Liturgical Books and Our Sense of Time

[Original post, July 12, 2010]

Anyone who has used a hand missal or a breviary is familiar with the chart of movable days somewhere in the front. I find it interesting to note how far they go into the future, because I suspect it says something about our sense of time and change.

My hand missal for the ordinary form, published in 2003, goes up to 2010, suggesting that the editors imagined one would use it for seven years. Perhaps it was a good guess, given that we expect the new and improved English translation of the 2002 Missale Romanum one of these days. [As we know, it arrived for Advent 2011.]

My Baronius Press hand missal for the extraordinary form, published in 2007, has a calendar that goes up to 2066, suggesting a much longer sense of how long someone might use it.

My 1976 American English Liturgy of the Hours goes up to 1999, while the 2000 typical edition Liturgia Horarum goes up 2022, about the same span of years. My 1962 Breviarium Romano-Seraphicum goes a little bit longer, to 1992.

The 2002 Missale Romanum contains a liturgical calendar that goes up to 2023, about the same span as the breviaries. The 1954 Missale Romano-Seraphicum, however, has a calendar that goes up to 2003, more than twice the span. The editors imagined it being used almost long enough to come back as an option after forty years of Novus Ordo exclusivity!

I'm sure there's a dissertation to be written here, but on the face it one might guess that folks used to imagine liturgies (and books!) as lasting longer than we do now.

--

2019 update: On a recent visit to the Specola Vaticana, the Vatican Observatory, the Brother Astronomer showed me a volume of the work of Christopher Clavius, SJ, who was one of the main authors of the Gregorian calendar reform, promulgated by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. Just on the page that was open, his calculations for the date of Easter, etc.--in the sixteenth century!--go up to 2031. I don't know how far the charts went after that. So it goes to show that sixteenth century Jesuits (at least) had a longer view of the calendar than any of the liturgical books I mentioned in the original post.

Bring Me The Breviary

Over the last couple weeks a visiting friar has displaced me from my regular place in choir. Not a big deal, though I don't like my little choir-cubby ruffled.

One friar noticed my suffering and said,

'Well, brother, there are many displaced persons in Rome.'

Latin Doubts Changing World Ramble

There are those who like to think that liturgical Latin has been making comeback. Not that it needs to of course; as goes the oft quoted section 36 of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican II, Linguae latinae usus, salvo particulari iure, in Ritibus latinis servetur. "Particular law remaining in force, the use of the Latin language is to be preserved in the Latin rites."

Recent experience has made me doubt, however.

Matins and Babies

From Fr. Cantalamessa's fourth Lenten homily for this year:

"I am speaking from experience here. I belong to a religious order in which, until a few decades ago, we would get up at night to recite the office of Matins that would last about an hour. Then there came a great turning point in religious life after the Council. It seemed that the rhythm of modern life—studies for the younger monks and apostolic ministry for the priests—no longer allowed for this nightly rising that interrupted sleep, and little by little the practice was abandoned except in a few houses of formation.

"When later the Lord had me come to know various young families well through my ministry, I discovered something that startled me but in a good way. These fathers and mothers had to get up not once but two or three times a night to feed a baby, or give it medicine, or rock it if it was crying, or check it for a fever. And in the morning one or both of the parents had to rush off to work at the same time after taking the baby girl or boy to the grandparents or to day-care. There was a time card to punch whether the weather was good or bad and whether their health was good or bad.

"Then I said to myself, if we do not take remedial action we are in grave danger. Our religious way of life, if it is not supported by a genuine observance of the Rule and a certain rigor in our schedule and habits, is in danger of becoming a comfortable life and of leading to hardness of heart. What good parents are capable of doing for their biological children—the level of self-forgetfulness that they are capable of to provide for their children’s well-being, their studies, their happiness—must be the standard of what we should do for our children or spiritual brothers. The example we have for this is set by the apostle Paul himself who said, 'I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls' (2 Cor 12:15)."

Read the whole thing.

Dipped in the Petrine Magisterium

Here in Rome the proper calendar includes several blessed and canonized popes that don't appear in the General Roman Calendar. The Pope, after all, is our local bishop. It's a town of Popes. I think of it each time I'm on the 881 bus and it announces, "next stop [the corner of] Gregory VII [and] Pius XI."

