Tag: divine office

Praying the Monastic Office (Reblog)

On By J. Barrett LeeIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Article by Sr. Cintra Pemberton OSH originally posted by the Conference of Anglican Religious Orders in the Americas (CAROA).

Psalm 62 says: “For God alone my soul in silence waits; from God comes my salvation.” This is the prayer in my heart, said over and over, as I sit in the darkened chapel each morning before Matins. The time seems to fly by some days and drag by on others, but it’s essential life-giving time nevertheless. As I sit alone in the silence, sometimes I feel the presence of the angels. I can hear them singing in some faraway place, calling me to join my voice with theirs, and when the time comes later in the day, I will try to do just that…

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‘Office Work’: Praying the Liturgy of the Hours

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“Indeed, let nothing be preferred to the Work of God.”
-Rule of St. Benedict, chapter 43

The heart of Benedictine spirituality is the Divine Office. Also called the ‘Liturgy of the Hours’ or the Opus Dei (Latin: ‘Work of God’). The Office is the daily cycle of prayer, centering on the chanting of Psalms and the reading of Scripture. The purpose of this exercise is, as monks have called it, ‘the sanctification of time.’ We frame our days and pause periodically from our work to reset our lives in the context of eternity. All of life is sacred; the Office is how we remember that.

There are many good breviaries and prayer books available to assist this process in an orderly way. Most famous among Anglicans and Episcopalians is The Book of Common Prayer. This is a fantastic resource, even for Protestants of other denominations. Presbyterians have their own version in The Book of Common Worship: Daily Prayer. Roman Catholics have the four-volume Liturgy of the Hours. The breviary I use is Benedictine Daily Prayer (abbreviated BDP), edited by Dr. Maxwell Johnson and published by Liturgical Press. What I like best about this one is its similarity to the practice of the Office at St. Gregory’s. When I pray, I like to feel connected to my brothers in the cloister, even though I can only visit the monastery once a month or so.

At St. Gregory’s, the monks say seven offices daily. They rise at 4am for Matins (also called Vigils in BDP), followed by Lauds at 6. During the day, they pause from their work every two or three hours for the “Little Hours” of Terce, Sext, and None. Vespers concludes the work day at 5pm, followed by Compline before bed. They recite the entire Psalter each week, as prescribed in the Rule of St. Benedict.

Naturally, it is difficult for someone outside the cloister to keep this kind of schedule (in point of fact, it’s not easy for monks themselves). In my own practice, I get up between 6 and 7 for a combined service of Vigils and Lauds. During the day, I try to say as many of the Little Hours as possible. Vespers is a non-negotiable. Compline is usually the last thing I do before lying down at night.

BDP uses a four-week cycle of Psalms at Vigils (with an option to do it in two weeks), a two-week cycle at Lauds, weekly at Vespers, and daily at the Little Hours and Compline. Most of the Psalter is said during this time, with perhaps a half-dozen omissions for the imprecatory (cursing) Psalms that are also omitted in the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours.

My schedule requires a certain flexibility with the time at which the hours are said. Traditionally the hours were said at the “crosspoints” of the old analogue clocks (12, 3, 6, and 9; am and pm). I usually use these as a base-point and leave myself a window of an hour before or after, in which to recite that office. It ends up looking roughly thus:

6am (5-7):  Vigils and Lauds  (approx. 30-35 minutes)
9am (8-10):  Terce  (5 mins.)
12pm (11-1):  Sext  (5 mins.)
3pm (2-4):  None  (5 mins.)
6pm (5-7):  Vespers  (15-20 mins.)
9pm (8-10):  Compline  (10 mins.)

On busy days, I say a combined Vigils and Lauds, at least one of the Little Hours, Vespers, and Compline. My bare minimum is Lauds and Vespers, inserting the longer Scripture readings from Vigils. I only do this as a last resort, since it causes me to miss much of the Psalter at Vigils.

Work meetings and family commitments don’t always allow for me to say all three of the Little Hours, but I keep the goal of saying all three before my eyes. This provides a helpful framework for my day. It might seem like a lot, but each of these offices can be recited in as little as 5 minutes. If you think about it, that’s no longer than the average coffee or cigarette break at work (and without the added risk of lung cancer). The benefits are as psychological as they are spiritual. As a person who lives with ADHD, this helps me to stay on-task and organized. If I am working on a large project at work, I find that I often return to it with mind refreshed and renewed perspective. I keep an older edition of BDP in my car for this purpose, should I need to say an office on the run. The best days are when I manage to say all three.

The Divine Office is meant to be sung, rather than said. At Vigils and Lauds, I typically sing the hymn and say the rest. At the Little Hours and Compline, I sing the hymn, the Psalms, the Gospel Canticle, and the Marian Antiphon. At Vespers, I sing the entire office, except for the reading and responsory.

