The O Antiphons

Here in Australia it is 17 December, a date that marks the start of our Christmas novena, a period of increased intensity in the Office.

This is actually the most complex period of the year in terms of saying the Office, since you have to juggle the antiphons for the day, psalms of the day, and the proper texts for Advent.  The reward, though, comes in the richness of the texts, above all in the O Antiphons for the Magnificat.

They are of course most commonly sung in their plainchant form.  But I have to admit I kind of like the idea of an O antiphon flashmob...

Blog reorganisation

Just to let readers know I've done a little tidying up of the blog, and in particular transferred a lot of the links I had in sidebars to new pages, which can be accessed from the links on the top bar (under the blog title).

There are now pages for the Ordo (though I'll keep current month stuff in the sidebar), learning the Office, Benedictine spirituality and Office related resources.

Most of this material is not new, just (hopefully) a bit better organised.

There is one new section of material you want to take a look at though, and that is the Office Resources page.  Contains listings of chant books for the Office available online, books about the hymns of the Office and a lot more.  I'd love to add in any other useful resources you are aware of that I may have missed.

PS Feedback on the org, especially if you hate it and want me to put something back n the sidebars, is welcome!

Interested in saying the Benedictine Office?

If you've just bought a book to say the traditional Benedictine Office with, such as the (Farnborough edition) Monastic Diurnal, or are considering doing so, let me welcome you to a wonderful source of spiritual nourishment!

There are, though, some things you need to consider before embarking on this journey.

(1) The traditional Benedictine Office is said in Latin.

The Monastic Diurnal provides the text of the Office in both Latin and English, however the English is not approved for liturgical use, it is there for study purposes only.  Pope Benedict XVI confirmed in Universae Ecclesiae that permission to use the 1962 books is for the Latin text only.  While that clarification was made specifically in relation to the Roman Office, it almost certainly applies to the Benedictine as well.

That doesn't mean you have to have studied Latin formally though - you just need to learn to pronounce the words adequately (for example by listening to monastic podcasts of the Office, or working with sound files or videos of the psalms), and get a general sense of what it is that you are saying.

(2) The traditional Benedictine Office is properly sung

While monks and nuns away from their monasteries can and do just say the Office quietly to themselves, the Benedictine Office is properly sung.  This reflects the instruction of numerous of the Fathers who attested to the benefits of singing the psalms, which are the core of the Benedictine Office.

You don't have to be an expert singer  though, or know Gregorian chant - most monasteries sing at least some of their Office each day on one note.  But if you are interested in Benedictine spirituality, you should at least try and make the effort to listen to the Office being sung, and/or sing it yourself, as a  regular part of your regime.

 (3) The Monastic Diurnal is keyed to the 1962 Extraordinary Form calendar

The Office and the Mass are linked, and the calendar used in the Diurnal is that of the 1962 Extraordinary Form, with some small differences in saints and a few feast days to reflect its use by Benedictines.  In particular:

• the collect used each day at most of the hours (except Prime and Compline) is normally the same as at Sunday or the weekday Mass;
• the 'antiphons'  used on feast days and Sundays normally reflect the feasts celebrated at Mass.

It is possible to use the traditional calendar for the Office and the modern one for Mass, but this is obviously not ideal.  And it is possible to adapt the Office as set out in the Diurnal to reflect the modern calendar, but most people find that this requires too much effort.

(4)  The Monastic Diurnal only covers the day hours of the Office

The Diurnal contains the 'hours' of Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline, those parts of the Office that are said during the day (prayers said at first light to those said before bed).

It is not compulsory (for laypeople) to say any or all of these hours, and for most people one or two hours (Prime and Compline are good choices for morning and evening prayer for example) will be enough.

If you really want to say all of the psalms, however, be aware that the Diurnal does not include the Night Office, Matins, and there is no equivalent semi-official Latin-English book for Matins.

(5) The Benedictine Office contains a lot of repetition

If you said all of the day hours (ie those contained in the Diurnal), you would be saying 26 psalms each day.  That adds up to 182 in total each week.

But although this form of the Office spreads all of the psalms over the course of a week, St Benedict wanted a lot of the psalms to be repeated each day, presumably because he thought those particular psalms were important for the formation of his particular spirituality.  

