Getting ready for Advent - Office basics 1: Finding your way around (Benedictine) Office books

We are rapidly coming up to the end of the liturgical year, and the start of the new, in the form of the season of Advent.

Accordingly, I thought this might be a good time to provide a quick refresher on some Office basics.

As I've had a few requests, I thought I would also provide some comments on using older Office books, such as older breviaries or editions of the Diurnal, in conjunction with the 1962 rubrics.

Time to brush up your rubrics

Advent is easily the most complex time of the liturgical year, and to say the Office in this period correctly requires a firm grasp of what parts of the Office change, and which don't, and where to find the various texts.

Today, a quick refresher on finding pages in the Diurnal (or other Office book).

The first challenge during Advent (and indeed throughout the year) is that you need to juggle page numbers in several different places in your book, and it is easy to get confused as to which section of the book you are looking for (or are in).

Page numbering in Office books

The Ordo published on this website includes pages references to the Latin-English Monastic Diurnal published by Farnborough Abbey, editions from 2005 onwards (as far as I know the latest edition hasn't changed anything, but please do let me know if I'm wrong about this!). 

It is important to note, however, that page number in the Diurnal, as for many breviaries, is not sequential throughout the book.  

Instead each key section of the book has its own numbering system, as follows:

Section	Key content	Page numbering system
Front material	Reference material such as Table of movable feasts, General Calendar and conclusions to the collects.	Roman numerals: i to xxx.
Proper of the Season	Texts that vary according to the liturgical and calendar seasons of the year.	Numbers with an asterix: 1* to 487*.
The Psalter	The psalms and standard ‘default’ texts for each hour and day.  This is the core of the book and is (broadly) organised around the order of the psalms rather than the order in which the various 'hours' of the Office are said.	Numbers: 1 to 269.
Proper of the Saints	Texts used on the feasts of saints, arranged by date.	Numbers in square brackets: [1] to [385].
The Common of Saints	Used for more important feasts that don't have their own special texts.  They are grouped by types of saints (apostles, confessors, etc).   The Office of the Dead, various other special prayers, as well as indexes, are included in this section.	Numbers in parentheses: (1) to (243).
Supplement	Texts for feasts that are celebrated in certain places only.	Numbers with two asterixes: 1** to 59**.

Using older Office books

If you are using an older edition of the Diurnal, or an older breviary, the page numbers will not be the same as those cited in the Ordo I provide here.

Instead of looking for page numbers, then, you need to focus on finding the texts for the relevant day, feast or type of text cited in the Ordo entry (Monday in the first week of Advent etc).  

If you are using a 1962 Collegeville Monastic Diurnal, this should be very straightforward.  

For earlier editions, though, there are few tricks to this (for example days in former octaves) which I'll come back to in due course, but the texts are generally all there (save for a few newer feasts).

Depending on how familiar you are with the books you are using (and whether you are juggling a chant book and a book with readings for Matins for example), you might want to create a little conversion table/index for yourself to remind you what the order of the sections is, and where to find the key texts you are looking for.

I've provided a listing for the key sections for a few books in my possession below by way of a starting point.

Section of the Office book	Monastic Diurnal	Monastic Breviary 1962 vol 1 (Advent to Pentecost)	Antiphonale Monasticum 1934	Monastic Breviary 1892 (English Congregation), Pars Hiemalis
Proper of the Season	Numbers with an asterix: 1* to 487*.	Numbers: 1 to 738.	Second section in the book – numbers: 181 – 618.	Second section in the book – numbers: 151 – 390.
The Psalter	Numbers: 1 to 269.	Numbers in parentheses: (1) to (254).	First section in book – numbers: 1 – 180.	First section in the  book – numbers, 1 - 150
Proper of the Saints	Numbers in square brackets: [1] to [385].	Numbers in square brackets: [1] to [213].	Third section in the book – numbers: 619 – 752.	Third section in the book – numbers: 301 – 604.
The Common of Saints	Numbers in parentheses: (1) to (243).	Numbers with an asterix: 1* to 389*.	Fourth section of the book – numbers: 753 – 1182.	Fourth section of the book – numbers in parentheses: (1) to (196).

