Showing posts with label Office. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Office. Show all posts

Friday, November 16, 2018

Getting ready for Advent 2B - Reading an Ordo Part II


Continuing my series getting ready for Advent, and the new liturgical year, I want to continue on with some further comments on using an Ordo.

And in the process, I'll talk about what texts to ignore or adapt in older Office books!

An ordo and the default, or ferial texts.


A key point to keep in mind in using the Ordo, including the one provided on this blog, is that they typically only tell you what is different from the ordinary, ie what appears for the relevant hour and day of the week in the psalter section of your book.

This means that:

(1) If the Ordo is silent, you should use the default texts set out in the psalter section for the particular day and hour you are proposing to say.

(2) If the Ordo provides page numbers for a part of the hour, unless indicated otherwise, these displace the ones normally used at a particular hour.

An example: 1 Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent


For First Vespers of Advent (the Saturday before the First Sunday of Advent) for example, the Ordo might read:

1 Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent: Antiphons, chapter, responsory, hymn, versicle, Magnificat antiphon, and collect, MD 1*/AM 186 ff.

What this is telling you is that the parts of the hour of Vespers not mentioned - the opening prayer, psalms, Magnificat and closing prayers (other than the collect)  - are as normally said for Saturday Vespers.

The table below spells out what this means in practice.

 VESPERS
‘Default’ texts
1 Vespers of the First Sunday of Advent
Opening prayers
MD 1
 MD 1
Antiphons
and psalms 
Saturday - MD 249 ff



Ant 1 (Regnum tuum)+Ps 144+Ant 1
Ant 2 (Laudabo)+Ps 145+Ant 2
Ant 3 (Deo nostro)+Ps 146+Ant 3
Ant 4 (Lauda)+Ps 147+Ant 4
 Antiphons of Advent 1, MD 1,
 with psalms of Saturday, MD 249 ff

 Ant 1 (In illa die)+Ps 144+Ant 1 (of
 Advent 1)
 Ant 2 (Iucundare)+Ps 145+Ant2
 Ant 3 (Ecce Dominus)+Ps 146+Ant 3
 Ant 4 (Ecce veniet)+Ps 147+Ant 4
Chapter
O altitudo, MD 254
Fratres, MD 1*
Short Responsory
Magnus Dominus, MD 254
 Ostende nobis, MD 2*
Hymn
O lux beata Trinitas, MD 254
 Conditor alme, MD 2-3*
Versicle
Vespertina oratio, MD 255
 Rorate caeli, MD 3*
Antiphon for the Magnificat
Of the following Sunday of the year
 Ecce nomen Domini, MD 3*
Magnificat
MD 209
 MD 209
Antiphon for the Magnificat
 Of the following Sunday of the year
 Ecce nomen Domini, MD 3*
Closing prayers
MD 210
 MD 210
Collect of the week or day
  MD 1*

Knowing the ferial Office


At Vespers, as the example above illustrates, almost every part of the hour can be festal, but at the other hours, fewer things change - at Prime, for example, only the antiphon.

This means that in saying the hours, particularly when it comes to the special seasons of the year, and on feasts, you need to have a good understanding of what the normal parts of the hour are and the order they are said in, as well as how different levels of feasts can affect the hour.

To help you on this, I've reposted some quick guides to the day hours, with page number references to the Monastic Diurnal, over at the Learn the Benedictine Office Blog.

Navigating older books


If you are using an older Office book, I'd suggest taking the quick guides, and drawing up your own set of page numbers for the psalter section in it.

In general, if you follow the directions in the Ordo about what parts of the Office change for a particular feast, the texts you are looking for will generally be there.