In fact overall, ten psalms are said every day in the Benedictine office (Ps 3, 4, 50(51), 90 (91), 94 (95), 133 (134), and 148-150).  An additional nine psalms (the first of the Gradual Psalms, 119(120)-127(8)) are said five days a week.

The hours repeated psalms - Compline is the same each night, five of the psalms at Lauds each day, Terce to None are the same five times a week - give the individual hours a particular flavour, and contain key messages worth memorising.  

But if you are looking for lots of variety, you either need to pick your hours (Prime doesn't have any repeated psalms, and Vespers is normally different each day, aside from special sets of psalms used on feasts) or consider whether this is really the Office for you.  In fact Matins is the workhorse of the Benedictine Office with twelve different psalms each day.

(6) The Monastic Diurnal uses the Vulgate 

It is also worth noting that the Diurnal uses the traditional Vulgate translation of the Psalms into Latin (attributed to St Jerome), not the 1979 'neo-Vulgate' Latin on the Vatican site and used by some monasteries (ie monasteries using the Ordinary Form of the Mass but retaining Latin for the Office).

There are key advantages to using the traditional Vulgate.  First, it is closer or identical to the Latin used by the Fathers, so lines up better with the Patristic readings used in the Office.  It also aligns with the antiphons and other texts used in the chants of the Office.  Moreover, as it turns out, the 1979 neo-Vulgate is rapidly proving to be a product of its time, with more recent scholarship (reflecting research based on the Dead Seas Scrolls in particular) casting down on the desirability of many of the translation decisions taken.

It does mean, however, that the numbering of the psalms mostly does not line up with modern Bibles.

I should also note that there is a version of the Benedictine Office available using the neo-Vulgate published by Solesmes, however there is no official English version of it.

(7) Learning the Office requires effort

Finally, in part because of the factors listed above the Office takes some effort to learn how to say correctly.

The traditional Benedictine Office is quite different to the modern Liturgy of the Hours in many respects, and the Diurnal is not a very user friendly book.  The Diurnal does include most of the instructions necessary to say the Office (albeit with a bit of work), but it does not contain a translation of the full 1962 rubrics.

The Diurnal basically assumes you already know the rubrics and are familiar with this form of the Office.  Accordingly, you will almost certainly need some help to learn to say it.

And given that this is liturgy, the formal, official prayer of the Church, and not just a devotion, being prepared to make that effort is important.

(8) How to get started

If the above hasn't put you off, and you are interested in doing a comprehensive course on the Benedictine Office, you can find extensive notes on how to say the Office here.

A good starting point is my post on finding your way around the Diurnal.

And the best place to start in terms of actually saying the Office is Compline.  

The Office in Christmastide and the Sundays after the Epiphany

The season of Christmas (or Nativitytide) has two parts: the 'twelve days of Christmas', from Christmas Eve (I Vespers of Christmas) to January 5; and the season of Epiphany, which officially runs up to 13 January.

There is a bit of a trick to it though, because older versions of the liturgy actually treated all of the time up until the Feast of the Purification on February 2 as the season of Epiphany, and the Office retains traces of that: the Sundays are still labelled 'after Epiphany' up until the pre-Lenten season of Septuagesima, and the readings on them reflect Epiphany themes. 

In fact the readings for the original six Sundays of Epiphanytide allowed for (before addition of Septuagesima under St Gregory the Great) continue to be said, with any Sundays displaced by an early start to Septuagesimatide moved to the end of the liturgical year.

In addition, the Office of Our Lady on Saturday continues to be said in its Christmastide form right up until February 2.

The other key point to note is that there are a number of texts to be said on particular dates in addition to the main (fixed) feast days.

The twelve days of Christmas

The Christmasy feel for the Office really starts on December 24, with the Vigil of the Nativity.  But in fact that day, at least up until None, is technically part of Advent.

Christmas has a second class octave, and so the Office is effectively that of Christmas for a whole week, but displaced to some degree by the series of second class feasts that occur in this period.

Between January 2 and January 5, the 'ordinary of the ferial office after the Octave of the Nativity', which includes chapter verses, hymns and so forth for Lauds to Vespers, is used, MD 119*.  

