Everyone: Pray Lauds, Vespers and Compline

“I would like to renew my call to everyone to pray the Psalms, to become accustomed to using the Liturgy of the Hours, Lauds, Vespers, and Compline. Our relationship with God can only be enriched by our journeying towards Him day after day”.

— Benedict XVI, Wednesday General Audience, 16th November 2011

I must step up my prayer life to meet this pontifical encouragement: for too long, while I pray Lauds in the Carmelite chapel since I attend an early Mass there daily, I've let pressure of work distract me from the rest, although I make time for Compline.  Hence, I resolve to return to Vespers.

Dominican Lauds of the Holy Cross

After Mass at St Francis, Riverside, this morning (where, thanks be, the strange weekday arrangement of chairs around the altar has at last been abolished, at length, since our priest has gently and patiently been working to improve matters liturgical without fuss, suppressing the contrary practice that had grown up there, and in peace I could kneel in the pews like a Catholic), I took the chance to read Lauds from my Dominican Diurnal – and what beautiful words.

Mass, especially given the use of the Roman Canon in the new corrected translation, had been marvellous, of course, and most marvellous in the offering of the Sacrifice and the reception of Our Lord in His Sacrament – but now I would like to present the sacred texts of Lauds, Dominican-style, which differ significantly from the Roman, in that only four antiphons (three for the psalms, one for the Benedictus) and the collect are the same in both, and the hymn in particular is noteworthy:

Ante Laudes V/.  Dicite in nationibus.

R/.  Quia Dominus regnavit a ligno.

AD LAUDES

Aña 1.  O magnum pietatis opus! Mors mortua tunc est, in ligno quando mortua Vita fuit.

Psalmus Dominus regnavit etc.

Aña 2.  Ecce Crucem Domini: fugite, partes adversæ: vicit Leo de tribu Juda, Radix David, alleluja.

Aña 3.  Nos autem gloriari oportet in Cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi.

Aña 4.  O Crux admirabilis, evacuatio vulneris, restitutio sanitatis!

Aña 5.  Crux benedicta nitet, Dominus qua carne pependit atque cruore suo vulnera nostra lavit.

Capitulum (Gal. 6)

Mihi autem absit gloriari, nisi in Cruce Domini nostri Jesu Christi: per quem mihi mundus crucifixus est, et ego mundo.

Hymnus

Originale crimen necans in Cruce,

Nos a privatis, Christe, munda maculis:

Humanitatem miseratus fragilem,

Per Crucem sanctam lapsis dona veniam.

Protege, salva, benedic, sanctifica

Populum cunctum Crucis per signaculum:

Morbos averte corporis et animæ:

Hoc contra signum nullum stet periculum.

Sit Deo Patri laus in Cruce Filii,

Sit coæqualis laus Sancto Spiritui:

Civibus summis gaudium sit Angelis,

Honor sit mundo Crucis Exaltatio.  Amen.

V/.  Tuam Crucem adoramus, Domine.

R/.  Tuam gloriosam recolimus passionem.

Ad Bened. aña.  Super omnia ligna cedrorum tu sola excelsior, in qua Vita mundi pependit, in qua Christus triumphavit, et mors mortem superavit, alleluja.

Oratio

Deus, qui nos hodierna die Exaltationis sanctæ Crucis annua solemnitate lætificas: præsta, quæsumus, ut, cujus mysterium in terra cognovimus, ejus redemptionis in cælo præmia consequamur.  Per eundem...

Lessons and Lauds

This week, as Matins is beyond me, I have taken up praying the Lord's Prayer, then reading the day's Lessons, together with their blessings, responsories, and the Te Deum if appointed, before going straight into the versicle before Lauds and Lauds itself (with Pretiosa).  In other words, by prefixing the second part of Matins to Lauds, I have profited from a good deal of Scripture.  (The readings have been from St Paul to the Philippians, chapters 2 and 3.)