Please contribute

Please do let me know if you find any errors in the page references, or other typos, or need anything clarified in this post.

And if you are using an older/other Office book for the traditional Benedictine Office not covered by the table above, please do consider sharing the order and page numbers for it via the comments box - others are probably also using it, and I'd be curious to know just when the ordering changed and how consistent or otherwise the number systems are!  If I get enough responses I will put them together in a supplementary table.

Understanding the calendar VIC - Liturgical seasons and Conclusion

In this last post in this series on understanding the calendar, I want to to finish off by treatment of the liturgical seasons and provide a bit of a recap of the series, in order to try and bring together everything I've covered, by way of completing the construction of the 'personal Ordo' for August that we have looked at as we've progressed through the series.

To do that, we need to recall that there are essentially five different cycles at work in the Office, consisting of: the hours; the day of the week; the date (fixed feasts); the calendar month and seasons; and the cycle of movable feasts and seasons of liturgical year, which depends on the date of Easter each year.

(1) THE HOURS

The first step in constructing your personal Ordo, you will recall, is to decide which hours you are going to say, and find the pages that relate to them in your Office book.  

In Part IIA of this series, on the hours, we looked at the eight hours that make up the Office and the way they are spread through the day and night to sanctify time.  

In Part IIB we looked at the particular character of each hour, which is reflected in the different structures employed for each of them, the hymns and other texts used at them, and the psalms allocated to each hour.

In a monastery using the traditional Office, all of the hours are normally sung each day.

Most Oblates and other laypeople though, would normally only say one or two hours - such as Prime and Compline, or Lauds and Vespers - a day.

The table below provides a starting point for your consideration, with page numbers for the Monastic Diurnal produced by Farnborough.

Hour	When said	Key considerations in deciding whether to say...	Page references in Monastic Diurnal (Psalter section, middle of book)
Matins	After midnight, before first light	No available in Latin-English; longest hour by far (40-90 mins depending on day if said).	na
Lauds	First light	Quite long (9 psalms & canticles) and complex structure; varies substantially on feasts.	37-146
Prime	Morning before work	Simple structure (only psalms and antiphons vary each day) makes it a good starting point for beginners; theology of hour is about our foundations in Christ, awareness of presence of God.	1-37 (M-Sat); 146-150 (Sunday)
Terce, Sext and None	Mid-morning, noon, mid-afternoon	Simple structure, each hour is very short, uses three sets of psalms.  Traces Passion of Christ, our spiritual ascent through humility.	151-203
Vespers	Late afternoon/sunset	The most variable hour in content on feasts.  Focuses on reflection on the day.	203-256
Compline	Before bed	Best starting point for beginners as same each day of the week.  Preparation for sleep/death.	256-269

(2) THE DAYS OF THE WEEK

The second key cycle in the Office is of the day of the week, since one of the most distinctive features of the traditional Benedictine Office was originally that it ensured that the entire psalter was said each week.

Part IIIA of this series focused on the parts of each hour that vary with the day of the week in the 'ferial' Office, that is, as it said on days of the year that are not feasts, special days, or part of special seasons.   

Part IIIB of the series started looking at the different ranking of days, providing a 'default' Ordo that listed Sundays as Class II and weekdays as Class IV, includes the Office of Our Lady each week, and for any given day of the week, looked something like this:

Wednesday - Class IV

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

(3) FIXED DATE FEASTS OF THE YEAR

The next step in constructing our Ordo is to take account of the fixed date feasts of the year.

Part IVA of the series looked at the feasts of the general calendar that fall on ordinary weekdays.

Part IVB looked at the interactions of feasts with Sundays. 

Part IVC looked at how to take account of local feasts, and the effects of different levels of feasts on each hour.