The key things to watch out for in using older books for the day hours are that:
  • only part of the antiphon may be given before the psalm - but in the 1962 rubrics they are always said in full before and after the psalm(s); and
  • older books may include additional material such preces in the psalter section, and additional commemorations elsewhere - that are no longer used.
In the case of Matins, although I haven't done a comprehensive comparison, as far as I've found there are generally very few changes in the texts for particular feasts between older books and the 1962 breviary.  The main exception is feasts that have been upgraded in various ways, such as the Assumption and Immaculate Conception, but even in these cases the 1962 breviary generally provides an option to use the older version of the feast,

The key change relates to Class III feasts, which often represent a downgrade from a three Nocturn Office to a two Nocturn one.  In this case, the feast is normally marked, in the 1962 rubrics, by:

  • an Invitatory antiphon and hymn (taken from the Common of the type of saint or of the feast);
  • a single reading (usually identical to the Roman 1962) and  responsory (either of the feast or of the type of saint;
  • Nocturn II chapter (typically that of Sext) and versicle (typically that of Terce) of the type of saint; and 
  • collect of the feast.  

Friday, November 9, 2018

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.

Tuesday, January 10, 2017

Prayer options for the Stealth Hermitess (and others) - Offices of the religious orders Part II

In my last post in this I talked about the value of the (traditional) Offices of the religious orders.

There is a key question around these Offices though, namely can just anyone say them?

In this post I will go into a bit of the history, and sketch out the competing positions on the answer.

Warning: this is a rather technical post and many may prefer to remain in invincible ignorance on this topic!  I would also add that I am not a canon lawyer or expert on liturgical law, so my opinions on this issue are just that, they have no particular weight.

Offices of religious orders as a devotion vs as liturgy

The first point to note is that anyone clearly can say these Offices as a devotion.

The Offices of religious orders have clearly been approved by the Church at one point or another, so there is absolutely nothing harmful in them; quite the contrary, the prayers and other components of these Offices are a treasure that deserves to be appreciated.

But can laypeople legitimately pray them as the official prayer of the Church?

The answer is not at clear cut as it turns out.

A little history

The problem is that before Vatican II, who had the right to say the Divine Office of a religious order was very tightly regulated indeed, and typically restricted to religious in solemn vows, or on the path to them.

Before Trent

Prior to the Council of Tent, a wide variety of different forms of the Office existed and their were few if any rules on who could say what.  So far as the laity went, the Office they said seems, as far as I can gather, have been largely dictated by where they lived: if your parish church was a monastery or was run by a monastery you probably got some form of the monastic office or office of the religious order in charge; if your parish was secular you probably attended the Roman Office and/or the Little Office of Our Lady.  In addition, there were a wide variety of votive offices in books of hours that appear to have been used.

The seventeenth century and after

After Trent that changed in several fundamental ways.  First, the clergy and religious, but not the laity, were formally delegated to say the Office.  The net result of this was that laypeople saying the Office by themselves were no longer deemed to be praying liturgically. 

Secondly, instead of the Office universally being sung, like the Mass it became able to be said silently.  Where once priests typically sung a large proportion of their Offices in Church with a congregation, it increasingly became a private affair. 

Thirdly, much tighter controls over the Office were imposed, with the breviaries of the religious orders now having to receive papal approval rather than essentially being an affair largely dictated by the Order, Congregation or individual monastery.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the controls became even tighter, and many Benedictine nuns running schools and other active apostolates found themselves deemed 'mere oblates', and were forced to choose between abandoning their livelihoods or being deprived of the right to say the full Office.  Oblates and Third Order members (and others) were generally not permitted to use the full Divine Offices of the religious orders; instead they typically said the Little Office of Our Lady of their Order.

From the late nineteenth century onwards, a series of individual indults provided that priest-oblates/third order members could satisfy their obligation to say the Office by using the Office of their Order.  It was a very limited permission though - for private recitation only, rather than with a group, and in the case of the Benedictines, even that was not granted until 1947.

Vatican II and after

All that changed though, with Vatican II and subsequent legislation, which firstly decreed that the various Little Offices (provided they had psalms as their basis) could constitute liturgical prayer; extended the delegation to pray the Office liturgically to the laity; and largely 'deregulated' control over the Office to the Orders themselves.

The 1979 Thesaurus for Benedictines and subsequent Directory and Directive Norms, for example, effectively gave individual monasteries the right to construct their own forms of the Office (albeit within certain limits, providing they adhered to the 1972 calendar approved for the Benedictine Confederation).

And of course, since then, Unversae Ecclesiae has made it clear that the 1962 books can also be used by members of religious orders.

