Understanding the calendar IVB - Fixed date feasts and Sundays

In the last post in this series on the calendar, we looked at how the General Calendar of feasts fixed to particular dates of the year interacts with the Office for ordinary (Class IV) days of the week.

I want to devote one more post to the detail of how to resolve conflicts between days of the week and fixed date feasts, looking at the case of Class II Sundays.  

If you work through these two posts, you will understand the general principles of how it works, and hopefully will be able to use the tables in the Diurnal to resolve the other situations in which these conflicts arise for yourself!

Sundays

Sundays have always been celebrated with more solemnity than other days in the Office.  St Benedict, for example, gives Sunday Matins an extra 'Nocturn', includes the reading of the Gospel and two extra hymns in it.

He also stressed that the psalm cycle started afresh each Sunday.

Over the centuries, however, the proliferation of feasts and rules for them that equated many feasts with Sundays meant that the texts of the core Sunday cycle was often displaced by feasts.

This situation was changed by reforms of Pope Pius X in 1913 which gave Sundays a privileged position in relation to feasts of the same or even higher rank, and can mean that a particular feast isn't celebrated at all in a particular year, or that its celebration is muted in various ways.

It can also mean that even though the Sunday is displaced by a feast, it is still remembered in the Office as a 'commemoration'.

Resolving conflicts - the two tables

You might expect that the rules on which feast or day are celebrated would be pretty straightforward: Class I feasts would trump Class II feasts or days, Class II feasts could trump Class II feasts and so on.

Unfortunately, while broadly true, it is not quite that straightforward, as we have already seen from the case of Saturday night Vespers, where when the Sunday is displaced by a feast, it is still 'commemorated' in the closing prayers of the hour.

There are a range of options as to what can happen when a feast falls on a Sunday, ranging from the feast being transferred to another day, the Sunday or the feast being commemorated, or the feast completely overriding the normal Sunday Office.

In the last post, we started looking at the 'two tables' contained in the front section of the Diurnal, which cover cases of 'occurrence and 'concurrence'.

Concurrence, it was noted, is about resolving which set of texts to use at Vespers when there are two competing possibilities, such as when Vespers of a feast potentially clashes with Saturday Vespers (I Vespers of Sunday).

The concurrence table also tells us what to do when a Class I feast (ie a feast that has first Vespers) occurs on a Monday (it tells us that a commemoration of the Monday feast is said at Sunday Vespers).

In this post, though, I want to focus primarily on the question of 'occurrence', when feasts of the General Calendar coincide with a Class II Sunday.

Sundays override memorials and Class III feasts and vigils.

Let's start with the simplest case, the two lowest rankings of days set out in the General Calendar: memorials (not covered in the table), Class III feasts, and Class III vigils.

These rank below Sundays, and so are not  celebrated when they coincide with a Sunday in a particular year.

In the August 2018 Ordo that we have been constructing then, we need to note that two of the memorial listed for August in the General Calendar are not celebrated this year - August 5's Our Lady of the Snows, and St Clare on August 12. 

Class II feasts and vigils

When it comes to Class II days, Sundays ranked Class II generally have priority over Class II feasts and vigils.

Sundays completely override Class II Vigils.

Accordingly if the Vigil of St Lawrence (August 8) falls on a Sunday in a particular year, it is not marked in the Office at all.

Class II feasts, though, even when they do not form the main Office of the day are still remembered in the Office through a 'commemoration' at Lauds.  In 2018, for example, the feast of St Martin in November coincides with a Sunday, and so is reduced to a commemoration.

The key exception to the priority of Sundays over Class II feasts is for 'feasts of Our Lord'.  When these fall on a Sunday, they completely replace the Sunday, with no commemorations of it.

In 2017, for example, the Feast of the Transfiguration of Our Lord coincided with a Sunday, so even though the feast is ranked Class II, it had a first Vespers, and the Office of the feast was used without any commemorations of the Sunday.

Class I feasts and Class II Sundays

Class I feasts do have priority over Class II Sundays.

When this happens though, except in the case of Feasts of Our Lord, the importance of the Sunday cycle is emphasized by its remembrance through commemorations at both Lauds and Vespers.

In summary

The table below summarises the rules discussed above.