During this period, the antiphons and psalms are of the day of the week as set out in the psalter for ‘throughout the year and in Nativitytide’. At Matins, the Invitatory, hymn, versicles and chapter are of the season, and three readings are of the date.  At Terce, Sext and None, the antiphons is as for throughout the year; the chapter and versicle are particular to Nativitytide (set out in the psalter section of the Diurnal, as well as at MD 122-3*.  At Lauds and Vespers, the chapter, responsory, hymn, versicle and canticle antiphon are for the season, and can be found at MD 119-25*.

The Ordinary of the Office in Epiphany (January 7-12)

Epiphanytide is part of the greater season of Christmastide, hence at all hours, antiphons and psalms are of the day of the week as in the psalter for ‘throughout the year and in Nativitytide’.

At Matins, the Invitatory antiphon, hymn, versicles, responsories and chapter are of the season.  At Lauds and Vespers, the chapter, responsory, hymn, and versicle are for the season, and can be found at MD 133-9*.  

In the not too distant past the feast of Epiphany had an Octave, and the proper antiphons for the canticles set for each day are remnants of that octave.  Similarly, the feast of the Commemoration of the Baptism of Our Lord is said as if it were an octave day.

Office of Our Lady after Christmas

On fourth class Saturdays up until the feast of the Purification, the Office is of Our Lady after Christmas.

Matins: As for Office of Our Lady throughout the year except for collect.  Reading 3 is of Our Lady (the breviary provides readings for Saturdays 1, 2, 3, and 4&5.

Lauds to None: Office of Our Lady after Christmas, MD (133) ff.  

January 14 - Septuagesima: Ordinary of Time Throughout the Year

Nativitytide officially ends with the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord; from January 14 until Septuagesima, the Offices uses the default texts set out in the psalter section of the Diurnal or Breviary for ‘time throughout the year’.

August 15: The Assumption of Our Lady

The Assumption is perhaps the most important of the Marian feast of the year, and a Holy Day of Obligation (even in countries that have largely abandoned the concept such as Australia).

The Diurnal offers a choice of two versions of the Office for this feast - the first is the ‘new approved Office’ was written after the official proclamation of the dogma of the Assumption.

And in honour of the feast, Psalm 121 (122), 'I rejoiced when they said to me, let us go into the house of the Lord', in the setting from the fabulous Vespers of the Blessed Virgin by Monteverdi.

The liturgical genius of St Benedict/2 - The seven days of creation

In the introductory post to this series I suggested that to understand the deeper levels of meaning of St Benedict's Office we need to immerse ourselves in the Patristic mindset.  

One aspect of this is an appreciation of the symbolism of numbers, which provides a key, I think, to the two anchors of the Benedictine Office, namely the creation of the universe, and its recreation through the Resurrection.  Today, a look at the first of these, creation in the Office.

  

Reading the liturgical code in the Benedictine Rule

One of the challenges for modern readers of the liturgical provisions of the Benedictine Rule is to appreciate some of the nuances of its presentation.  St Benedict provides little explicit theology for his Office; he does, though, provide some strong hints.

It is surely no accident, for example, that the section of the Rule on the liturgy follows immediately after the discussion on the cultivation of obedience and humility as a means of coming to 'that perfect love of God that casts out all fear' whereby we can observe the precepts of God not out of fear but out of 'love of Christ and through good habit and delight in virtue'. (RB 7).   

Obedience to the rubrics St Benedict sets out, I would suggest, just like obedience to the other parts of the Rule and to the superior, is one of the means by which the saint proposes that we learn the habit of turning away from our own will. 

We could also note that the final degree of humility is an injunction to manifest our humility to others by keeping our eyes downcast while pondering the guilt of our sins, whether at the Work of God in the oratory, or elsewhere (RB 7).  The work of God, as many of the psalms make clear, is, amongst other things, a sacrifice of praise offered for those sins.

Another key dimension of the Office at least hinted at by the saint is its teaching function.  St Benedict insists that his monks say all of the psalms each week.  He also twice suggests devoting time to their study and meditation on them (RB 7, 48).  One of the reasons for this, I suspect, is the Patristic view that the book of Psalms encapsulates all of the Old and New Testaments, and teaches us their content as we pray them.  St Basil is one of the authors St Benedict specifically commends to his monks, his psalm commentaries may well have been a particular influence on the design of the Benedictine Office given that his half dozen or so commentaries on individual psalms include those that open the Benedictine Office at Matins on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday [1].  St Basil opens his sermons on the psalms by noting that:

"All scripture is inspired by God and is useful, composed by the Spirit for this reason, namely, that we men, each and all of us, as if in a general hospital for souls, may select the remedy for his own condition. For, it says, 'care will make the greatest sin to cease.'  Now, the prophets teach one thing, historians another, the law something else, and the form of advice found in the proverbs something different still. But, the Book of Psalms has taken over what is profitable from all. It foretells coming events; it recalls history; it frames laws for life; it suggests what must be done; and, in general, it is the common treasury of good doctrine, carefully finding what is suitable for each one." [2]

St Basil goes on to suggest that we absorb these lessons without even being aware of it:

"When, indeed, the Holy Spirit saw that the human race was guided only with difficulty toward virtue, and that, because of our inclination toward pleasure, we were neglectful of an upright life, what did He do? The delight of melody He mingled with the doctrines so that by the pleasantness and softness of the sound heard we might receive without perceiving it the benefit of the words, just as wise physicians who, when giving the fastidious rather bitter drugs to drink, frequently smear the cup with honey..." [3]

The insight that we don't have to be conscious that we are learning something, that our understanding can grow without the meaning being explicitly laid out before us each time is important to keep in mind I think.

The importance of numerology

There is more though, to this implicit learning process, I want to suggest, than just the words of the text.  Number symbolism is one of those patristic devices that often seems particularly alien and stretched to us [4].  St Benedict's contemporary Cassiodorus, for example, manages to provide extended explanations for the numbering of the psalms up to 25 until he (more or less) runs out of steam, but on the whole they are not explanations that seem particularly intuitively obvious to modern minds [5].  Yet Patristic thought, following Scripture (think of those detailed measurements of the Temple for example), put a great deal of emphasis on numbers, seeing the appropriate use of them as reflecting and resonating with the divine design. David Clayton, for example, has argued that:

"The reason for incorporating a Christian cosmology in these works is deeper than a superficial desire to conform to an ancient symbolism that only a few will recognize. The assumption is that human beings are hardwired to pick up information presented in accordance with the pattern of the divine mind. Nature appears beautiful because we recognize in it the thumbprint of the Creator. When the work of man is structured in the same way, we see the mark of inspiration from the Creator and we are drawn to it." [6]

A few months back I drew attention to a suggestion from Fr Cassian Folsom OSB on the significance of the numbers, including the link the adoption of the 'seven times a day shall I praise you' verse of Psalm 118 (seven signally completeness) and the number of the day hours, which  Fr Cassian suggests signals that this form of the Office fulfils the injunction to pray without ceasing [7].  

The sacred number seven

There is though, another reference to the number seven in St Benedict's specifications on the Office, in the form of the instruction that no matter what psalm schema is used, all of the psalms should be said over the course of the week (RB 18). 

It is worth recalling, first of all, just why St Benedict calls seven the 'sacred number' (RB 16), namely the allusion to the seven days of creation. By insisting on a seven day psalm cursus then, on having his monks say all of the poems that encapsulate the entire Old and New Testaments each week, St Benedict is inviting us to recall those seven days of creation. 

He makes the link between the days of creation and the psalmody explicit too,  in his selection of the texts. 

Consider firstly the repeated psalms of the Office, which ensure that at least three times each day in the Office we acknowledge and respond to God as our creator.  At Matins, in Psalm 94, we are invited to sing, praise and worship God because he is our creator.  At Lauds in Psalm 148 we are invited to join the praise of all creation, to join the heavenly liturgy, the music of the cosmos.  And in the last line of the last psalm said each day, Psalm 133, God's blessing as our creator is called down on us.  The Trinitarian allusion implicit here is, I suspect, deliberate: St Benedict builds in a number of other such allusions, for example in the addition of the Gloria Patri as the doxology for each psalm and the threefold saying of the Domine labia mea aperies at the start of each day. 

The variable psalms though, also make a contribution to this great theme of God as creator [8].  There are of course many references to creation in the psalms, and some of these have no obvious connection to the day of the week on which they are said [9].  Several, though, at least as they were interpreted by the Fathers, do.  Let me just highlight a small selection of them.  Psalm 32:7 at Monday (feria secunda) Matins, for example, can be read as a reference to the division of the cosmic waters on the second day of creation.  Psalm 135, said at Vespers on Wednesday (feria quarta), takes the story of creation up to the creation of the sun and moon, day 4.  Psalm 73, which opens Thursday Matins, adds the creation of sea creatures (verses 13-14), day 5.  And Psalms 88, 93 and 99 said on Friday (day 6) all contain references to the creation of man. 

