sing it.

It's main disadvantage is that the breviary itself does not come cheap.  There is however a free downloadable app available on itunes for it available for it that may suit many people.

The other problem is that in my view at least, the psalm distribution it uses simply doesn't work all that well - some of the repetitions it eliminated (such as of Psalm 50 and the Laudate psalms at Lauds each day) are actually quite important spiritually.  And few of the individual hours or days have much internal coherence in my view.

By contrast, the much more ancient Office of St Benedict seems to me to provide a psalm cursus that is both closely linked to the spirituality of the saint's Rule, and is a tightly constructed masterpiece.

There are some issues, though, around the use of the Offices of the religious orders that are worth touching on, including how much of it to say - and who (if anyone save for professed religious) is actually entitled to say it.  So more on the Offices of the religious orders in the next post in this series.

Prayer options for the stealth hermitess (and others) Pt 2 - Devotional Offices

Liege book of hours associated with Beguines,
National Gallery of Victoria

In my previous post on options for an active prayer life, I pointed to the challenges posed by saying the Divine Office liturgically.

One possible way around this is to use one of the devotional Offices available.

Treasury of the psalter

The psalms and formulas of the Office are a rich spiritual treasury with intrinsic merit in and of themselves, so well worth exploring.  St Athanasius, for example wrote that:

SON, all the books of Scripture, both Old Testament and New, are inspired by God and useful for instruction, as it is written; but to those who really study it the Psalter yields especial treasure.

Each book of the Bible has, of course, its own particular message: the Pentateuch, for example, tells of the beginning of the world, the doings of the patriarchs, the exodus of Israel from Egypt, the giving of the Law, and the ordering of the tabernacle and the priesthood; The Triteuch [Joshua, Judges, and Ruth] describes the division of the inheritance, the acts of the judges, and the ancestry of David; Kings and Chronicles record the doings of the kings, Esdras [Ezra] the deliverance from exile, the return of the people, and the building of the temple and the city; the Prophets foretell the coming of the Saviour, put us in mind of the commandments, reprove transgressorts, and for the Gentiles also have a special word. Each of these books, you see, is like a garden which grows one special kind of fruit; by contrast, the Psalter is a garden which, besides its special fruit, grows also some those of all the rest. (Letter to Marcellinus)

You don't have to say the Office formally in order to access this garden of delight!

Approval for liturgical use?

There are a lot of books (and online offerings) floating around that look like forms of the Divine Office but strictly speaking (almost certainly) aren't, but can provide an excellent way into exploring the psalms.

The issue is this: in order to be used for the Office, Canon Law requires the book in question to have official approval for liturgical purposes.  Pope Benedict XVI, for example, confirmed that the permission to use the 1962 Roman Office was for the Latin, not any of the English translations floating around.

Now it has to be admitted, that post-Vatican II the question of what exactly constitutes sufficient approval for this purpose is rather fuzzy.  The Benedictines, for example, like most, embarked on the usual period of wild liturgical experimentation post-Vatican II.  The Congregation of Rites eventually endorsed some pretty broad guidelines (the Thesaurus Liturgiae Horarum Monasticae) on what constituted a valid Office (including use of one of a choice of psalm schemas), but not actual books as such.

The more conservative elements continued to use the old chant books, but adapted them to the modern calendar - they have mostly now migrated to the new Antiphonale Monasticum Solesmes finally got around to producing from 2004 onwards.  A fair proportion of monasteries, though, even today, don't actually have officially approved books (though I presume they do have to use versions of the psalms that have been approved for liturgical use). 

And there is still a note on the Carthusian Order's website to the effect that they haven't had their reformed Office books agreed by the Vatican as yet.  

I'm pretty sure no one doubts that what these monasteries are are doing is liturgical though (well ok, I'm pretty sure the Carthusians are good at any rate; what some so-called Benedictine monasteries do might be another matter...).

Regardless, it seems to me that there is a big difference between books and orderings of the office that have received imprimaturs and various forms of official endorsement within religious orders (and that have essentially been used with only minor changes for centuries), and books produced that were never claimed to be liturgical in nature in the first place.

Devotional forms of the Office

Nonetheless, non-liturgical forms of Office can still be very worthwhile forms of prayer, well worth considering, as a way of accessing the psalms and other treasures of the Office.