If a Class II Sunday coincides with a…	Office is of…	Vespers impact
Memorial	Memorial is not marked in the Office	Not affected.
Class III Feast or Vigil	Feast or vigil is not marked in the Office	Not affected
Class II Vigil	Vigil is not marked in the Office	Of the Sunday
Class II Feasts other than those of Our Lord	Of the Sunday with commemorations of the feast at Lauds	Of the Sunday
Class II  Feasts of Our Lord	Feast, with I Vespers and no commemoration  of Sunday	I&II Vespers of the feast
Class I	Of the feast with commemorations of the Sunday at Lauds and Vespers (unless feast of Our Lord)	I&II Vespers of the feast

Adding in local feasts

In the last two posts we've looked at fixed date feasts of the General Calendar of 1962.

In the next post I will to look at other sources of fixed date feasts.

Understanding the calendar Part IVA - The fixed date feasts of the general calendar

So far in this series on how the calendar works in the 1962 Benedictine Office in the 1962 Office I've looked at:

• the daily cycle of 'hours' and the rationale for them;
• the days of the week; and the ranking of days and feasts.

This week I want to look at how to take account of the feasts that occur on fixed dates through the year.

In this post I will look at feasts that occur on weekdays; in the next we will look at the rules for Sundays; and the third I will look at adding in local feasts, as well as alternative calendars.

Some of what follows will be very familiar to some, but new to others.  

Either way, it is important to make sure you thoroughly understand it, as even if you normally follow an Ordo, there are some local feasts that you will need to add in to your Office, and that requires you to apply these principles to them.

The base 'Ordo'

In the last post I noted that feasts and days can be ranked from Class I to Class IV, with the 'default' ranking of days such that Monday to Saturdays are Class IV; and Sundays (which start from I Vespers of Saturday) are Class II.

The base texts for these days are contained in the 'psalter' section of your Office book, supplemented by the texts for Saturdays Office of Our Lady (in the section with 'Commons of feasts').

So your starting point 'Ordo' looks something like:

Sunday - Class II

All as in the psalter for a Sunday

Monday - Class IV

All as in the psalter for Monday

Tuesday - Class IV

All as in the psalter

Wednesday - Class IV

All as in the psalter 

Thursday – Class IV

All as in the psalter

Friday - Class IV

All as in the psalter

[I Vespers of Our Lady on Saturday]

Saturday - Class IV; Office of Our Lady on Saturday

Matins to None:  All as for the Office of Our Lady on Saturday
Vespers: Of Saturday (=I Vespers of Sunday)
Compline: As in the psalter

The general calendar of 1962 for Benedictines 

The next step is to overlay this with the feasts fixed to particular calendar dates.

The calendar contains two main types of feasts: the cycle based around the life of Our Lord, as well as the various Marian feasts; and those of the saints.

The feasts of saints are generally linked to the date of their heavenly birth, that is their death on earth, though in some cases for various reasons their feasts are moved to other dates.

Most Office books contain a table listing out all of the feasts attached to particular dates, arranged by month.

The version in the Diurnal, which you can find starting on page xi, is the officially approved 1962 calendar for the Benedictine Confederation (I'll come back to the question of alternate calendars and when they are permitted in due course).  

The listing for the first half of August can be translated as looking like this:

1 August - Class IV; The Holy Maccabees, memorial
2 August – Class IV; St Alphonsus Mary de Liguori, memorial
3 August - Class IV
4 August - St. Dominic, Class III
5 August – Class IV; Dedication of the Church of Our Lady of the Snows, memorial
6 August - Transfiguration of Our Lord, Class II
7 August - Class IV; SS Sixtus II, Felicissimus and Agapitus, memorial
8 August - Class IV; St Cyriacus, memorial 
9 August – Vigil of St Lawrence, Class III
10 August - St Lawrence, Class II
11 August - Class IV; St. Tiburtius, Memorial
12 August – Class IV; St. Clare, memorial 
13 August - Class IV; SS Pontianus and Hippolytus, memorial 
14 August – Vigil of the Assumption, Class II           
15 August - Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Class I

Not all of these feasts are necessarily observed every year, as the extent to which the monthly calendar interacts with the weekly cycle is governed by a series of rules ('rubrics').

Let's take a look at some of the key ones for Class IV (week) days.

Memorials on Class IV days

A good starting place is memorials, the lowest level of feasts of saints.