I'll come back to these references later in this series, firstly because to actually see some of them requires an understanding of Patristic approaches to Scriptural interpretation, on which I'll say more in due course.  More importantly though, just to jump ahead a little, St Benedict, I think, adopts the common patristic approach of connecting the events of the days of creation with events in the life of Christ.  St Ambrose, for example, like many others, saw a connection between the creation of man on the sixth day (Friday) and the crucifixion of Christ on that day [10].  Psalm 88, said at Matins on Friday, at least as the Fathers interpreted it, neatly makes that link in these two key verses, the first of which alludes to God's creation of man, the second which they interpreted as a prophesy of the Passion:

46  Memoráre quæ mea substántia: * numquid enim vane constituísti omnes fílios hóminum?	48 Remember what my substance is: for have you made all the children of men in vain?
47  Quis est homo, qui vivet, et non vidébit mortem: * éruet ánimam suam de manu ínferi?	49 Who is the man that shall live, and not see death: that shall deliver his soul from the hand of hell?

Before we go on to explore these references and connections further though, I want to close this post by returning to our consideration of the purpose of the Office.  

I noted above its role in training us in virtue, and in teaching us doctrine and morality.  Its most important function though, is as a participation in the heavenly liturgy, and it is worth pondering for a moment, the reasons why St Benedict describes it as our 'service' (RB 59).  In particular, the link between the notion of the service owed to God by virtue of his creation of us is nicely captured, I think, by this quote from Pope Benedict XVI:

"In the life of monks, however, prayer takes on a particular importance: it is the heart of their calling. Their vocation is to be men of prayer. In the patristic period the monastic life was likened to the life of the angels. It was considered the essential mark of the angels that they are worshippers. Their very life is worship. This should hold true also for monks. Monks pray first and foremost not for any specific intention, but simply because God is worthy of being praised. “Confitemini Domino, quoniam bonus! – Praise the Lord, for he is good, for his mercy is eternal!”: so we are urged by a number of Psalms (e.g. Ps 106:1). Such prayer for its own sake, intended as pure divine service, is rightly called officium. It is “service” par excellence, the “sacred service” of monks. It is offered to the triune God who, above all else, is worthy “to receive glory, honour and power” (Rev 4:11), because he wondrously created the world and even more wondrously renewed it." [11]

By praising God seven times in the day with psalms that summarise the story of God's work of creation, and saying them over the course of sacred number of seven days, then, the monk is repeatedly reminded both implicitly and explicitly of the seven days of creation.   More, he is invited to join in the divine, the cosmic, liturgy sung by all of creation, and so become co-creators with God through this 'work of God'.  

The story of God's saving work though, does not end with the creation of the world, but rather continues through history, and most especially in that 'eighth day' of creation, the Resurrection.  No wonder then, that the Benedictine Office actually consists of seven day hours - and the night office to make eight.  But more on this anon!

Notes

[1]  St Basil's sermons on creation and the psalms appear to have been well-known in the West, with St Ambrose using the former as the basis for his own commentary on the Hexaemeron.  The sermons cover Psalms 1, 7,14, 28, 29, 32, 33, 44, 45, 48, 59, 61 and 114. I'll come back to their significance for St Benedict's arrangement of the Office in due course.

[2] Sister Agnes Clare Way, C.D.P. (trans), St Basil, The Great Exegetic Homilies, A New Translation, Catholic University of America Press: 1963, Sermon 10 on Psalm 1, pp151.

[3] ibid, pp 152.

[4] On this topic more generally, see David Clayton, "Number", http://www.scribd.com/doc/21558177/Number-by-David-Clayton

[5] P G Walsh (trans), Cassiodorus: Explanation of the Psalms, Ancient Christian Writers, 3 vols, Paulist Press: NY, 1990.  Cassiodorus' notes on the numerical significance of the psalms are mainly in his 'conclusion' notes on each psalm.  On Psalm 25 he comments that "...we could not elicit the nature of any created object mentioned in Scripture connected with the numbers 26, 27, or 28."  But goes on to invite his readers to find something, emulating his previous examples, or at least to see significance in the possible divisions of the number...