Yesterday and today in the liturgy we get two popes in row, yesterday having been the optional memorial of Pope Blessed Gregory X and today the obligatory memorial of Pope St. Agatho. Not knowing if there are proper readings for their Offices of Readings and not knowing anyway where to look for them if they did indeed exist, this led to me praying over the same second reading two days in a row, a passage from the sermons of that mainstay of the breviary, Pope St. Leo the Great, which the Liturgy of the Hours provides for popes in the Common of Pastors.

At the end Pope Leo provides a wonderful definition of Petrine primacy:

In universa namque Ecclesia, Tu es Christus, Filius Dei vivi, cotidie Petrus dicit, et omnis lingua, quae confitetur Dominum, magisterio huius vocis imbuitur. 

In the whole Church, Peter says each day, You are the Christ, the Son of the living God, and every tongue which confesses the Lord is dipped in the magisterium of his voice.

Let Us Pray For The New World Order

Attentive readers of this blog will have noticed that since initiating a liturgical life in Italian a little over a year ago, I have tried to be attentive to the possibility of sinister forces at work in the Italian Liturgy of the Hours. For example, there was my fear for the reappearance to the Joachimite heresy in the prayers for the feast of St. Benedict.

Today I have another concern to share.

totus per eam cursus diei ac noctis consecretur

At breakfast this morning I got into an interesting conversation on the broad variety of practice in the Order regarding the praying of the Liturgy of the Hours in common. For example, in my province it's pretty standard to pray just the hinge hours, Morning and Evening Prayer, in common. Here in the Curia, however, we also pray Midday Prayer together. In the house where I stayed over last summer, we also often prayed the Office of Readings in common. I have to say I didn't really care for it, as accustomed as I am to pausing on interesting phrases and taking as much time as I want to reflect between the readings and responsories.

So for me the move to Rome has meant praying more of the Liturgy of the Hours in common. For the brother with whom I was talking, however, it had meant less; in his province it was normal to pray the entire cycle of the Hours in common each and every day.

Regarding the contrast, he had an interesting comment, which went something like this: 'If the brothers pray the minimum of the Hours in common, the danger is that they will never think of the other Hours, or because of doing the least allowed they will begin to see the liturgy as less of a value. On the other hand, if the brothers pray all the Hours in common, it can happen that they never learn to think of praying their breviary on their own, as if they had no individual responsibility for their prayer.'

A thoughtful comment, I thought. As much as I hate the term, is the answer 'balance'?

Much in Many

Melito of Sardis is wonderful in the Office of Readings today:

Here he is who bore much in many; here is the one who was killed in Abel and in Isaac had his feet tied, who roamed, a foreigner, in Jacob, was sold in Joseph, exposed in Moses, had his throat slit in the lamb, was pursued in David, and in the prophets dishonored.

God's response to a broken and violent world is not to magically remove the suffering we have insisted upon for ourselves and each other--and thereby take away also the freedom which is his likeness--but to identify himself with it, that, if we consent to the salvation he is just dying to give us--literally--all the death we have purchased for ourselves might be destroyed from the inside by the divine humility joined to our humanity in the person of Jesus Christ.

Reek of Stupefaction

Yesterday I finally got to confession. It had been too long. In fact, it had been since the day of my pilgrimage to the bleak Via Ostiense 131/L. I just didn't know whom to ask. It's so much easier to walk up to a confessional box. When you have to pick someone, knock on his door, and ask him if he has a moment to hear your confession, that's something different. But I had been praying that the Holy Spirit let me know to whom I should try to go, and, perhaps spurred on by the beginning of the second stage of Advent yesterday,  I finally managed it.

In his counsel, the priest invited me to live these days of immediate preparation for Christmas con cuore stupito. It probably just stuck in my mind because it sounds funny to the ear of an English-speaker. 'With an amazed heart' or 'with an astonished heart,' I guess you could say. 'With a stupefied heart' doesn't really do it, but it's not an entirely useless thought; perhaps it captures something of being overwhelmed by contemplation of the mysteries at hand.

In one of the little synchronicities of grace, later on I happened to pray Night Prayer in Italian. (As I have mentioned, I don't really prefer it.) When I came to the Alma Redemptoris Mater in Italian, there was the substantive of the same word:

O santa Madre del Redentore,
porta dei cieli, stella del mare,
soccorri il tuo popolo che sta cadendo,
che anela a risorgere.
Tu che accogliendo quell'Ave di Gabriele,
nello stupore di tutto il creato,
hai generato il tuo Genitore,
vergine prima e dopo il parto,
pietà di noi peccatori.