The key rule is that Memorials do not displace Class IV days, but are celebrated in conjunction with them by making a 'commemoration'* of the feast of the saint at Lauds (only).

If we were putting together an Ordo for August 2018, then just looking at the memorials for the moment, we find that the first day of August in 2018 was a Wednesday.

In the last post I gave as template for a Class IV Wednesday.  To that we just need to add an instruction to observe the memorial:

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

or we could simply say:

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

Exactly the same principle applies to the memorials listed for August 2, 7, 8, 11, and 13 August, which fall on weekdays this year.

The actual texts you need to make these commemorations (ie add the antiphon, versicle and collect after the collect of the day in the closing prayers) are contained in the 'Proper of the Saints' section of the book (in the Diurnal, the pages with page numbers in square brackets).

For the memorial of the Holy Maccabees, you can find them on pages [209-10] of the Diurnal, page 988 of the Antiphonale Monasticum, or pages [76-7] of the 1962 Monastic Breviary.

 

Feasts and weekdays

The second category to consider is the Class I, II and III feasts of the calendar that fall on weekdays in any particular year.

Again the key principles are very simple: 

1.  Higher level feasts (Class I, II or III) displace lower level weekdays (Class IV).

2.  Class I feasts normally start from I Vespers, ie the day before the feast (note: there are special rules for when two feasts occur in a row, and for Saturday Vespers, and I'll come back to these).

3.  All other levels of feasts affect the Office from Matins to Compline only.*  

*Note: In pre-1962 Calendars, the equivalent to Class II feasts started with I Vespers, and some monasteries retain this practice. 

Let's start by overlaying the General Calendar for August with the days of the week in 2018, leaving aside Saturdays and Sundays for the moment.

On Monday August 6, the feast of the Transfiguration, as Class II, displaces the default Class IV day.  

And the same thing occurs on Friday August 10 with the feast of St Lawrence.

Because the Feast of the Assumption is Class I, though, it also affects Tuesday 13 August, displacing its Vespers.

The actual way and extent to which a weekday's texts are displaced, depends on:

• the hour concerned.  At Prime, for example, only the antiphon can change; at Matins, Lauds and Vespers, 'festal' psalms sometimes displace those for the day of the week;
• the level of feast; and
• whether or not the feast has its own ('proper') antiphons, or just uses those for the type of saint concerned (ie Commons of Apostles, Martyrs, etc).

You can find notes on the way feasts impact on the normal texts of the day in the notes on each hour linked to in the Learn the Office page on this blog.

The simplest approach, though, is to follow the Ordo notes provided on this blog, which basically tells you which things change because of the feast, and where to find the relevant texts.

Vigils and weekdays

The August calendar also provides an example of another type of 'day' in the calendar to take account of, namely Vigils, in this case relating to the feasts of St Lawrence and the Assumption respectively.

Vigils, like feasts, can be Class I (such as for Christmas), II (as for the Assumption) or III (St Lawrence) and simply displace or add texts to the celebration of the normal weekday Office.

On Class II&III vigils, the main effect is on Matins, where the readings are those of the Vigil; at the day hours, the only change is the collect (at the hours other than Prime and Compline), which is of the vigil.

Feasts and Saturday Vespers

Finally, to complete our consideration of feasts and weekdays, we need to look at feasts that fall on Saturdays.

For Matins to None, the rules for Saturday are exactly the same as for other Class IV weekdays.

Saturday Vespers, however, are normally celebrated as 'I Vespers of Sunday', and the rules for Sundays are slightly different to those for weekdays, as they have a higher priority than most feasts.

Let's look at the example of the feast of St Dominic in August 2018.

Normally on a Class III feast, Vespers would be of the feast.

But in this case, that would conflict with First Vespers of the Sunday, which is effectively considered to be Class II.

The key to working out potential conflicts between Sundays and feasts is the 'Two tables' in Diurnal (pages xxv - xxvii).

The second table, concurrence, deals with situations like the feast of St Dominic, and it can be read as providing these rules:

1.  If (II) Vespers of a Class III feast coincides with I Vespers of a Class II Sunday (ie Saturday Vespers), Vespers of the feast is not celebrated.

