A New Use for the Office of the Dead

“Let my soul die the death of the just, and my last end be like to them.” (Numbers 23, 10.)

Those who recite the Office of the Dead (Officium Defunctorum) will have been struck by the fact that most of its antiphons and responsories are in the first person singular, as if one is preparing for one’s own death, fearing the ineluctable judgement of God and the uncertain fate of one’s soul.

For this reason, it may be appropriate as a private devotion to recite this Office, suitably modified in a few particulars, precisely as a meditation on and prayer for a merciful judgement, as follows:

1. Replace the Invitatory Antiphon Regem cui omnia vivunt with the following (once used in the churches of the Netherlands):

Invit. Aña. Circumdedérunt me gémitus mortis, * Dolóres inférni circumdedérunt me. 

(Ps. 17, 5a. 6a; cf. Ps. 114, 3; cf. 2 Reg. 22, 5a. 6a)

2. In every place, omit Requiem æternam… Et lux perpetua… (This better parallels the Office of the Paschal Triduum, upon whose model the Office of the Dead was drawn up in Carolingian times.)

3. Replace the versicle before the lessons of each Nocturn with those from the Carthusian Office of the Dead, which better match the other Matins antiphons and responsories, which are all in the first person singular, rather than the third person plural used in the corresponding versicles in the Roman Office of the Dead:

V. Convértere, Dómine, et éripe ánimam meam.

R. Salvum me fac propter misericórdiam tuam. (Ps 6, 5)

V. Custódi ánimam meam, et érue me.

R. Non erubéscam, quóniam sperávi in te. (Ps. 24, 20)

V. Ne perdas cum ímpiis, Deus, ánimam meam.

R. Et cum viris sánguinum vitam meam. (Ps. 25, 9)

4. Replace the 2nd Responsory Qui Lazarum resuscitasti (the only one explicitly praying for the dead) with the shorter 9th Responsory Libera me Domine de viis (which is appointed to be used when only one Nocturn is said).

5. In the 3rd and 6th Responsories, having omitted Requiem, repeat the whole of the response instead. (This is already the case for the longer 9th Responsory Libera me Domine de morte, appointed to be used when all three Nocturns are said, and better parallels the Office of the Paschal Triduum.)

6. Pro pia devotione, after the last Responsory at Matins, insert the Dies iræ as a further meditation on the last judgement, but omitting its last three verses from Lacrimosa onwards (which have a different metre and tune, and whose last verse, Pie Jesu, is a prayer for the dead), and replacing them with a doxology sometimes found in older sources that fits the metre of the piece, and appointed in the modern Divine Office (reading Nos not Me) for use with the Dies iræ, which is therein chopped into three parts for use at the Hours in the last week before Advent:

O tu, Deus majestátis,
Alme candor Trinitátis,
Me conjúnge cum beátis. Amen.

(The length of this is approximately the same as that of the Te Deum used at this same position in festal Matins.)

7. In the preces, replace the versicle A porta inferi (which is in the third person plural) with the following, using the exact text of the antiphon for the Canticle of Isaias (which is in the first person singular):

V. A porta ínferi.

R. Erue, Dómine, ánimam meam. (Cf. Is. 38, 10 & 17)

8. Replace the versicle Audivi vocem at Lauds and Vespers (which is in the third person plural) with the following (which is in the first person singular):

V. Non intres in judícium cum servo tuo, Dómine.

R. Quia non justificábitur in conspéctu tuo omnis vivens. (Ps. 142, 2)

9. At Vespers, instead of reciting Psalm 145, Lauda, anima mea, Dominum, as part of the preces, it seems more appropriate to use Psalm 141, Voce mea ad Dominum clamavi, which St Francis prayed with his dying breath, and which is used together with Psalm 129 at Lauds in the Carmelite Office of the Dead.

10. Simply omit the versicle Requiésca(n)t in pace (which is in the third person) in its position before the Collect, but replace it after the Collect with the following (which is in the first person singular, and has exactly twice as many syllables):

V. In te, Dómine, sperávi, non confúndar in ætérnum. (Ps. 30, 2)

R. Amen.

11. Replace the Collect(s) for the dead with the following Collect for a Good Death:

Omnípotens et miséricors Deus, qui humáno géneri et salútis remédia et vitæ ætérnæ múnera contulísti: réspice propítius nos fámulos tuos, et ánimas réfove, quas creásti; ut, in hora éxitus eárum, absque peccáti mácula tibi Creatóri suo per manus sanctórum Angelórum repræsentári mereántur. Per Dóminum nostrum Jesum Christum Fílium tuum, qui tecum vivit et regnat in unitáte Spíritus Sancti, Deus, per omnia sǽcula sæculórum. R. Amen.

Officium Defunctorum

Over the past week since my father died, I've found such a help in the prayers of the Office of the Dead: the plaints of Job, the wavering between hope and fear, so well mirror one's own confusion and prayer.  (I compare it to the unhelpful modern Office, which is too happy by half: Glory be instead of Requiem, indeed!)