That's the Latin natura mirante that translates in our American-English breviary as 'to the wonderment of nature' if I remember rightly.

A certain amazed, astonished, joyful wonder is the spiritual climate of Christmas. We are amazed to see that the birth of Jesus Christ reverses everything that our insecure and acquisitive minds think power and mightiness should mean. The Word of God, through whom all things are created, is born as one of us, born to plain parents, born away from home, born into a people and a place that were considered important by no known criterion of human civilization.

But Christmas is not only astonishing because it is an amazing and even scandalous revelation of God; Christmas is also invites us to wonder because it reveals who we really are, what creation really is. The creation, and we ourselves as created beings in it, as full of wonder and beauty as it all is even just on its own terms, finds in the newborn Jesus its true destiny, that we and all created being exists precisely so that God might be with us, incarnate among us. And our prayer is to sit in wonder, con cuore stupito, at the astonishing realization that we exist so that the overflowing Love we call the Blessed Trinity may love all the more by drawing us into the dynamic relations that are Himself. This is why it is the Holy Spirit--the Love the proceeds from the Father and the Son--who conceives Jesus Christ, that in the humanity of Christ we might be invited, drawn, and folded into the eternal, blessed and infinitely happy generation of the Beloved by the Lover.

Gentle Advice From The Italian Ordo

The new Ordo that comes ahead of the new liturgical year is like the ecclesiastical equivalent of the new box of crayons on the first day of school.

Finding an Ordo for the year of grace 2013 in my mailbox yesterday, I noted right away that the Italian version (or at least the version of the Capuchin provinces of the middle part of Italy) is somewhat bigger and more beautiful than what we have in the States:

It also has a heap of information presented by way of preface, some of it useful, like the faculties granted to priests of the Order to absolve from certain censures and excommunications, as well as the faculty to commute private vows. (I remember reading about that last one when I was first ordained and thinking that I would never have the chance to exercise such a thing. On the contrary, I have had a couple of occasions to use it.) Other parts seem somewhat random, like Universae Ecclesiae in between the sections of pastoral considerations for Celiac disease and the Eastern Orthodox, respectively.

However, one section caught my eye especially, on how to improve celebrations of the Liturgy of the Hours. Most of the points are pretty standard, e.g. sing, don't pretend things are optional when they aren't, etc. A couple of the points, though, are fun:

"In the recitation of the Offices a 'spoken' style is used, thus avoiding those emotional emphases that disturb praying in common."

Anyone who has been in religious life knows what that's about. So much for Franciscan prayer being 'affective.'

"If a minister makes an error with an antiphon or something else, avoid brusque and immediate corrections, which are ill-suited to the climate of prayer."

There's one some religious could pray over.

New Breviary Hopes

I heard yesterday with great delight that our bishops in the United States had voted in favor of a project to develop a new translation of the Liturgy of the Hours. This is, of course, a necessary thing given the new translation of the Roman Missal. At the very least, we need to be relieved of the funny situation of using the new Sunday and sanctoral collects for Mass while still having the old ones printed in our breviaries.

So, given that I am full of opinions about breviaries--and for this I make no apology, since, as one notes, breviaries are the only things (apart from our clothes) that the Rule permits us to have--I offer my hopes for the glorious day when I unbox a new English Liturgy of the Hours. Please, my brothers...

• Let us have the three Magnficat and Benedictus antiphons for each of the three Sunday hinge hours, instead of this stingy business we have now where Evening Prayer I gets year A, Morning Prayer gets year B, and Evening Prayer II gets year C, such that the antiphon only corresponds to the Sunday gospel once during the Sunday hours. Every other edition I have ever seen gives all three for each.
• Point the psalmody for singing.
• It's a little thing, but put the daggers for when the antiphon doubles the first line of a psalm so that it might be skipped, as is right and just. I don't know why we don't have these.
• Include the Latin hymns, or at least translations of them. Both would be best.
• Make the cards for the gospel canticles, festal psalmody, Te Deum, etc., tough.
• Dump the psalm prayers.
• Six ribbons are better than five. That way there's one each for Proper of Seasons, Ordinary, Psalter, Night Prayer, Proper of Saints, and Commons.
• Give us books just as tough as the Catholic Book Publishing Company's 4-volume set we have now. Say what you want about them, but those books are strong.

Thanks in advance for all of your work!