Singing the Hours: Musical Resources for Benedictine Daily Prayer

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized4 Comments

For many years since college, the staple of my private devotional life has been the Daily Office in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer (BCP). I’ve sampled other prayer books and breviaries over the years, but nothing has come close to the BCP. Nothing, that is, until I discovered Benedictine Daily Prayer (BDP).

I fell in love with this particular breviary because of its close similarity to the Office as it recited at my home monastery, St. Gregory’s Abbey, Three Rivers. It offers seven offices daily, with a robust cycle of longer biblical readings at Vigils. Of all the prayer books currently on the market, this is the one that most closely resembles the Liturgy of the Hours as prescribed in the Rule of St. Benedict and the Thesaurus Liturgiae Horarum Monasticae. The editor of BDP, the Rev. Dr. Maxwell Johnson of the University of Notre Dame, has done an amazing job with this project. With the recent release of a revised edition, Dr. Johnson has even managed to improve on excellence. This volume is great for Benedictine oblates, monastic enthusiasts, or anyone else who is passionate about the Divine Office. Choosing between BDP and my long-beloved BCP has been a difficult challenge.

You can order a copy of BDP from the publisher by clicking here.

The biggest challenge with BDP is the lack of musical resources available for those, like me, who prefer to chant the Office. I have managed to piece together several helpful resources in this regard and would like to share them here. I would be remiss if I did not give credit to Dr. Johnson for recommending several of these resources to me.

The Mundelein Psalter <— Click here for link

This is a fantastic resource for chanting the Office. It was designed for chanting the Liturgy of the Hours for the Roman Catholic Church. There is a selection of lovely, simple psalm tones that are easily learned. There are hymn tunes from the Liber Usualis for most of the major office hymns. These could be easily adapted for the psalms and hymns in the BDP. Frankly, some of the hymn translations in the Mundelein Psalter are better than the ones in BDP. Additionally, there are tones for chanting the other parts of the office, like the opening versicle and doxology, the litany, and the Lord’s Prayer. I also really like that the editors printed the full text of the General Instruction for the Liturgy of the Hours in the front of the book. The website (linked above) has several useful resources for learning the chants. It should be noted that the music in the Mundelein Psalter is printed in Gregorian notation. This system is different from the modern, five-line staff, but can be easily learned and is actually more adaptable than modern notation. The learning curve for Gregorian notation is steep at first, but well worth the effort, especially for those who are serious about chanting the Divine Office in the monastic style.

There are two significant downsides to the Mundelein Psalter. First, it is quite expensive (about $50). Second, it is almost a full breviary in itself (for the Roman LOTH), so you get a lot of material you don’t need and will likely never use. That being said, if it fits your budget, the Mundelein Psalter is an excellent resource for music and instruction.

The Lumen Christi Hymnal

This smaller, less expensive volume is great for the hymns. Like the Mundelein Psalter, many of these hymn translations are superior to the ones printed in BDP. The tunes are straight out of the Liber Usualis and are printed in modern notation (unlike the Mundelein Psalter). Also, I particularly appreciate that the Lumen Christi Hymnal includes tones for the Marian Antiphons in Latin. These are a beautiful way to end Compline just before bed.

[On a personal note, my very Presbyterian wife has come to love the Marian Antiphons by osmosis. She is usually settling into bed as I sing Compline in our room. One of the highlights of her day is when I “sing her to sleep” in Latin.]

St. Meinrad Psalm Tones

Click here for the tones in Gregorian notation

Click here to see them in modern notation

The first, best thing about these tones is that they are available for free. You can’t beat that on a budget. For those who don’t want to shell out the money for the Mundelein Psalter, these can be printed and used easily with the hymn tunes from the Lumen Christi Hymnal. St. Meinrad’s Archabbey is one of the largest and best-known Benedictine communities in the United States. Their tones are simple and elegant. Unlike the traditional Gregorian psalm tones, the St. Meinrad tones have more than two lines. This may be off-putting to strict traditionalists, but I am finding they have an elegance of their own that blends well with Gregorian chant. In many ways, I prefer them to the traditional tones for use with BDP because the multi-syllabic intonations and cadences of the Gregorian tones often don’t fit into the shorter psalm lines of the adapted Grail Psalms used by BDP.

Theses are the musical resources I am most familiar with. All of them have worked well for me in chanting the Divine Office as laid out in Benedictine Daily Prayer. I sincerely hope this is useful for others on the path.

The Divine Office

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This is a short introduction to the Liturgy of the Hours (a.k.a. the Divine Office) by Fr. Jeremy Driscoll, OSB of Mount Angel Abbey. It is beautifully and simply done. Very much worth a few minutes of your time, especially if you’ve ever wondered what monasticism is all about.