[6] David Clayton, The Cosmic Liturgy and the Mind of the Creator, September 29, 2009

http://www.thomasmorecollege.edu/blog/2009/09/29/the-cosmic-liturgy-and-the-mind-of-the-creator/

[7] Praying without ceasing: St Benedict's numerical theology, http://saintsshallarise.blogspot.com.au/2014/02/praying-without-ceasing-st-benedicts.html; Fr Cassian Folsom, Pray without ceasing: http://osbnorcia.org/2014/03/21/conferences (see esp conference 3)

[8] It should be noted that most of the vespers hymns contain allusions to the day of creation as well, though these are relatively recent additions to the Office: see Albert Kleber O.S.B., “The Hymns at Weekly Vespers and the "Week" of Creation,” American Benedictine Review, 6:2 (1955) 171-187.

[9] Psalms including specific references to the days of creation that don't neatly allude to the day of the week on which they are said include Psalm 8, 103, and 138.

[10] John J Savage (trans) St Ambrose Hexameron, Paradise A New Translation, Catholic University of America Press: NY, 1961, pp 227.

[11] Pope Benedict XVI, Visit To Heiligenkreuz Abbey, Address,Sunday, 9 September 2007, http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2007

Feast of the translation of the relics of St Benedict: the liturgical genius of St Benedict/1

Today is of course, the feast of St Benedict in the Benedictine (and novus ordo) Calendar, and so in honour of the feast, I am posting today a brief introduction to a series of posts on the liturgical genius of St Benedict's Office.

The liturgical genius of St Benedict

Most modern commentators on St Benedict's Office have struggled to find any systematic thematic or programmatic intent in St Benedict's psalm selections beyond a few allusions to the morning or light at Lauds.

Certainly the Rule itself provides only a few rather oblique clues as to the factors that shaped St Benedict's Office, and don't go to the reasons for selecting this or that psalm for a particular hour or day.  Nonetheless, in this series of posts on the liturgical genius of St Benedict, I will argue that in fact the Benedictine Office reflects a very deliberate theological and spiritual program indeed, one that links together the seven days of creation with seven 'days' that set before us the life of Christ: seven days, in short, of the new creation.  It is, in my view, a structure that builds into each day and hour key themes and ideas for us to meditate on.  And it is a program that is closely integrated with the spirituality of St Benedict's Rule more generally.

Aggiornamento or patrimony?

The standard post-Vatican II take on the Benedictine Office is that there is, in essence, nothing particularly special about it, and therefore, implicitly or explicitly, the specifications that St Benedict set out in his Rule can be freely abandoned [1].  His Office, it was argued, provides a model for aggiornamento, of adaptation to the times for us to emulate, rather than representing a monument of tradition to be preserved.  In fact the Benedictine Order's 1977 instruction on the liturgy notes that:

"The arrangement of the Work of God described in chapters eight to twenty of the Rule of Benedict is a clear testimony to the proper liturgical tradition of Benedictine monasteries... this Liturgy of the Hours is not a mere reproduction of an existing Office, but consists of elements freely chosen from ancient (especially monastic) traditions, while the door is left open for adaptations to practical needs..." [2]

The basis for this claimed freedom to innovate was the twentieth century academic consensus that St Benedict took as his starting point the psalter of the Roman Church of his time, and made relatively minor changes to it aimed primarily at giving the hours from Lauds to None a little more variety.  But, it was argued, St Benedict did not have in mind any underlying program to the ordering of the psalmody; made no attempt to give the Office any thematic unity.  In sum:

"The process was clearly not one motivated by selecting thematically appropriate psalms.  There was a measure of that only at Lauds and Compline.  Rather, the process was, in Vogues words, a "mechanistic" one, "a matter of a very modest task of arithmetic."[3]

This take on the Benedictine Office, as the author of the quote above, James McKinnon, hints in his own comments, simply does not pass the plausibility test.  Here's why.

First, St Benedict devotes a lot of space and care to his Office in the Rule, and it is hard to resist the idea that he must have had good reasons for doing this.  It is true that the saint did, after setting out his schema, with due modesty, give a seeming permission to use other orderings of the psalms (RB 18).  Yet while modern commentators have latched onto this throwaway line, the earliest monastic commentators took quite a different view of it.  Hildemar, for example, argued that the words are simply a standard humility formula, and suggests that those who abandon St Benedict's specifications "are not seen to be lovers of the holy rule but transgressors" [4].