It was no longer possible to consider myself, abstractly, as being in a certain "state of life" which had certain technical relations to other "states of life." All that occupied me now was the immediate practical problem of getting up my hill with this terrific burden I had on my shoulders, step by step, begging God to drag me along and get me away from my enemies and from those who were trying to destroy me. 

I did not even reflect how the Breviary, the Canonical Office, was the most powerful and effective prayer I could possibly have chosen, since it is the prayer of the whole Church, and concentrates in itself all the power of the Church's impetration, centered around the infinitely mighty Sacrifice of the Mass--the jewel of which the rest of the Liturgy is the setting: the soul which is the life of the whole Liturgy and of all the Sacramentals. All this was beyond me, although I grasped it at least obscurely. All I knew was that I needed to say the Breviary, and say it every day. 

Buying those books at Benziger's that day was one of the best things I ever did in my life. The inspiration to do it was a very great grace. There are few things I remember that give me more joy. (Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain, 329-330)

Threshard

Every year on the feast of St. Luke, Gregory the Great pierces me a little bit in the Office of Readings: As he preaches on the Lord's advice that we pray for workers to be sent into his harvest, he delivers this biting comment on the priesthood:

Ecce mundus sacerdotibus plenus est, sed tamen in messe Dei rarus valde inventur operator, quia officium quidem sacerdotale suscepimus, sed opus officii non implemus.

"Behold, the world is full of priests, but a real worker in God's harvest is rarely found, for we have taken up the priestly office, but the works of the office we do not fulfill."

St. Francis:

"And I worked with my hands, and I still desire to work; and I earnestly desire all brothers to give themselves to honest work. Let those who do not know how to work learn, not from desire to receive wages, but for example and to avoid idleness." (Testament, trans. FA:ED. By the way, this quote is affixed to the top of the pages of the General Curia's intranet site. That gives some idea of the culture of the place.)

Abba Abraham:

A brother questioned Abba Abraham, saying, 'If I find myself eating often, what will come of it?' The old man replied in this way, 'What are you saying, brother? Do you eat so much? Or perhaps you think that you have come to the threshing floor to thresh grain?' (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers, trans. Benedicta Ward, SLG)

Cubicle

I appreciated St. Ambrose in the Office of Readings today, from his treatise on Cain and Abel, as he explicates the Lord's teaching on prayer from Matthew 6:6: "But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret."

Sed intellege non cubiculum conclusum parietibus, quo tua membra claudantur, sed cubiculum quod in te est, in quo includuntur cogitationes tuae, in quo versantur sensus tui. Hoc orationes tuae cubiculum ubique tecum est, et ubique secretum est, cuius arbiter nullus est nisi solus Deus.

"But [by this 'inner room'] do not understand a cubicle bounded by walls in which your body can be enclosed, but the cubicle which is inside you, in which your thoughts are kept and your feelings turn over. This is the cubicle of your prayer. It is with you everywhere, and everywhere it is a secret. In it there is no one to judge you but God."

It's a pity that 'cubicle' in English is such an impoverished word, conjuring up images of drudgery, claustrophobia, and conformity. Because of the way we use it, it's easy to think that it comes from the word 'cube.' In fact, 'cubicle' derives from the Latin verb 'cubo, cubare,' to lie down. The cubicle is the little room where you lie down, your bedroom.

The place of prayer is an inner place, a space in which our spirit can 'lie down' and relax, because no judge but God has any access. Prayer, and indeed any of our attempts to relate our person to another personality, whether divine or human, depend on our awareness and cultivation of this space, of our inner cubicle. If we have forgotten about it or neglected it, we will not experience ourselves as a being separate enough from others in order to relate to them as a distinct person ourselves. Our relationships, including our prayer, become fawning, aggressive, or unchaste because we have ceased to be a self in relationship but only a consciousness reacting to another as another object.

By cultivating our awareness of our own inner cubicle, and the life of relaxation in it we call prayer, we also practice our mindfulness that  the core of the other is also an inner cubicle. This is the root of genuine prayer on the one hand, and of charity and chastity in our human relationships on the other: the awareness of ourselves and each other person as rooted in an irreducible mystery to which only God has access.

The Third Age Dawns

I should be so fortunate as to gloriously conclude my Franciscan career by being burned at the stake in Marseilles, with soldiers guarding the pyre for days and the ashes stolen away so that none of you, my kind readers, might have relics, but it's probably more realistic for me to look forward to a death somewhat more in harmony with my shallow spiritual condition.

