Office Update

Well, the day's dose of Breviary is done, bar Compline: distractions abounded, with some moments of devotion, but in 50 minutes I got from Matins to Vespers inclusive - not that speed is anything to be proud of, but I don't have all the time in the world. Even with the short Matins of Whitsuntide, the Breviary is a big commitment, and on an ordinary feria I'd allow at least a good hour to say the all the Hours. But the flip side is one feels in continuity with all those who have thus worshipped God on earth down the centuries; the modern Divine Office is very good, I mainly use it in fact and have for over a decade, but when and if I have the time to pray the Breviary, it somehow feels right.

Although I used the 1962 Breviary, I observe, to aid devotion (rather as St Ignatius advises one to lift up one's mind to God while on the way to pray, for the space of an Our Father), the older rules about saying a Pater, Ave and Credo before Matins and Prime, and a Pater and Ave before Terce, Sext, None, and Vespers, plus a Pater and Dominus det nobis at the end of all, with the Marian anthem &c. to finish.

Of course, Paschaltide has therefore just ended for me, and it's the eve of Trinity Sunday; I noticed that I'd marked the third and fourth antiphons of 1st Vespers, for they are in fact in poetry, being doxologies in the metre 11.11.11.5., which I think is called the Sapphic metre. For this reason, I sang them to a tune I know, as I did the Vesper hymn; although I only sang the actual Gregorian for the marvellous Veni Creator at Terce.