June 22, 2009

Little German Breviary

Today the mail brought my latest foreign language adventure, a German breviary. It seems as if it is their equivalent of our Shorter Christian Prayer, and contains Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Compline. Unlike our short breviary, which is usually in one volume, this seems to be four little inexpensive volumes for--as far as I can tell--Advent/Christmas, Lent/Easter, Ordinary Time, and then a fourth volume for the sanctoral cycle (which seems odd to me.) I ordered the ordinary time volume. What I really want right now is the Compline. Knowing it well, it's usually where I start when I'm trying to learn to pray in another language.

Anyway, it's an adorable little pocket-size prayer book. Here's the title page and the nice and sturdy Benedictus/Magnificat card:



And now I shall go on a pet rant. Even in this little breviary, as you can see in the picture below, Sunday antiphons for the Gospel Canticles are provided according to the three-year cycle of Sunday Gospels. This is how it is in the typical edition. I have no idea why our English translators didn't see fit to print the whole set for the three hinge hours each Sunday. Instead we get the antiphon that corresponds to year A for Evening Prayer I, year B for Morning Prayer, and year C for Evening Prayer II, which means that the antiphon only fits the Sunday Gospel one out of three times on each Sunday. Come on, guys.



It comes with three ribbons, which is generous for the size of the book. They are the cloth kind, which can't be cauterized with fire, and so have to be either tied or shellacked so they don't unravel.

5 comments:

pennyante said...

Oh, I loved the vesper verses. It contains one of my favorite passages...

B. Lord, if you want to, you can heal me. And Jesus said, I do want to... be made clean...

********

And Jesus said... I DO want to...

When I say, "Lord, forgive me." I know He will respond, "I will..."

Scott said...

Thanks for this post! Another great German breviary is Christuslob, which has chant music. It's what the Christian Prayer edition could be like if there weren't such a monopoly on breviary publishing by Catholic Book Publishing. Too bad the company with the monopoly also happens to put out the ugliest imaginable editions of everything.

Brother Charles said...

Thanks for the tip, Scott!

Anonymous said...

i think the problem is that the american edtion has never been updated, the antiphons for each sunday cycle were added in the next edtion of the liturgy of the hours that came out under Pope JP2
and the american edtions are all from the first edtion that came out in the 1970's.

the bigger question is why is there so little interest in making the liturgy of the hours a real ecclesial prayer and a school of prayer? the bishops seem to have no interest in it...that is why it is never updated??/

Brother Charles said...

Thanks for the information, Anonymous. Perhaps once we get the English 3rd edition MR out and promulgated, they can start on the LOH. Badly in need of a new edition, I agree.