Nevertheless, one can have devout hope, and in that spirit, I'd like to point out something I noticed today. It's the feast of St. Benedict, and here in Europe it's a feast day because Benedict is the patron of Europe. Therefore there are propers for Benedict in the Italian breviary that I had never seen before. I was particularly struck, indeed amazed, by the last of the intercessory prayers for Vespers:

Hai fatto di San Benedetto un novello Abramo, padre di moltitudini di santi.

"You have made of St. Benedict another Abraham, father of a multitude of saints."

I checked the typical edition, and this prayer doesn't appear there, so we may rest easy knowing that the Joachimite heresy has not been reborn at the center of holy mother the Church. But it seems to be alive and well somewhere. I'm looking at you, Italian bishops' conference!

If there is anyone out there who prays the Hours from another European edition, I would be very curious to know if you also prayed this prayer today.

Sunday Morning at the Basilica of St. Francis

Today I decided to take the morning off. The Mass here at the friary was to be an anniversary Mass for a deceased lady who had been a friend of the friars, and her family was coming. A local friar was specifically assigned to offer the Mass and pray with them, and when I looked at the Mass-scheduling book, there was no intention assigned to me. Given such freedom, plus the fact that Morning Prayer tends to be pretty sparse here on Sundays what with most of the friars going off to various parish churches and chapels, I decided that I would get up late (it turned out to be seven o'clock) and 'go out to church.'

I went out of the friary around eight and took the short walk down to the basilica of St. Francis. The early Mass was just finishing up as I made my way to the stairs that go down to the tomb. It was early enough to still be pretty quiet and empty down there. A conventual friar was saying his breviary. A sister whom I remembered seeing on the bus yesterday was praying quietly.

I sat down and opened my breviary. Clerici faciant divinum officium secundum ordinem sanctae Romanae Ecclesiae. Invitatory. Signore, apri le mie labbra/e la mia bocca proclami la tua lode. Office of Readings, then Morning Prayer. O Dio, vieni a salvarmi/Signore, vieni presto in mio aiuto. At the end of the intercessions, I try to pray for everyone who arrives in my thoughts: the friar and the sister and all of the pilgrims who will visit the tomb today, the American Capuchins here in Assisi on the perpetual profession pilgrimage, the new priests and deacons at home, the friars at home preparing for temporary profession and the postulants looking forward to investiture, the other students at the Italian school, and all those who have suffered on account of my sins and negligence. Officium dicebamus secundum alios clericos...et eramus idiotae et subditi omnibus. Most High and Glorious God, I give you my heart to make me so by whatever means you will. Holy Father Francis, pray for me.

After those prayers I went up to the lower basilica and found a spot for Mass. I know that it's probably wrong for a priest to attend Mass in such 'morally absent' fashion, but once in a while it's just so nice to just 'go to church;' to not have to worry about anything but your prayer and the sacrifice that you bring to the altar, to simply hear a simple homily, to respond to the pastoral smile of the cantor and sing with the people, and especially to have again the joy of kneeling at the consecration. Here in Italy they kneel according to the norm of the Roman rite, from the epiclesis to the memorial acclamation, rather than in the extended fashion we practice in the United States, but it's enough for my joy. I find that I don't yet know by heart the prayer before Holy Communion in Italian, and I draw a blank as I try to remember it in English. So quietly I pray, Domine, non sum dignus...

God Most High, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, of all things visible and invisible, through the sublime humility of the Incarnation of the Eternal Word, gives himself to me under the little form of bread. And yet I know that the Body of Christ I receive is the broken and sacrificed Christ crucified. Receiving him into my own created body and my own created soul, I confess to God the desire for that same humility, a desire that he himself has worked in me in his mercy. And I pray for the willingness to become simple and subject to all.

Comfort in Ruin

In various places I saw this week the announcement from the Canadian bishops' conference regarding bishop Raymond Lahey having been dismissed from the clerical state. (Read the whole thing here.)  Lahey, you will recall, was caught with child pornography at the Ottawa airport.

The bishops' announcement details the effects of the penalty: "loss of the rights and duties attached to the clerical state, except for the obligation of celibacy; prohibition of the exercise of any ministry, except as provided for by Canon 976 of the Code of Canon Law in those cases involving danger of death; loss of all offices and functions and of all delegated power, as well as prohibition of the use of clerical attire."