Who can use the traditional Offices of religious orders?

Yet though Universae Ecclesiae made the position clear for professed members of religious orders, it did not actually specifically address the issue of third order/oblates, or the laity more generally, and the situation for these groups is, I think, pretty unclear.

Let me note that private and public associations of the faithful on the path to becoming religious institutes are, I think, in a different position which will depend on their statutes; for the purpose of this post I'm just talking about the laity.

There are, I think, four possible positions on the right to pray the traditional (1962) Office of a religious order liturgically:

Position 1: The narrow view - Only those previously covered by indults (such as priest Oblates) can use them to pray the office liturgically, on the basis of the previous indults;
Position 2:  With the permission of the monastery -  Individual monasteries or orders can give oblates/third order members permission to use their Offices, consonant with their role in forming the spirituality of the members of these associations under the Code of Canon Law;
Position 3 - All oblates - Any oblate or third order member can use the Office of the Order they are associated with; or
Position 4 - Anyone can pray these Offices.

Personally I now lean towards position 3, but I can see the arguments for a broader view.

Let's go through the arguments.

1. The narrow view - priest-oblates only

A narrow reading of the Universae Ecclesiae would seem restrict the permission to use the 1962 books strictly to professed religious, since paragraph 34 talks about 'Sodalibus Ordinum Religiosorum'.

Though many oblates, for example, like to claim the title 'OSB Obl.' the reality is that oblates and (secular) third orders are not actually technically 'sodales', or members of the religious order in question.  Rather they are members of public associations of the faithful associated with the religious order (or monastery in the case of Benedictines) in question (1983 Code of Canon Law, 303, 311).

However, pretty much everything I've found on this topic agrees that this is too narrow a reading of the document.

In particular, Universae Ecclesiae makes it clear that although the books are to be used as they stood in 1962 (ie in Latin and according to the pertinent rubrics), it also says that "With regard to the disciplinary norms connected to celebration, the ecclesiastical discipline contained in the Code of Canon Law of 1983 applies."  Since the indults for priest-Oblates/Third Order members reflected the fact that before the Vatican II, aside from religious, only priests could pray the Office liturgically; with the extension of that right to all the faithful, the previous restrictions make no sense.

Moreover, in contrast to most Orders, the 1963 Benedictine books were never actually suppressed, and continue to be used in many monasteries, albeit with assorted adaptations, right up to the present, so arguably wasn't covered by Universae Ecclesiae in any case (except by extension).

2.  Up to the individual monastery or Order

A second possibility is that it is up to individual religious orders (or in the case of Benedictines Congregations/monasteries) to decide what Office those affiliated with them should be encouraged to say.

On the face of it this seems like a reasonable position to take, but the possible outcomes would surely be contrary to the spirit, even if not the letter of Universae Ecclesiae.  It would mean that an Order like the Dominicans couldn't at least in theory, stop its professed members from using the traditional Office, but could stop its third order members from doing so.  That would appear to be a perverse outcome indeed.

And while more of a case for this approach could perhaps be made for Benedictines, where Oblates in theory at least seek to share the spirituality of the particular monastery they are associated with, the whole point of Summorum Pontificum and the subsequent clarifications was to reopen access to the Catholic patrimony.  It would surely be contrary to the intention of the legislation to deny oblates the right to enjoy the patrimony of the Order they have chosen to be associated with.

So while individual monasteries/orders certainly can give their oblates/seculars explicit permission to use the traditional Office, presumably using whatever version of the rubrics they use themselves, there is a good case, in my view, for a wider view.

3.  All oblates/third order members

This position is essentially that all third order members and equivalents have the right to say the traditional (1962) Office of their Order privately (but not publicly in the absence of religious).  This is the position that Fr Augustine Thompson OP, for example, has taken in relation to the Dominican Office.

I have to admit that this is the position that I had always assumed applied, and am still fairly attracted to, though I can see the case for a broader view.

The advantage of this position is that it preserves the traditional idea that the liturgy of the religious orders pertains to those orders, while recognising the change in status of third order members when it comes to the liturgy.