It showed that for August 2018, for example, the ferial texts have to be adjusted to take account of the memorial of the Holy Maccabees that falls on that day:

Wednesday 1 August - Class IV; The Holy Maccabees, memorial

Matins: All as for Wednesday in the psalter

Lauds: All as for Wednesday in the psalter with a commemoration of the Holy Maccabees

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

(4) MONTHS AND THE 'NATURAL' SEASONS

The fourth step in the construction of our Ordo is to take account of the months and seasons in the Office.

In Part VA of the series we saw that the Benedictine Office has only two 'natural seasons': winter (First Sunday of November to Easter), when three readings are said during the week at Matins; and summer (Easter to the end of October) when the weekday readings are reduced to one.  

Part VB focused on the monthly cycle in the Office from August to the end of Epiphanytide, which depends on the interaction of calendar months and fixed date feasts.

For those who say Matins, it is worth noting that there is one other monthly cycle of readings in the 1962 version, namely for the Office of Our Lady on Saturday, there are readings for four Saturdays of each month of the year (December and March aside, where the liturgical seasons mean that there can never be more than one Saturday of Our Lady). 

With that information, we can now look at the Ordo for August 2018, for example, we can now add in the Sunday cycle for the month of August to reflect the fact that the first Sunday of August fell on August 5, so our Ordo for the first few days of August now looks like this:

Wednesday 1 August - Class IV; The Holy Maccabees, memorial

Matins: All as for Wednesday in the psalter

Lauds: All as for Wednesday in the psalter with a commemoration of the Holy Maccabees

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

Or, in summary:

All as in the psalter for Wednesday with a commemoration of the Holy Maccabees at Lauds

Thursday 2 August – Class IV; St Alphonsus Mary de Liguori, memorial

All as in the psalter for Thursday with a commemoration of St Alphonsus at Lauds

Friday 3 August - Class IV

All as in the psalter for Friday

Saturday 4 August - St. Dominic, Class III

Matins: Invitatory antiphon and hymn from Common of a Confessor; antiphons and psalms of Saturday; one reading of the feast; chapter of a confessor; collect of the feast.

Lauds: Antiphons and psalms of Saturday; rest from the Common of a Confessor not a bishop, Collect of the feast.

Prime: Antiphon 1 of Lauds from the Common of a Confessor, rest as in the psalter for Saturday.

Terce to None: Antiphon, chapter and versicle from the Common of a Confessor; collect of the feast; rest as in the psalter for Tuesday to Saturday.

Vespers: I Vespers of Sunday (ie Saturday Vespers) with Magnificat antiphon for the First Sunday of August

Sunday 5 August - First Sunday of August, Class II

Matins: All as for Sunday in the psalter with responsories and Nocturn I&II readings for the First Sunday of August

Lauds: All as for Sunday in the psalter

Prime: All as for Sunday in the psalter

Terce to None:  All as for Sunday in the psalter

Vespers: All as for Sunday in the psalter

Compline: All as in the psalter every day

.....Saturday 11 August – Our Lady on Saturday, Class IV; St. Tiburtius, Memorial 

Matins to None: Our Lady on Saturday with Matins reading of Saturday 2 of August and commemoration of St Tiburtius at Lauds.

I Vespers with Magnificat antiphon of the Second Sunday of August.

(5) THE LITURGICAL SEASONS

The last step in creating our Ordo is to take account of what is commonly known as the liturgical year, that is the cycle of feasts and Sundays whose date depends on that of Easter.

Part VIA of the series provided a bit of an overview, and focused on the parts of the Office that change each week depending on the part of the liturgical year.  

Part VIB of the series looked at the special seasons of the year and their effect on the Office.

There are two last points to note on this topic.

First, the Marian antiphons and prayers said at the end of Compline also change at particular points of the liturgical year (viz Advent, 2 February, Easter and at the end of the octave of Pentecost).

Secondly, the Office of Our Lady on Saturday has some variants for the period after the Nativity and during Eastertide.