A lot of early twentieth century 'short breviaries' for example were produced specifically for laypeople (for a wealth of material on this topic, including a listing of most of them, go look at the wonderful work of Theo Keller on this topic).  

One well worth considering just by virtue of its ready availability (ie you can download it for free online) is the Day Hours of the Church, a two volume version of the Roman Office put together by the Nuns of  Stanbrook in the early twentieth century and published by Burns and Oates.  

Another devotional version of the Roman Office available at relatively low cost is the translation by Maquess of Bute (compare its $25  or less per volume to the $360 for the Baronius three volume edition of the Roman Breviary).

There are still modern devotional Offices being produced, including the 'Benedictine Daily Prayer' book produced by the monks of Collegeville (though I have to admit I find it difficult to identify anything specifically Benedictine about it myself).

Anglican books

One sub-category of devotional volumes I should mention are the assorted Anglican versions of the monastic and Roman Offices.

I know they are popular with many (for example for the Night Office).  

But I personally think that is a case of taking ecumenism too far - the principle lex orandi, lex credendi (in effect, the way we pray determines what we believe) dictates that we should be very careful indeed in selecting our books for prayer.

If you want an English translation of Matins, use the Clear Creek booklet.  It doesn't give you all the variants for feasts and so forth, but it is Catholic.

And if you want something more comprehensive, but with a nice traditional sounding translation, consider the new Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham, which uses the Coverdale translation of the psalms.  The introduction is a little coy about the extent to which it can be considered liturgical prayer (it says it is "permitted by a simple imprimatur for daily devotional use and worship" in the Ordinariate and that "Those canonically bound to recite the Office will be guided by the appropriate authority as regards the extent to which these texts may be used.").  But for devotional use at least, a good new option.

Liturgical Offices

In the next post in this series I will look at the liturgical forms of the Office around, and some of the issues around their use.

Prayer options for the stealth hermitess (and others) - Part I

St Julian of Norwhich

One of the posts I've been meaning to put together for a while is on choosing which form of the Office (or other prayer) might best suit your needs.

Given the latest assault on religious life by the Vatican, this seems like a good moment.

Pray without ceasing

Every Christian, of course, is called to 'pray without ceasing' (1 Thess 5:16-18).

Just what that means in practice has always been fairly controversial.

At one end of the spectrum, some of the Desert Fathers are those who take the injunction very literally indeed, even hiring people to pray for them when they had to stop to eat or sleep.  St Clement of Alexandria also articulated a 'gnostic' ideal of  the person devoted to continuous prayer, and some religious orders down the ages (including modern ones devoted to perpetual adoration) have devoted themselves to the maintenance of continuous prayer at the collective level, even if not the individual.

At the other end of the spectrum are those who see the injunction fulfilled through the orientation of our lives: good works as liturgy, as it were.

St Benedict's Rule advocates something of a happy medium: formal prayer at seven set intervals through the day, and again once at night, in order to fulfil the injunctions of Psalm 118 (Seven times a day will I praise you, and at midnight I rose to give praise to you); provision for private prayer as led by the Spirit; and a balance of work and spiritual reading to fill out the day.

St Benedict's Office, of course, was not designed for laypeople, or even really hermits or anchorites.

First it is quite hard to learn, and requires considerable effort to do regularly and correctly.  

Secondly, it was intended to be sung, preferably in community, and in my view loses a lot when it is just said (private recitation is a relatively modern innovation, and really a Jesuit thing, not a Benedictine one!).  

Thirdly, it  takes several hours a day to sing in full, requiring more time than most people can spare.  

Finally, while some or even all of the day hours will be manageable for many, even if you just say it, the long Night Office (especially on Sundays) is a much more formidable undertaking (and there are no good translations of the full night Office available).

So what to do?

Devotions and private prayer

Everyone should, of course, have their own regime of private prayer as a base to build on.  Things like making a morning offering, grace before (and ideally after) meals, and an evening prayer for a happy death.  Most people will say some of the rosary each day.

The thirteenth century Anchoresses Rule (one of my favourite books I have to admit) has a lot of concrete suggestions, for this, starting from:

"When you first rise, bless yourself and say In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritui Sancti, Amen.  and begin at once Veni Creator Spiritus..."