Furthermore, what happy feasts: Bl Jordan of Saxony, O.P., first successor of St Dominic as Master of the Order of Preachers, on Monday (with Memory of St Valentine); Bl Henry Suso, O.P., that ascetic mystic, on Tuesday; a feria yester-day; and feria with Memory of Bl Reginald of Orleans, O.P., he whom the Blessed Virgin cured and  to whom she revealed the habit of the Order, to-day.  A pleasant run through the week of the Sixth after Epiphany, with Septuagesima to come this Sunday: "Alleluia our transgressions make us for a while give o'er" and all that.

Vernacular Liturgy: Dolphins, bless the Lord

While in a very interesting bookshop off Cuba Street in Wellington, I found a useful book: Lauds, Vespers and Compline in English (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1965).  It advertises itself as being reprinted from (in conformity with Sacrosanctum concilium) "an officially approved edition of the Roman Breviary".

Therefore, I have this week (recovering from my holiday) been using this book for Lauds, Vespers and Compline: it's curious to pray in English again.  I find the translation of the psalms used - the Confraternity version adapted to the Breviary - strangely reminiscent of the Grail Version.  It is most useful as regards the Office Hymns, which it wisely translates as prose.

Some of the phrases used are a little odd: this morning, for the feast of St Agnes, the Sunday psalms being appointed, I was amazed to read in the Benedicite, "You dolphins and all water creatures, bless the Lord"!  I thought cetus meant whale; but perhaps the translators understood it to signify cetaceans in general.

Lauds I & II

Have you heard about the well-meaning but liturgically unread priest who, all afire with zeal, preferred the Breviary to the modern Office - but didn't realize the reason the Breviary has both a Lauds I (which is for ordinary and festal days) and Lauds II (for penitential days, replacing the first psalm with the Miserere), and read BOTH Lauds every day for a long while till someone discovered his unfortunate unintentional work of supererogation?

And one night I dreamed there was a Lauds III as well...

Monastic versus Roman Day Hours

I've been exercised about the pros and cons of the Monastic Office compared to the Roman - and of course, the one thing we all want to know about is, Which is longer?

Breviarium monasticum juxta regulam s. patris Benedicti, ad usum Congregationis ss. Vitoni et Hydulphi Ad usum congregationis SS. Vitoni et Hydulphi. Pars Hyemalis-Autumnalis. By Benedictines

(Not having mine own copy of the Breviarium Monasticum, I made use of Google Books for the purposes of making certain comparisons.)

Well, the short answer is, the Psalmody of the Day Hours of the Monastic Breviary is about 4% longer on average, but of course the Monastic Office lacks certain elements of the Roman - it has only two short responsories a day as against five, no Nunc dimittis at Compline, and, at least in the Farnborough Abbey edition, there is no Officium Capituli at the end of Prime.  On the other hand, it does have Kyrie and Pater noster at every Hour, which is much to be desiderated.  So overall the two are roughly the same length within the limits of this rough measurement.

Short answer to question: The two are each just about as long as the other. 

The longer answer is that the devil is in the detail!  

For a start, Monastic Lauds is almost twice as long as the Roman, and no wonder: every day it consists of Psalms 66 and 50, then two variable psalms and an Old Testament canticle (on Saturday, the canticle is so long it's broken into two, and only one psalm accompanies it), and then Psalms 148, 149 and 150 sub una Gloria Patri, for a total of seven psalms and a canticle.  Prime, on the other hand, is exactly the same length in both rites, despite having quite different psalms allotted to it.  Still, of the 289 psalm verses on average in the Monastic Diurnal's psalmody each day, 148 of them - half - are got through at Lauds and Prime, which makes their recitation rather daunting!  (I try and say Roman Lauds and Prime before work; I doubt I'd be able to if I used their Benedictine equivalents.)

The Rule of St Benedict wisely provides that Terce, Sext and None be short; they are in fact each only about two-thirds as long as the comparable Roman Hours.  What a relief after Lauds...