What has struck me about the Office of the Dead, or rather the Dirge and Placebo as mediæval Englishmen called it (Dirge from Dirige, the first antiphon of Matins, said as one with Lauds; and Placebo as the first word of Vespers), is how standardized it is: the Roman and Monastic Uses are identical in this respect; I have found in my Dominican Breviary but few differences; and having consulted the Carmelite, Carthusian and Ambrosian Breviaries available online via Google Books, in essence they are all the same.  (The Carthusians even used the same nicknames for the Hours of the Dead as the English did: Dirige for Matins, Exsultabunt for Lauds, and Placebo for Vespers.  In their case, however, they abbreviate by saying only one antiphon for the psalmody at each Nocturn and at the other Hours.)

Independently of one's grief or otherwise, I would commend praying some or all of the Office of the Dead on a semiregular basis (and many internet sites provide it even if you don't have it to hand in a book): it forms a most sobering meditation on the shortness and uncertainty of our life ere we shuffle off this mortal coil...

Vespers in the Graveyard

Despite the threatening weather, on the way home from Hobart I stopt and, moved by the Spirit perhaps, decided to pray in the Pontville Catholic cemetery where my godmother Elizabeth is buried: so I walked that hallowed ground, where rest those sown by Christ the Sower to rise again at the end of time to face the General Doom, and for their souls read Vespers of the Dead (Placebo).

It's been too long since I've visited a graveyard: it's a real moral tonic. Memento mori!

Placebo and Dirge

The perfect devotion for a cold rainy Friday, after watching some horror: sitting in my study, reading Vespers, then Matins (Nocturn II) and Lauds of the Dead - what our longfathers before us called Placebo and Dirge (Dirige) from the first antiphons of these Offices. It is not for nothing that the sacred liturgy bids us pray for the dead by putting on our lips first-person cries for mercy, and the anguish of Job. "Man, born of a woman, living for a short time, is filled with many miseries..." (Job xiv, 1 - the opening of the first Lesson of Nocturn II.)

But thanks be to God! "When the fulness of time was come, God sent His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that He might redeem them who were under the law..." (Gal. iv, 4-5a) - here is the answer to the questionings of Job. The Hours of the Blessed Virgin go with the Office of the Dead very well: point counterpoint. Having read her Hours (but for Compline), the late evening hour was right for the thought of the last things.

And so, fortified, off to bed.

Officium Parvum Beatæ Mariæ Virginis

The Little Office is a blessing and a relief - why not try it as a fit devotion and rule of prayer suited to a traditionalist Catholic? I know that Fr Tattersall recommended it to my friend Justin for one.

I have previously posted on:

• the Little Office of Our Lady (which, as that day, I've again used instead of the full Breviary this Saturday);
• and more on the Little Office; and yet more on it;
• The Little Office of Our Lady after the Use of Sarum;
• I've put the whole of the Dominican Little Office of Our Lady online as well;
• and also made some suggestions regarding the Little Office and the Office of the Dead;
• furthermore it must be noted, lest would-be pray-ers go astray, that the Baronius Press edition of Our Lady's Office is full of misprints and mistakes, to a really vexing degree.

Some other useful resources:

• the Little Office, in parallel Latin and English, according to the Use of Rome in 1599: hence the hymns are in their original state prior to Urban VIII's misguided 'correction' of them, the antiphons are not doubled - given in full before as well as after each psalm or canticle - and the items removed in the reforms of Pius X (that is, Psalms 66, 149 and 150 at Lauds) and Pius XII (the prefatory Ave of each Hour, the Kyrie before the Collect, the memorial of the saints at Lauds and Vespers, the Pater and versicle to be said at the end of the Hours one has said, and the Pater, Ave and Credo after the Marian anthem at Compline) are still there;
• the Little Office according to the Ambrosian Rite as of 1957;
• the Little Office as put on someone's blog, apparently in the pre-1950's form (with all the above-named items removed under Pius XII still included).

The Little Office and the Office of the Dead

Among pious layfolk in past times, not only was the Little Office of Our Lady read, but also the Office of the Dead (to say nothing of the Penitential Psalms or Litanies of the Saints).

Now, interestingly enough, the three Nocturns of Matins of the Dead have on average 49 psalm-verses, Lauds have 64, and Vespers, 40.  Matins and Lauds together are known as (the) Dirge, from the first antiphon of Matins, Dirige; Vespers is for the same reason known as Placebo, its opening word (as Deus in adjutorium, etc. is not used).  Hence, Dirge and Placebo together have on average 153 psalm-verses, and this total, when added to that of the Hours of the Blessed Virgin (to wit, 237, as I calculated below), gives 390 - which is almost exactly the portion of psalm-verses counted up in the Breviary each day.

This has interesting consequences - for instance, a priest unable to say the Breviary for some reason could theoretically apply to have his obligation commuted to reciting the Little Office and the Office of the Dead together, since he would be praying about the same amount of holy psalms and lessons, pious hymns and prayers, so to speak!  (In mediæval days, it was common for religious and laity to have committed the Little Office to memory, and one assumes this would also be the case for Placebo and Dirge.  In more recent times, a priest unable, through failing eyesight, say, to read his Breviary would usually get his obligation commuted to reciting 15 decades of the Rosary daily, which at a reasonable pace takes 45 minutes to an hour.  I wonder if these days all 20 decades would be required?  But oh no, I forgot, the modern Divine Office being so short it would seem that only 10 decades would suffice... and in any case, few priests would know or care to ask for such a commutation, seeing as it is an open secret that many don't pray the Office at all.)