Lectio divina (spiritual reading), systematic study and meditation on Scripture and other spiritual works is also absolutely essential for everyone in my view.

Monks can devote several hours to it, but even devoting a short amount of time each day to being nourished by Scripture is worthwhile in my view (provided it is guided by good Catholic commentaries, since the meaning of Scripture is not self-evident, and Catholics do not believe in 'sola scriptura'!).

But what more?

Association with the monks and nuns

The first thing you should consider, I would suggest, is to become an Oblate of a monastery, and thus gain a special share in the prayers they offer.

Oblation doesn't excuse from the obligation to pray yourself of course.  But your financial and spiritual support for the monks or nuns of your monastery (Benedictines are always associated with a specific monastery, there is really no such thing as the Benedictine Order in the same sense as the Carmelites, Francisans or Dominicans for example) helps ensure that the Work of God they carry out on behalf of the Church can continue.

The point is that we are one body but many parts, each with different roles, and the role of monks and nuns is above all to pray; the orientation of (most) laypeople should be to the things proper to their state of life, including family, work and active works.  We each support each other, but work in different ways for the kingdom.

Attending the Office when it is available

The second thing is to attend the Office (in whatever form) when it is available.

Up until the Council of Trent parish priests were pretty much expected to sing the day hours in their churches, and the laity often attended and joined in, particularly on Sundays.  The tradition was never, as far as I can determine, for the laity to attempt Matins (Vigils) - that was always viewed as a particularly monastic preserve.

These days it is a rare parish that makes even Sunday Vespers available, but if it is possible to attend, go.  And consider making a retreat at a monastery that actually does sing the Office (should such a thing exist in your location!).

 Listening to the Office prayerfully

A more accessible option for many will be listening prayerfully to the podcasts of the Office made available by the monasteries of Norcia and Le Barroux (see the sidebar links).

Just listening to broadcasts of the Office is not a participation in liturgical prayer of course - it is akin to Mass for you at home on the television.

But Gregorian chant and even singing the Office recto tono (on one note) has an inherent spirituality that can assist our own private prayer.

Use the prayers and psalms of the Office devotionally

Another option worth considering is to use prayers and psalms of the Benedictine Office devotionally.

Praying the Office liturgically is a serious undertaking, in my view, that requires knowledge and preparation.

But there is no reason why you can't use the Monastic Diurnal, for example, to access the spiritual riches of St Benedict's legacy devotionally.

You could, for example, start off just by saying the opening prayer of the day hours - O Lord come to my aid, O God make haste to help me - at the seven times of the day St Benedict expected his monks to pray (first light, before work, mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon, sunset, before bed).

You could add an Our Father to this.

Or perhaps say one of the fixed psalms of the Benedictine Office - St Benedict, for example gave his monks Psalm 3, a song of the spiritual warfare, as one of the repeated psalms of the night Office, and it is a great way to start the day.

Liturgical prayer

Finally, you can learn to pray at least one or more hours of one or other forms of the Office liturgically.

The Divine Office is  part of the formal worship of the Church, just like the Mass and sacraments.

One of the positive fruits of Vatican II, though the 1983 Code of Canon Law, was to make it clear that laypeople can pray the Office liturgically not only when they are present when it is said by monks, nuns or priests, but also when praying by themselves.

Under the 1983 Code of Canon Law, priests and religious are required to say some form of the Divine Office, and laypeople are 'earnestly invited' to participate in the Office as an action of the Church. 

This a wonderful privilege.  But as with all privileges, it carries obligations with it.  We can't just make it up as we go along, and muddle through.  We have to do it correctly, lest we be guilty of liturgical abuse.

Still want to do it?  I'll go through the main options for saying the Office in my next post in this series.

How do you choose which form of the Divine Office/Liturgy of the Hours to say? Part I - Introduction

c15th book of hours

Many people become interested at one point or another, in saying some or all of the Divine Office (aka Liturgy of the Hours). 

And rightly so, since it is an important part of the patrimony of our faith, a continuous tradition of prayer that reaches back to the earliest years of Christianity, and provides access to the great prayerbook of the Church, the psalms.

But which one?

When you start looking for books or websites to aid you though, there are a bewildering array of options to choose from. And as learning the Office actually involves quite a lot of effort (and potentially cost in buying books) you don't want to make too many wrong choices!