As for Vespers and Compline, Roman or Monastic, their length is almost the same. 

My final reflection: while Traddies do tend to deprecate the psalter reform of Pope St Pius X, he did make it possible to get through all 150 psalms in the week* - which remains no mean feat even with the '62 Breviary, I can assure anyone: you need to devote an hour a day at least to it! - and did so by using each psalm only once, rather than repeating psalms on different days (as is done at Lauds, the Little Hours and Compline in the Monastic Breviary, and as was done even more in the pre-1912 Roman Breviary, which included such fatiguing joys as praying the whole of Psalm 118 every day).  As a result, even if one only prays the Day Hours of the Roman Breviary, one is exposed to 115 of the psalms, over three-quarters of the total - whereas, because of its repetitions, the Benedictine Diurnal only includes 72 psalms, just less than half of the Psalter.

*Recall what the Holy Patriarch St Benedict said in his Rule (chapter xviii):

We especially impress this, that, if this distribution of the psalms should perchance displease anyone, he arrange them if he thinketh another better, by all means seeing to it that the whole Psalter of one hundred and fifty psalms be said every week, and that it always start again from the beginning at Matins on Sunday; because those monks show too lax a service in their devotion who in the course of a week chant less than the whole Psalter with its customary canticles; since we read, that our holy forefathers promptly fulfilled in one day what we lukewarm monks should, please God, perform at least in a week.

What then of the Night Office?  (Which is called Matins, rather misleadingly, in the Roman, and Vigils in the Monastic terminology: both contain one or more Nocturns.)

It is said that an angel revealed to a desert Father that twelve was the appropriate number of psalms for the Night Office, and this is the number adhered to in the Monastic Nocturnal.  Be that as it may, in the Roman the number nine - no doubt in honour of the Nine Choirs of the angelic host - was settled on for feasts long ago, and since 1912 this has been the number of psalm-portions for each night.  Note how much longer Monastic Vigils must be: it must get through 78 psalms (some divided in twain) each week, and each Hour begins not just with Psalm 94, but with Psalm 3 beforehand.  Most holy, but very lengthy...  Whereas the Roman arrangement since 1912 has only had to cover 35 psalms a week, or 5 a night (again, breaking longer ones up into parts, as in the Day Hours as well), plus the prefatory Invitatory (Ps 94).

Again, I find Roman Matins quite long enough, and quail at the very idea of attempting Monastic Vigils.

I heard the voice of...

I felt pretty tired and headache-y when I got up yesterday morning; couldn't drag myself further than the kitchen, so I sat there, eyes closed, sore-headed, feeling sorry for myself. I did have the benefit, tho', of hearing my housemates singing Lauds in our chapel (you could say we are fairly Catholic!), and it was really wonderful, especially since the tones for the psalmody were so melodious. Somehow, the awful noise each man thinks he's making (speaking only for myself: I can't sing immediately upon awaking) becomes a fine strong sound when heard from a slight remove. So I did pray Lauds yesterday shortly after 6am, despite not making a sound: because that's what participatio actuosa truly is, really partaking of the liturgical act of Christ and His Church, by uniting one's heart and all else to what's going on to the extent possible, raising one's mind to God - De profundis clamavi ad te, Domine.


After the others finished singing the Tota pulchra - we add something Marian after Lauds - they came in, and one found for me some panadol, after taking which I went back to bed for the morning, till I felt better. Thanks, guys!


In the evening, it was time to head out and attend Low Mass for the feast of the Conversion of St Paul, after making a quick confession beforehand: the last few days have been difficult. The Pro. was not so much like an oven as like a sauna - it was warm but not humid outside, but inside the sweat ran through my hair. At least, when I joined the others for Friday Night Catechism in the parish centre, the air-conditioning was on!


My laptop has been fixed, thanks be, but the Internet connexion at home is playing up (Murphy's Law in action). At least I could watch a DVD before turning in for the night.