So we are now in a position to add in the final layer of the Office cycles to our sample Ordo for August 2018, to reflect the number of the Sunday after the Octave of Pentecost:

Wednesday 1 August - Class IV; The Holy Maccabees, memorial

Matins: All as for Wednesday in the psalter, collect of the tenth Sunday after the Octave of Pentecost

Lauds: All as for Wednesday in the psalter with a commemoration of the Holy Maccabees; collect of the tenth Sunday after the Octave of Pentecost

Prime: All as for Wednesday in the psalter

Terce to None:  All as for Tuesday to Saturday in the psalter, collect of the tenth Sunday after the Octave of Pentecost

Vespers: All as for Wednesday in the psalter, collect of the tenth Sunday after the Octave of Pentecost

Compline: All as in the psalter every day, with Marian antiphon for time after Pentecost, Salve Regina

Or, in summary:

All as in the psalter for Wednesday with a commemoration of the Holy Maccabees at Lauds, collect of the Tenth Sunday after Pentecost

Thursday 2 August – Class IV; St Alphonsus Mary de Liguori, memorial

All as in the psalter for Thursday with a commemoration of St Alphonsus at Lauds, collect of the Tenth the Sunday [ie at all hours other than Prime and Compline]

Friday 3 August - Class IV

All as in the psalter for Friday, collect of the Tenth Sunday

Saturday 4 August - St. Dominic, Class III

Matins: Invitatory antiphon and hymn from Common of a Confessor; antiphons and psalms of Saturday; one reading of the feast; chapter of a confessor; collect of the feast.

Lauds: Antiphons and psalms of Saturday; rest from the Common of a Confessor not a bishop, Collect of the feast.

Prime: Antiphon 1 of Lauds from the Common of a Confessor, rest as in the psalter for Saturday.

Terce to None: Antiphon, chapter and versicle from the Common of a Confessor; collect of the feast; rest as in the psalter for Tuesday to Saturday.

Vespers: I Vespers of Sunday (ie Saturday Vespers) with Magnificat antiphon for the First Sunday of August; Collect of the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Sunday 5 August - First Sunday of August, Class II, Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Matins: All as for Sunday in the psalter with responsories and Nocturn I&II readings for the First Sunday of August; Third Nocturn readings, Gospel and collect of the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Lauds: All as for Sunday in the psalter, Benedictus antiphon and collect of the Eleventh Sunday

Prime: All as for Sunday in the psalter

Terce to None:  All as for Sunday in the psalter, collect of the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Vespers: All as for Sunday in the psalter, Magnificat antiphon and collect of the Eleventh Sunday

Compline: All as in the psalter every day

....Saturday 11 August – Our Lady on Saturday, Class IV; St. Tiburtius, Memorial 

Matins to None: Our Lady on Saturday as for throughout the year with Matins reading of Saturday 2 of August and commemoration of St Tiburtius at Lauds.

I Vespers with Magnificat antiphon of the Second Sunday of August; collect for the Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost.


If you want to test your understanding, have a go at constructing a full Ordo for August 2018, then check it against the version you can find here.

FINAL NOTE: BREVIARIES AND THE SEASONS

There is one last issue I'd like to cover off, in response to a question, and that relates to Office books.

As I noted earlier, the Benedictine Office has only two 'natural' seasons, summer and winter.

So you might think the two volumes of the 1962 Monastic Breviary would align with this division.  And if you are using an older breviary, you may find it comes in four volumes, labelled Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, you might think that the volume change occurs at the equinox, or some other fixed date associated with the change of seasons.

In fact, however, the divisions in these books are mostly based on the liturgical year, which only loosely aligns with the 'natural seasons'

The first of the two volumes of the 1962 breviary covers Advent to Pentecost; the second covers the Sundays after Pentecost to the end of the liturgical year.