But it's the next sentence that struck me the most: "Lahey has accepted the Decree of Dismissal, which also requires him to pray the Liturgy of the Hours in reparation for the harm and the scandal he has caused, and for the sanctification of clergy."

I find that very comforting.

Even I should make a complete ruin of the vocation God has given me in his mercy, and even if I should become such a wicked priest as to require my dismissal from the clerical state, I will still have the Liturgy of the Hours and the privilege of praying it for the Church and the world. Even if I should make such a mess of the vows of my religious profession and the promises of my ordinations, that promise I made to pray the Hours on the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary in 2006 will always be with me. Even if I should die and go to hell, it will be my last joy to tell the devil that it was the privilege of this ruined soul to pray his breviary up to that moment.

One doesn't just all of a sudden have a laptop full of child pornography. I'm guessing that on the way to such a thing there are various moments when one might notice the destructive and abusive descent he was making. But anyone who is a sinner knows the power of concupiscence and denial in this regard.

So as I was praying the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer today, it was one of my intentions to pray for those who were abused in the production of the images on Lahey's laptop. And I pray also that all the victims of sexual abuse by priests would forgive me for praying for them without knowing what else to do about the sicknesses in the clergy at the root of their victimization. And I hope that Lahey, according to his decree of dismissal, is praying for me.

Do I have to go to the Triduum?

Somebody asked me: do I have to attend the services of the Triduum?

The short answer, as it seems to me: no.

Of course there is the Sunday obligation, which certainly includes Easter Sunday. I would maintain that the Mass of Easter Sunday is part of the Triduum, which begins with either Evening Prayer or the Mass of the Lord's Supper on Thursday and spans the three days until Evening Prayer on Sunday. In my Catholic life before priestly ordination, after which such a question became moot, I had always presumed that assistance at the Easter Vigil satisfies the Sunday obligation.

I guess the liturgies of the Triduum are like Ash Wednesday; they're not 'holy days of obligation' but just things that one does. But I don't think they are obligatory in any sense. In fact, the Liturgy of the Hours would even seem to suggest this; because the Mass of the Lord's Supper and the liturgy of the Passion replace Evening Prayer on Thursday and Friday, and the Easter Vigil replaces Night Prayer for Saturday and the Office of Readings for Sunday (I daresay that this is perhaps the only day of the year that some clerics thereby 'fulfill' their obligation to recite the Office of Readings. And why not? If you're only going to say your prayers once a year, what better day than Easter Sunday?), the rubrics are clear that those who do not assist at these liturgies are supposed to pray these Hours. In other words, the Liturgy of the Hours, in providing for those who do not attend the special services, suggests that such is a legitimate possibility.

Even more, though these liturgies are at the heart of the whole liturgical year for us, there could be fine reasons to opt out. The Mass of the Lord's Supper, though it is one of the most deep and beautiful liturgies of the whole Roman rite, can be especially prone to misplaced innovation and liturgical abuse. Somebody who is sensitive to such things might stay away just for the sake of keeping his recollection. On Friday, of course, there are many different prayers and devotions available in addition to the official liturgy. Someone might prefer something else, though the reception of Holy Communion is not to be dismissed.

But how about the Easter Vigil? Do you have to go? Do you have to feel guilty if you would rather not? Well, the Vigil is certainly a spectacular liturgy, and one that holds within itself a superabundance of symbol, meaning, and encouragement. But it can also be very long. Also, because of its intricate nature, it can be given to distracting liturgical disasters. (Everyone has stories. Sitting down for a drink after one Easter Vigil when I was a parish priest, my pastor said, "Well, let's just say this and call it a night: at least the church didn't burn down.") The Easter Vigil can be somewhat focused on the Elect (rightly) and those who are candidates for some combination of Eucharist, Confirmation, and full communion (wrongly) and sometimes these folks aren't known well to the average parishioner. This isn't a good thing, but it's often the situation on the ground. I remember one Easter Vigil before I was in religious life. I showed up to church early so I could pray my private preparation. Ahead of me in the front row were those to be initiated. I had never seen any of them before, and nor did I see any of them at Mass ever again. Over their nice clothes, each was wearing a lovely new brown scapular. I remember thinking it odd that someone should have be enrolled in the brown scapular--if indeed they were properly enrolled--before being baptized. (It's to be worn under the clothing in any case.) In this sense the Easter Vigil can seem like a graduation liturgy for a bunch of people one doesn't even know. And perhaps there are other reasons why someone might decide not to go.