Secondly, and more fundamentally perhaps, it is not in the least obvious that the 'mechanistic changes' thesis adequately explains some of the seeming contortions in the organisation of St Benedict's psalter.  Paul Bradshaw, for example, found several of his choices of psalms for Lauds utterly inexplicable [5]. On the face of it though, the psalm orderings for Vespers are equally difficult to explain: why, for example, did St Benedict choose to divide some of the shorter psalms assigned to Vespers rather than the longest ones?  And why does he squash Psalm 128 into Monday Vespers when leaving it until Tuesday would have allowed a far more even spread of the number of verses to be said over the week at that hour?

Thirdly, it doesn't take much work to find at least some well-attested thematic elements to the Office.  St Bede and Rabanus Maurus, for example, both point to traditional associations between the day on which events in the life of Christ occurred, and the Old Testament (ferial) canticles said at Lauds on those days, such as between the Canticle of Habacuc said on Friday and the Passion, for example [6].

Edging towards Jerusalem

It has to be acknowledged that at least some of the work of the last half century does at least hint at some deeper possibilities in St Benedict's Office.

Some few, such as Laszlo Dobszay and John Fortin, have drawn attention to particular features of the Benedictine Office that might be important in establishing a spirituality particular to the order, such as the use of the Gradual psalms at Terce to None during the week, and in the selection of the Prime psalms [7].

And even RB 1980 notes, for example, that the inclusion of a Third Nocturn in the Sunday Office seems to have its origins in the weekly 'Resurrection Vigil' observed by the fourth century nun Egeria during a pilgrimage to Jerusalem [8] Its article on St Benedict's 'liturgical code' fails to link this insight, however, to the other dimensions of St Benedict's Sunday Matins such as the selection of the psalms to be said.  On the face of it this is rather a major oversight, for where the Office started at Psalm 1, St Benedict starts at Psalm 20 which is pre-eminently a song of the Resurrection taking its cue from its final line 'Rise up, O Lord, in your strength...'  In fact the whole set of psalms that follow on Sunday are filled with prophesies of the Resurrection, culminating in Psalm 31, whose conclusion St Benedict's contemporary Cassiodorus puts in the mouth of Christ, a promise of mercy to the sinners to whom the way to heaven has been reopened [9].

RB 1980 also notes that the Roman Cathedral tradition tried to select psalms for their appropriateness to the time and day, and to underscore the Christological meaning of the psalms [10].  St Benedict, I hope to show over the course of this series, worked very much in this tradition.  In fact, ex-Trappist turned Orthodox scholar Patrick Reardon has recently identified at least some elements of this, pointing to the existence of a weekly cycle in both the Orthodox and Benedictine Offices, that runs from Wednesday to Sunday each week and echoes the events of Holy Week. [11]

Immersing ourselves in the Fathers

Nonetheless, none of the more recent discussions of St Benedict's psalter arrangement, at least that I've come across, suggest the existence of a comprehensive program behind it or provide a convincing rationale for St Benedict's ordering of it.

There is, in my view, a good reason for this.  Most twentieth century liturgists have adopted the tools of historical-critical method, and become preoccupied with tracing the origins of the Saint's psalm ordering (aka cursus or schema) by reference to precursor Offices.  Most treatments of the Office work from the psalm equivalent of the (now largely debunked) putative 'Q Gospel', in the shape of reconstructions of a putative Roman Office that St Benedict is thought to have started from and adapted [12].  Yet, like Q theory, the reality is that there is absolutely no actual basis for these reconstructions since no office books or listings of psalms for the Roman Office of the period have actually survived [13].

Instead of attempting to trace the borrowings in St Benedict's Office, therefore, a much more fruitful approach, I would suggest, is to attempt to immerse ourselves in the mindset that St Benedict would have brought to the Opus Dei, a mindset formed and informed by the Fathers of the Church [14].

This is not easy for a modern reader, because many of the ways St Benedict and his monks would have approached the text are directly at odds with those we've been conditioned to.