My late nineteenth English Congregation breviary divides up as follows:

Pars Autumnalis (Autumn): First Sunday of September to Last Sunday after Pentecost
Pars Hiemalis (Winter): First Sunday of Advent to the Saturday after Ash Wednesday
Pars Vernalis (Spring): First Sunday of Lent to Pentecost
Pars Aestiva (Summer): Trinity Sunday to last Sunday of August

The date at which you change volumes, in other words, changes each year depending on the date of Easter and that of the first Sunday of Advent.

For this reason, the sections containing the feasts of saints includes some overlap between volumes. 

COMMENTS AND QUESTIONS

I do hope you have found the series to be of interest and use, and please do ask any questions you may have through the comments box.

Understanding the calendar VIB - The liturgical seasons

In the last post we started looking at the cycle of 'movable feasts' that depend on the date of Easter.

Today a look a look at the key seasons and feasts of the year that are dependent on the Easter cycle.

Easter as the focus of the liturgical year

We are used to thinking of Advent as the start of the liturgical year, but in reality the liturgical year cycle originally centred on Easter, which was the first of all the feasts celebrated by the Church.

In fact Advent only became firmly established as the start of the year in the thirteenth century - indeed in the form given to it by St Gregory the Great in Rome in the late sixth century, Advent had a rather eschatological character, as indeed did the season of Epiphanytide as it developed over the seventh and eighth centuries.

Easter

The calculation of the date of Easter each year has been a source of controversy from the earliest years of the Church, with competing dates still celebrated by Orthodox and Catholics.

Even in the modern Western calendar, though, Easter remains the anchor for most of the liturgical year, with the date of many other feasts and special days, including Ash Wednesday, Ascension, Pentecost, The Most Trinity, Corpus Christi, and the Lent and Pentecost Ember Days, dependent on it.

You can read about the way it is calculated here.

For practical purposes, though, it is worth knowing that Easter can never occur before March 22 or later than April 25.

And for a list of the actual dates, consult the 'table of movable feasts' in the front of your Diurnal.

Counting backwards from Easter (1) - Septuagesima 

For Ordo purposes, it is easiest to think of the Sunday cycle as starting with the lead up seasons to Easter rather than Advent.

The traditional calendar has two pre-Easter seasons.

The first, Septuagesimatide, consists of the three weeks before Lent.

It's Sundays - Septaugesima (the ninth before Easter), Sexagesima (eighth before Easter) and Quinquagesima (seventh before Easter) can be traced back to the sixth century.

It was abolished in the 1970 calendar, but was retained in the 1962 calendar to provide a clear end point to the festive season, and soften the transition to Lent.

In the Office it is marked in several key ways:

• the Alleluia not used, with an alternative formula used in the opening prayers of the hours;
• the Scriptural reading cycle at Matins starts at the beginning of the Bible, with Genesis; 
• the collect of the Sunday is used each day at Matins and Lauds and Terce to Vespers, unless displaced by a feast; and 
• there are Magnificat antiphons at Vespers for each day of the week.

The rest of the Office though, remains as for 'throughout the year' during this time, with the ordinary days of the week being Class IV, and the Sundays Class II.

Counting backwards from Easter (2) - Lent

Like Septuagesima Sunday, the start of Lent - Ash Wednesday, a Class I 'day' - is also calculated by counting back the number of days/weeks from Easter.

In the Office, Lent has several phases:

• the days after Ash Wednesday but before the first Sunday of Lent, which are Class III days each with their own canticle antiphons and collects (one for Matins, Lauds, and Terce to None; another for Vespers), but otherwise continues to use the 'throughout the year' texts';
• from the First Sunday of Lent up to 'First' Passion Sunday, where each Sunday is Class I, and the 'Ordinary' of Lent provides the antiphons, hymns and other texts for the hours during the week';
• the two weeks of Passiontide (up to Palm Sunday) which has its own 'Ordinary' texts;
• Monday to Wednesday of Holy Week, which are Class I days with their own antiphons and special texts.  No other feasts can be celebrated during Holy Week; and
• the Sacred Triduum, where a special form of the Roman Office us used for Maundy Thursday to Holy Saturday.