So I guess that's my long answer. Assist and pray through these amazing liturgies as best you can. But if there's some reason why you would prefer not to, don't worry about it. Pray your prayers on your own, including the Liturgy of the Hours if that's something you do or are supposed to do. In your charity, pray for me, as I will in these days for all who support me in the little outlet of this blog.

Very Pedantic Liturgical Dubium

Here's a liturgical dubium at the heights of pedantry.

I have Masses in two parishes this weekend, one a Saturday vigil and the other on Sunday. At the Mass on Saturday afternoon, the readings will be from Year B, but at the one on Sunday, the readings from Year A will be substituted per the option for RCIA.

That means two different Sunday homilies, but that's o.k. I don't mind being kept on my toes in that regard.

My question is about the hinge hours of the Divine Office. On Sundays I usually use the typical edition Liturgia Horarum, which offers three different antiphons for the Magnificat at Evening Prayer I and II and for the Benedictus at Morning Prayer. These three correspond to the three-year cycle of readings. (I have observed that most editions of the Hours do this; it is only the American English edition that does not, instead offering but one that matches year A at Evening Prayer I, year B at Morning Prayer, and year C at Evening Prayer II. That's something worth fixing when a new edition comes out, which is all the more necessary now that the collects are in the new translation, but I digress.)

So, the question: which antiphons do I use for the gospel canticles? My best guess is to use the B antiphon for Evening Prayer I and the year A antiphon for Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer on Sunday, as will correspond to the Masses I celebrate in the course of the veritas horarum of the Sunday.

habere potuerunt breviaria

I love breviaries. Yesterday I was thinking about how I have a lot of them. Not that I make any apology for this, because it's one of the only things a friar is allowed to have according to the Rule. I counted mine up, and realized I have something like twenty volumes of different sorts of breviaries:

3 4-volume sets of the Liturgy of the Hours:

typical edition (Latin)
Roman-Franciscan (English)
Romano-Serafico (Italian)

I also have:

1962 Breviarium Romano-Seraphicum in the Capuchin use (2 volumes)

Roman-Franciscan Christian Prayer (This is what we were given to use when I was in formation with the OFM)

Daily Prayer (This is the Commonwealth English version of the Christian Prayer we have here in the USA. I picked it up and used it when I was a student in Ireland.)

Shorter Christian Prayer (my first breviary!)

Daytime Prayer (Great for keeping the clerical book bag light!)

The Ordinary Time volume of the Kleines Stundenbuch, which is sort of like Shorter Christian Prayer in German.

Liturgia de Las Horas para los fieles, which is like the Shorter Christian Prayer in Spanish.

I'm not sure where iBreviary fits into this.

The New Translation: What of the Hours?

The new translation is afoot. At the parish where I celebrated Mass yesterday the new Gloria was sung. Here in the States we are now allowed to have to the books, and who knows how many are in the mail. Very soon sacred ministers and seminarians, sacristans and liturgy coordinators will be perusing and inspecting the new missal with delight or disgust, depending on what they have decided upon for themselves.

As I've looked forward to all of this myself, a question keeps bugging me. What of the Liturgy of the Hours? On both rubrical and theological grounds, one might presume that more general changes like and with your spirit will flow to the whole of the liturgy as it is celebrated in English. But what of, for example, the collects? Eight weeks from now, when the first Sunday of Advent arrives, we will pray the Opening Prayer for Mass in the new translation. But we will still have the 1975 American English Liturgy of the Hours on that day, in which we will find printed the old version of the same prayer. So will it happen that the American-English speaking Church will pray, on that day, the new version of the prayer once (at Mass) and the old version for the other five times it is to be prayed on that liturgical day? (I.e. Evening Prayer I, Office of Readings, Morning Prayer, Daytime Prayer, Evening Prayer II)

Sundays are, of course, the most glaring case with regard to this problem, but the same question arises for almost every day outside of ferias of Ordinary Time--and even on those days the collect for the Sunday of the week is presented as the ordinary option to conclude the Office of Readings.

In the end, this presents a fine opportunity for a new edition of the Liturgy of the Hours in English, which would be a chance to fix and update some other things as well. It could also be a moment to follow the lead of the new English missal and let go of the division between Commonwealth and American English.

So, if you pray the Divine Office with the American English Liturgy of the Hours, what will you do on the first Sunday of Advent?