Pope urges pray the Office: and there's a new edition of the Diurnal out to help you do it!

Photos and dimension details: Jonah Smith

At his General Audience last week, the Pope concluded his series of talks on the psalms as the prayer-book of the Church by urging everyone to pray Lauds, Vespers and Compline.

And with absolutely perfect timing, the new, seventh edition of the Monastic Diurnal has just been released by the monks of Farnborough Abbey to enable you to do just that! 

The Farnborough Monastic Diurnal provides the day hours of the Office (ie all the hours except the long monastic night Office of Matins) with parallel English and Latin texts, according to the 1963 rubrics.

And unlike the modern Liturgy of the Hours (1970), or even the 1962 Roman Breviary (which uses the 1911 reordering of the psalter), the Monastic Diurnal utilises a traditional ordering of the psalms for each day and hour, namely that set out by St Benedict in his Rule and in use now for over 1400 years.

For those familiar with the previous edition of the book, it is on rather heavier paper, giving increased durability, and its dimensions are 150 mm x100mm x51mm.

At £45.00 plus shipping from the Abbey direct, it is a considerably cheaper option than most other breviaries around.

And thanks too to Father Abbot for giving this blog a bit of a plug!

The monks also have their own blog now, so you can follow their doings.

Norcia film...

For those who like to listen and follow the Office with the Norcia monks, a special alert - they currently have Sunday Prime up on their archive.

Even better, a film about the monastery, filmed over Summer this year, is due to be released in December.  Here is the trailer:

November 6: Twenty First Sunday after Pentecost/Third Sunday of November



The walls of Avila

 November suffers from the strange phenomenon of leaping straight to week three in terms of its Matins readings, and hence I Vespers canticle antiphon.

This reflects the fact that the first week of November used to be the Octave of All Saints, which had its own patristic readings, marking the start of the winter three readings schema for Matins in the Benedictine Office. 

The Scriptural readings for Matins are from the Book of Daniel, but in fact the canticle antiphon for I Vespers, 'Muros tuos' (Surround us O Lord with thy impregnable wall), is not scriptural. 

Scot's Church, Melbourne

The Gospel this Sunday, referred to in the Benedictus and Magnificat antiphons, is Matthew 18:23-35, the Parable of the unforgiving servant.

November 4: St Charles Borromeo, Memorial

Saint Carlo Borromeo (2 October 1538 – 3 November 1584) was a cardinal responsible for significant reforms in the Catholic Church during the Counter-Reformation, including the founding of seminaries for the education of priests.

The nephew of Pope Pius IV (his mother was a Medici) and son of the Count of Arona, through sheer nepotism he was appointed a titular abbot at the age of 12, and archbishop of Milan at 22.  Despite family pressure to quit the Church, he pursued doctoral studies in civil and canon law and was an active reformer of the Church, playing a large role in the Catechism of Trent and the final sessions of the Council itself.

He is not a saint for the faint-hearted.  In line with the spirit of Trent, he substantially revamped his own cathedral removing much of the ornamentation there, and remodelling the nave so as to segregate the sexes.   He was also a vigorous campaigner against heresy and witchcraft.  Ans so strong was the opposition to his reforms of one religious order in his diocese that an attempt to assassinate him was made.

In 1576, when Milan suffered an epidemic of the bubonic plague, Borromeo persuaded his flock that it was sent as a chastisement for sin, and led religious exercises to bring it to an end.  He also  led efforts to accommodate the sick and bury the dead, avoiding no danger and sparing no expense. He visited all the parishes where the contagion raged, distributing money, providing accommodation for the sick, and punishing those, especially the clergy, who were remiss in discharging their duties.

His cult  became established very quickly after his death in Milan, and he was canonised in 1610.

November 2: Feast of All Souls

Today's feast is devoted to those in purgatory, that we might free them by our prayers....

November 1: All Saints (aka All Hallows), Class I

Fra Angelico, c15th

October 31: I will please the Lord in the land of the living....

c15th illuminaton of Office of the Dead

Today is the eve of All Saints, aka Halloween, a night when traditionally the veil between heaven, hell, purgatory and earth was thought to thin. 

Medieval sermon collections and other works directed at the laity are full of stories of the dead appearing on this night to beg desperately for prayers to free them, as well as of demons and those in hell acting to scare us back to an awareness of the reality of the supernatural world. 

These days there are endless debates amongst Catholics infected by political correctness as to the appropriateness/catholicity of Halloween celebrations. Personally, I'm with those who think we do need a reminder of the reality of death, demons and the workers of evil....

So how should we respond to this annual reminder?

The Office of the Dead

Well getting ready to say the Office of the Dead regularly through November would be one excellent way.

'I will please the Lord in the land of the living' is the antiphon, taken from Psalm 114, that opens Vespers in the Office of the Dead (the Office of the Dead, remember consists of I Vespers, Matins and Lauds).  In fact Vespers of the Dead consists of Psalms 114, 119, 120, 129, and 137.

The antiphon is a prompt to do good works while we still can, and thus accumulate merit, as well as teaching that praying for the dead is something that pleases God.

If you say the Office regularly using the Diurnal, you will say the psalms and prayers of the Office of the Dead at least twice during November anyway, on All Souls and All Souls of the Benedictine Order.  So why not say one or more hours of it more a few more times, on behalf of your dead family and friends, and the souls in purgatory more generally?  Note that there is a partial indulgence attached to saying either Lauds or Vespers of this Office...

How to say the Office of the Dead

I've previously written about the rules around when the Office of the Dead can or should be said here.  And I've posted on the rubrics for the Office.

For those interested in penetrating the meaning of the psalms, and understanding the Latin of that Office in more depth, over at Psallam Domino I'm currently working through Psalm 22 (The Lord is my shepherd), said at Matins, verse by verse.  I then plan to move onto Vespers, looking at Psalm 114 in particular.