During Lent, Class III feasts that occur on weekdays are reduced to commemorations.

The first week of Lent also includes the first set of 'Ember Days' of the year.

You can read more on the Office during Lent here for the period up to Passiontide, here for Passiontide, and here for Holy Week.

Counting forward from Easter (1) - the Easter Octave to the Octave of Pentecost

The feast of Easter itself is celebrated for seven days, by virtue of its Octave, all of the days of which are considered Class I of Our Lord, and so preclude the celebration of any other feasts.

This means that any first class feasts that occur in this period are transferred to the next available date.

In the modern calendar, the Scriptural number symbolism of Christ's ascension on the fortieth day after Easter (always a Thursday) has subverted in many places by shifting the feast to the Sunday.

In the 1962 calendar though, the Office is governed by the 'ordinary of Eastertide' up to the fortieth day after Easter, and then the ordinary of 'Ascensiontide' for the days up to the fiftith day after Easter, the Feast of Pentecost.

Like Easter, Pentecost also has a Class I Octave when no other feasts can be celebrated.

Counting forward from Easter (2) - Sundays and feasts after the Octave of Pentecost

The first Sunday after the Octave of Pentecost, the Feast of the Most Holy Trinity, marks the start of a new cycle of feasts and Sundays tied to the date of Easter.

Apart from Trinity Sunday, these include Corpus Christi (the Thursday after Trinity Sunday) and the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus (Friday after the Second Sunday after Pentecost).

The Sundays after the Octave of Pentecost are Class II, and are numbered for their distance from that feast, and mark the start of a new cycle of readings at Matins.

For the first weeks after Pentecost (ie up to August), those readings centre on the books of Kings.

From August, though, the monthly reading cycle cuts in and means that the I Vespers Magnificat canticle, the First and Second Nocturn readings for Matins, and the responsories for Matins are determined by the week of the calendar month.

The collect of the week though, as well as the Third Nocturn and Gospel readings for Matins, collects for the week and Sunday canticle antiphons are determined by the number of the Sunday after the Octave of Pentecost.

This means you need to look in two different parts of your 'of the time' section of the Diurnal to find the texts you need each week.

The last Sundays after Pentecost, and Epiphanytide

The final twist to the annual cycle that you need to be aware of is the variable number of Sundays after Pentecost (and Epiphany).

There are twenty-four sets of texts for the Sundays after Pentecost, and six for the Sundays after Epiphany.

But if you consult the table of movable feasts in the Diurnal, you will find that, depending on the date of Easter, there can actually be anything between twenty three and twenty eight Sundays after the Octave of Pentecost.

This happens because Septuagesima can cut short the cycle of six Sundays after Epiphany, while the start of Advent (determined by the date of the Sunday nearest to November 30) can push the start of Advent back as far as November 27 or forward as far as December 3.

The pragmatic solution is to use the Sunday readings, canticle antiphons and collects not used earlier in the year during Epiphanytide to fill in the gap if necessary.

The formula for which Epiphanytide Sunday's texts are used after Pentecost depends on the number of Sundays in that particular year:

• if there are 25 Sundays after Pentecost, the 24th uses the texts for the 6th Sunday after Epiphany;
• if there are 26, the 24th is the 5th after Epiphany, the 25th is the 6th;
• if there are 27,  the 24th is 4th after Epiphany, and so forth; and 
• if there are 28, the 24th is 3rd after Epiphany.

The texts for the 'twenty-fourth' Sunday are always used on the last last Sunday of the liturgical year, no matter what number that Sunday is in any particular year.

In summary....

The table below summarises the level of days (feasts aside) for the key liturgical seasons of the year.