2.  If (II Vespers) of a Class I or II feast coincides with I Vespers of a Class II Sunday, Vespers of the feast is celebrated with a 'commemoration' of the Sunday.


So for Saturday August 5 our Ordo would read:

Saturday 4 August - St Dominic, Class III

Matins to None: Of the feast of St Dominic
Vespers and Compline: Of the Sunday

If the feast of St Dominic had been Class II or I, however, Vespers would have been of the feast with a commemoration of the Sunday (made exactly the same way a commemoration of a memorial is done).

Summary and Ordo for August 2018

The table below summarises the principles we've looked at so far for feasts and weekdays.

If a Class IV day coincides with a feast ranked…	Office is of…	Vespers impact
Memorial	The Class IV day (or Office of Our Lady on Saturday) with a commemoration at Lauds	Not affected.
Class III	The Class III feast	Vespers of the day is of the feast unless the feast falls on a Saturday, in which case Vespers is of the Sunday.
Class II	The Class II feast	*No first Vespers; if falls on a Saturday, Second Vespers includes a commemoration of the Sunday.
Class I	The Class I feast	Class I feasts normally have both first and second Vespers; if it falls on a Saturday, Second Vespers includes a commemoration of the Sunday.

*Note that some monasteries retain I Vespers for Class II feasts.

A good way to check your understanding is to put together some short Ordo notes for the days of August listed above (leaving aside the Sundays for now).

Once you've had a go, check it against the listing below.

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

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 with a commemoration of St Alphonsus at Lauds

Friday 3 August - Class IV

All as in the psalter

Saturday 4 August - St. Dominic, Class III

Matins to None: As for the feast of St Dominic

Vespers: I Vespers of the Sunday

Monday 6 August - Transfiguration of Our Lord, Class II

Matins to Compline: Of the feast

Tuesday 7 August - Class IV; SS Sixtus II, Felicissimus and Agapitus, memorial

All as in the psalter, with a commemoration at Lauds

Wednesday 8 August - Class IV; St Cyriacus, memorial

All as in the psalter, with a commemoration at Lauds

Thursday 9 August – Vigil of St Lawrence, Class III

Matins: Readings and collect of the Vigil

Prime: As for Thursday in the psalter

Lauds, Prime to Vespers: As in the psalter, with collect of the Vigil

Friday 10 August - St Lawrence, Class II

Matins to Compline: Of the feast

Saturday 11 August - Class IV, Office of Our Lady on Saturday; St. Tiburtius, Memorial

Matins to None: Office of Our Lady on Saturday with a commemoration at Lauds

Vespers: I Vespers of Sunday

Monday 13 August - Class IV; SS Pontianus and Hippolytus, memorial

All as in the psalter with a commemoration at Lauds

Tuesday 14 August – Vigil of the Assumption, Class II          

Matins: As for Tuesday in the psalter with readings and collect of the vigil

Lauds: As for Tuesday in the psalter with collect of the vigil

Prime: As for Tuesday in the psalter

Terce to None: As for Tuesday in the psalter with collect of the vigil

Vespers: I Vespers of the Assumption

Wednesday 15 August - Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Class I

Matins to Vespers: All of the feast.

The next post looks at how Sundays interact with the General Calendar.

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

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

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

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

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

Constructing a personal Ordo

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

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

Wednesday 

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

Levels of days and feasts

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

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

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

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

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

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

The defaults

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

And the default ranking of Sundays is Class II.

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

Sunday - Class II

Monday - Class IV

Tuesday - Class IV

Wednesday - Class IV

Thursday – Class IV

Friday - Class IV

Saturday - Class IV

Office of Our Lady on Saturday

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

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

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

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

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

Saturday Class IV - Office of Our Lady on Saturday

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

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

Which feast or day has priority?

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

Understanding the Calendar Part IIIA - Days of the week

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

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

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

The psalms of the day of the week

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The days of the week at Matins, Lauds and Vespers

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scriptural associations with the hours

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

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

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

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

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

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

The structure and fixed texts of the hours

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This week some notes on the first of these.

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

The hours

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

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

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

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

The proper times of day for the hours

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

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

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

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

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

The daily solar cycle and the hours

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

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

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

Prayer through the day and night

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can you say the hours in blocks?

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

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

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

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

Can you 'anticipate' the hours?

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

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

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

The rationale for the time of the hours?

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

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