So how do you decide which one you should be saying?

I want to start a little series here that aims to help you through the process of choosing an appropriate form of the Office for you and thus hopefully minimising the time and cost involved.

And I should start by thanking members of the Trad Ben yahoo group who provided some comments a while back on this subject that I intend to draw on heavily.

But first a few basics....

What is the Divine Office?

The Divine Office, or Liturgy of the Hours as it is known in the Ordinary Form, is, just like the Mass, part of the Church's public prayer, its liturgy.  There are a number of different versions of the Office - the 1970 Liturgy of the Hours and the 1962 Roman Breviary being the main ones.  But there are also many (mainly traditional) versions of the Office associated with individual religious Orders, such as the Benedictine and Dominican, as well as popular forms of it using a much smaller number of psalms (such as the Office of the Dead and the Little Office of Our Lady).

Like the Mass, each officially approved form of the Office has approved texts and associated requirements for it to be said validly (ie as liturgical prayer, the public worship of God) and licitly (according to law).

Like the Mass it is intended to be said (or rather sung in the case of the Office) in a church accompanied by appropriate ritual as befitting the highest form of prayer offered by the Church.

Where it differs from the Mass, however, is that although it is preferable that it be said by a group of people in a Church, led by a cleric (or group of religious in the case of the Office), it can also validly be said (in accordance with a permission granted following Vatican II) by groups of laypeople, or even by individuals alone. 

Indeed, these days, most priests and religious (who are required to say the Office everyday) are far more likely to say it by themselves than 'in choir' or 'in common'. 

And the flexibility this implies makes it a very attractive option for people who want to increase their prayer commitment in a way that links closely to the Mass, and join themselves to the public prayer of the Church.

The Office as a devotion

It is worth noting though, that though the Divine Office is part of the liturgical prayer of the Church, it can also be said devotionally, giving it the same (lesser) status as the rosary and other acts of piety.  And there are a number of 'Offices' which were always intended solely to be said as devotions rather than as part of the official prayer of the Church.

In part this is because of history: prior to the Council of Trent there were few restrictions on the laity saying the Divine Office.  Most priests in parish churches, as well as monasteries, sang the hours publicly everyday.  But many people said them privately as well, the reason why 'Books of Hours' were amongst the most popular books of the Middle Ages.

The need to counter widespread heresy, however, led to the introduction of much tighter controls over liturgical texts, as well as the decision to restrict the 'delegation' to say the Office (the Church can decide who can say its public prayers on behalf of us all) to clerics and religious (monks and nuns).  Laypeople could still say the Office - but only as a devotion.

The result was, particularly in association with the liturgical movement in the early twentieth century, the development of a large number of devotional 'short offices', intended solely for the laity.  An example is the relatively recent Benedictine Daily Prayer A Short Breviary, but there are many others around.

That all changed with Vatican II, with Sacrosanctum Concilium urging a recovery of the Church's longer tradition of the Office as a liturgical prayer involving the laity as well as priests and religious.  The Council (and subsequent law) removed the restriction of the formal delegation to say the Office to clerics and religious, allowing laypeople also to say it liturgically. 

Unfortunately, in my view at least, as with so much else of the positives that can be found in the texts of Vatican II, its laudable  objective of reopening the Office to the laity was largely sabotaged by the botched job of reform represented by the 1970 Liturgy of the Hours.

Yet despite the problems associated with the Liturgy of the Hours, there has been something of a revival of interest in the Office on the part of the laity, not least (perhaps somewhat ironically depending on your attitude to the pastoral decision made at Trent and in its wake) amongst the more traditionally inclined.  As a result, an increasing number of new editions or reprints of various traditional forms of the Office are becoming increasingly available.

A disclaimer

This website is of course dedicated to the traditional form of the Benedictine Office said according to the 1962 rubrics, which is my favourite form of the Divine Office.  So my comments will of course to some extent be biased towards this option!

But I, like most people, only arrived at this preference by a process of experimentation, and I am perfectly well aware that my preference is shaped by a number of particular factors - the amount of time I have to devote to the Office, my preference for the Latin, and my attraction to Benedictine spirituality in particular.  Accordingly, in the course of this series I will try to make it clear why some other options may suit others better.  Just keep in mind my possible biases on this subject...

More soon.