Season	Start/date  determined by	Sundays	Weekdays
Septuagesimatide	Easter	Class II	Class IV
Lent and Passiontide	Easter	Class I	Class III (Class III feasts commemorations only; if a Class I&II feast displaces, commemoration of the Lent day at Lauds and Vespers)
Holy Week and Easter Octave	Easter	Class I	Class I
Eastertide and Ascensiontide	Easter	Class II	Class IV (Vigil of the Ascension, Class II, Ascension Class I)
Octave of Pentecost	Easter	Class I	Class I
Weeks after the Octave of Pentecost	Easter	Class II	Class IV
Advent	Sunday nearest to 30 November	Class I	Class III to 16 December (if Advent day displaced by a Class I, II or III feast, commemoration at Lauds and Vespers); Class I 17-23 November
Christmastide	Fixed date feasts and ferias, December 24-Jan 5	Class II	Vigil and Octave Day Class I; Class II Octave; otherwise Class IV
Epiphanytide	Feast of the Epiphany (Jan 6) and Sundays after; Feast of the Purification (Feb 2); note that end date determined by Easter (Septuagesima Sunday).	Class II	Class IV

And with this we have pretty much covered the calendar!

I plan on one more post, just to bring all of this material together in the sample Ordo have been constructing as we've gone along for August 2018. 

So if you have any questions on any of the material covered in this series, or on things that haven't been answered in it, please do speak up now and I'll try and include the answers in the next (and last) post in this series.

Understanding the calendar VIA - The liturgical year Pt 1

St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 390: Antiphonarium officii (Antiphonary for liturgy of the hours) (https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/0390).

The cycles in the Office

So far in this series on how the calendar for the Office works we've looked at:

• 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 last cycle we need to cover is that of the liturgical year cycle, which is largely dependent on the date of Easter, which varies each year depending on the date of the 'Paschal Full Moon'.

In this post, a little background, and then in the next I'll work through the cycle of  'movable feasts' and liturgical seasons and the key rules associated with them.

The Office and the liturgical year - the ferial character of the early Office

Today we take for granted that the Office and the Mass cycles are and should be closely linked.

As I noted earlier in this series, however, most if not all of these connections are the result of the later, gradual development of the Office rather than necessarily having been in place in St Benedict's time.

Although St Benedict specifies that a Gospel reading be included at Matins each Sunday for example, we don't know if this was always one of the accounts of the Resurrection (as was the case in the Office in Gaul described by St Benedict's contemporary Caesarius of Arles), or (more likely in my view) a continuous reading of the Gospels over the year (the remnants of which are suggested in one of the earliest Mass lectionaries, the Wutzburg Sacramentary), or, as is now the case, the reading used at the Mass.

The development of the connections

We do know however that the practice of using the third nocturn for Patristic readings related to the fixed Gospel cycle is a ninth century Frankish development, rather than reflecting Roman practice of the time.

Similarly, the addition of collects to the Benedictine Office (as for the Office used in the Lateran) seems to have been a relatively late development.

Even the special forms of the Office used during the Sacred Triduum, for example, have actually been imported from the Roman Office, and their use has been resisted strongly by Benedictines at times (since it means that all 150 psalms can't be said in a week, contrary to RB 18).

The liturgical year in the modern Office

The cycle we are now looking at, which depends each year on the calculation of the date of Easter, is often described as that of the movable feasts, key dates of which are solemnly announced each year on the feast of the Epiphany, a remnant of a period before the ready availability of Ordos.

In fact you can find a list of these key dates (Ash Wednesday, Easter etc) for many years to come in the front section of the Diurnal.

The texts that are linked to these dates can be found in the 'temporale' section of the Diurnal (or breviary) and includes:

• (in the breviary) the readings used at Matins from Septuagesima to July, and the cycle of Gospels and third Nocturn readings from August to November;
• the collect used at Matins, Lauds, and Terce to Vespers each day, except where it is displaced by a feast;
• the canticle antiphons used on Sundays that are not feasts;
• the texts needed for the observance of various 'movable' feasts; and 
• texts for the specials seasons and times of the year.

In the next post we will start working through the key parts of the liturgical year.