Where we see translation problems and transmission errors, for example, the Fathers saw a providentially given text; where we have been trained to prefer the Hebrew Masoretic Text tradition, in St Benedict's time primacy was accorded to translations of the psalms based on the Septuagint Greek, not the Hebrew.

Above all, where we tend to focus on recovering the literal meaning of the text in its 'original' historical and cultural context, late antiquity mostly favoured the spiritual meanings of the text. The Fathers - demonstrably including St Benedict - saw Christ everywhere in the psalms, with the text either being in his voice or about him.  They invariably read the Old Testament in the light of the New: they saw the Old Testament in terms of typology, where events and people foreshadowed the events of the Gospels; they read it as prophesy; and they assigned particularly Christological meanings to certain key words and phrases [15].

If we too adopt this approach, I hope to demonstrate, the construction of St Benedict's Office takes on a whole other colour.

I'll say more about this in the next post in this series.

Notes

[1] See for example "The Liturgical Code in the Rule of St Benedict" in Fry, Timothy OSB, Imogene Baker OSB, Timothy Horner OSB, Augusta Raabe OSB and Mark Sheridan OSB editors.  RB 1980. The Rule of St Benedict in Latin and English with Notes. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1981; pp 379-414; Terrence G. Kardong, OSB, Benedict’s Rule. A Translation and Commentary. Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1996, pp209-217.

[2] Benedictine Confederation, Thesaurus Liturgiae Horarum Monasticae, Rome,1977.  Translation by Luke Dysinger: http://ldysinger.stjohnsem.edu/CH_599z_MonSpir/09_mon-reform/00a_start.htm

[3] James McKinnon, "The Origins of the Western Office", pp 63-73 in The Divine Office in the Middle Ages, Methodology and Source Studies, Regional Developments, Hagiography, Written in Honor of Professor Ruth Steiner, edited by Ruth Steiner, Margot Elsbeth Fassler, Rebecca Anne Baltzer, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000: 72.

[4] Hildemar, Commentary on the Rule of St Benedict, http://www.hildemar.org/FullText.html#Ch8.  Smaragdus (c817) similarly exhorts 'the one who has promised to live according to this Rule to hold firmly to it..", Smaragdus of Saint-Mihiel, Commentary on the Rule of St Benedict, trans David Barry, Cistercian Studies No 212, 2007, pp 331.

[5] Paul F Bradshaw, Daily Prayer in the Early Church A Study of the Origin and Early Development of the Divine Office, Eugene: Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2008 reprint, esp pp 147.

[6]  Rabanus Maurus, Commentary on the Canticles said at Matins, PL 107:1089-1166; Bede, Commentary on the Prayer of Habbacuc, in Bede: On Tobit and on the Canticle of Habakkuk, Sean Connelly, Four Corners Press, 1997.

[7] Laszlo Dobszay,“Critical Reflections on the Bugnini Liturgy: The Divine Office”, 1983 PDF available from http://musicasacra.com/literature/; 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

[8] RB 1980, op cit, pp399-400; 388.

[9] See my post on Psalms 20-31: Songs of the Resurrection or the Passion

[10] RB 1980, op cit, pp386.

[11] Patrick Henry Reardon, Christ in the Psalms, Conciliar Press, revised 2011.  See especially pp 125-126; 181-182.

[12]  See especially Adalbert de Vogüé, OSB, The Rule of Saint Benedict A Doctrinal and Spiritual Commentary, trans John Baptist Hasbrouck, Cistercian Publications: Kalamazoo, Michigan, 1983, pp 127-163; Robert Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West The Origins of the Divine Office and its Meaning for Today, Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, rev ed, 1993, and Paul F Bradshaw, op cit.

[13] On the problems of the historico-critical approach more generally see Fr Aidan Nichols OP, Criticising the Critics Catholic Apologias for Today, Family Publications, 2010; Bruce K Waltke and James M Houston with Erika Moore, The Psalms as Christian Worship A Historical Commentary, William B Erdmans Publishing Company: Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2010; and Scott Hahn and Benjamin Wiker, Politicizing the Bible The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture 1300-1700, Herder and Herder, NY, 2013.

[14]The case for doing this has recently made by Fr Cassian Folsom OSB in his series of talks on Praying Without Ceasing.

[15] See for example John O'Keefe and RR Reno, Sanctified Vision An Introduction to Early Christian Interpretation of the Bible, The John Hopkins University Press: Baltimore, 2005.