It is obviously consonant with the supervisory role of the various orders to provide assistance to third order and equivalent members - for example in the form of websites, podcasts and editions of liturgical books - to assist in this.  But doesn't fundamentally undermine the idea that a rite or use is intended to be used by a specific group of people officially recognised as associated with that particular spirituality.

I find myself quite uncomfortable, for example, with an Australian group that is currently holding a  retreat using (as far as I can gather) the Benedictine Office and a pseudo-monastic horarium, but without, at least as far as I can ascertain, actually having any monks or nuns present to lead the affair (maybe they do though, and are just not advertising the fact; I'm simply using the example to illustrate the point).

In this particular case, the group evidently has some level of ecclesiastical approval, and no doubt a number of those present are Oblates, but does this approach mean a group could, for example, could set up an association dedicated to, say, the Sarum Rite, and lead a revival of its practices?  If so, let's do it!

4.  Anyone can say the (approved form of the) Office of a religious order

In any case, the group mentioned above are probably not alone in taking a more open view as to who can say these forms of the liturgy.

I have to admit that I have, in the past, assumed, as it turns out quite incorrectly, that those using this site were generally oblates.

Instead, a survey of those who took my recent course on the Benedictine Office, has proven me wrong on this front with many people indicating that they were attracted to the Benedictine Office because of its traditional nature and relatively accessible support resources, rather than being attracted, initially at least, to Benedictine spirituality per se.

Accordingly, I've been prodded to do a bit more digging, and  it has to be said that the current Code of Canon Law, and General Guidelines on the Liturgy of the Hours do seem to imply a much less restrictive view of the subject.

Under the 1917 Code of Canon Law, for example, priests were strictly restricted to using their own rite.  Under the 1983 Code, the restriction applies to the celebration of the sacraments only, not other liturgical functions such as the Divine Office.

Similarly, under the current Code Catholics have the right to join in the worship (though not necessarily to formally be enrolled as a member) of any Catholic Church, regardless of what rite it is using.  Indeed, the General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours explicitly provides that celebration in common of another use satisfies any obligation to say the Office:
241. The office in choir and in common is to be celebrated according to the proper calendar of the diocese, of the religious family, or of the individual churches. Members of religious institutes join with the community of the local Church in celebrating the dedication of the cathedral and the feasts of the principal patrons of the place and of the wider geographical region in which they live. 
242. When clerics or religious who are obliged under any title to pray the divine office join in an office celebrated in common according to a calendar or rite different from their own, they fulfill their obligation in respect to the part of the office at which they are present.
The key basis for a much broader view, though, is probably Canon 214 of the 1983 Code which provides that:
Christ's faithful have the right to worship God according to the provisions of their own rite (iuxta praescripta proprii ritus) approved by the lawful Pastors of the Church; they also have the right to follow their own form of spiritual life, provided it is in accord with Church teaching.
The Offices of the religious orders are generally considered to be uses of the Roman Rite, rather than different rites per se (regardless of what they are called; one doesn't formally transfer between rites when one becomes a Dominican for example, you just acquire the right to use an alternate use of the Roman Rite), so it can be argued that these books do meet the requirement here.  Moreover the right to follow one's own form of spiritual life is arguably closely bound up in the Office for many people.

Another point in favour of the broadest view is that in the wake of Vatican II, religious Orders were actively encouraged to share their liturgy, and many did so.  If we don't take the broad view, who precisely, for example, are the resources published by the Carthusians, who have no third order or (at least back then) associated lay group, intended for?

The real problem for many is, I think, a practical one: we instinctively find the current Roman Liturgy of the Hours' totally inadequate, even subversive of the faith, for reasons many others have laid out in depth.  The  century old 1962 Roman Office though, is equally unsatisfactory in many ways, and expensive and hard to access to boot.  In the absence of  good alternatives, are we seeing the Sensus Fidelium at work?

Regardless, let me make one last point.  Even if we don't technically have the right to say a particular form of the Office, that doesn't mean we aren't praying it liturgically: if a priest says Mass in a rite not his own, for example, it is still valid, just not 'licit'.  A similar situation may well apply in the case of the Office...

Friday, July 11, 2014

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.