Monastic Responsory for Advent

The Breviarium Monasticum contains 61 Matins Responsories for use during Advent (not counting two  that differ merely in their versicle); of these, the Roman Breviary contains 57, that is, all but four (and the two that appear in the former twice, with differing versicles, it contains but once).

Here is one of the "missing Responsories" enjoyed only by select Benedictines; it doesn't appear in the Office for a little while yet, as it is the fourth Matins Responsory for the 3rd Sunday of Advent, but I like the words, with their strongly eschatological flavour, and have englished the Latin as follows:

R/. Ecce veniet Dñs princeps regum terræ: * Beati, qui parati sunt occurrere illi, habebunt partem in civitate Jerusalem. V/. Veniens veniet Dñs, et non tardabit. * Beati, qui parati sunt occurrere illi, habebunt partem in civitate Jerusalem. Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto. * Beati, qui parati sunt occurrere illi, habebunt partem in civitate Jerusalem. 

R/. Behold, He shall come, the Lord, the Prince of the kings of the earth: * Blessed are they that are prepared to meet him, they shall have a place in the city Jerusalem. V/. Coming He shall come, the Lord, and shall not tarry. * Blessed are they that are prepared to meet him, they shall have a place in the city Jerusalem. Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. * Blessed are they that are prepared to meet him, they shall have a place in the city Jerusalem.

First Vespers of Candlemas

In the 1962 Breviaries (incl. the Dominican), Candlemas only has first Vespers if it fall on a Sunday - but, pro pia devotione, it seems good to read Vespers of St Ignatius of Antioch, and then Vespers of Candlemas as well.  

In the Dominican Office, Candlemas Eve Vespers is decorated with a beautiful Responsory and even a Prose – a unique survival of the mediæval practice of not just troping Kyries, or adding a Sequence after the Alleluia at Mass, but of taking up the last part of the melody of a Responsory, and adding a new poetic text to it: in this case, the Responsory is Gaude Maria Virgo, and the Prose is the Inviolata.

The words of the respond should seem familiar – the Tract used at Masses of Our Lady after Septuagesima uses the same text.  However, the versicle following is only used in the Office.

R/.  Gaude, Maria Virgo, cunctas hæreses sola interemisti, quæ Gabrielis Archangeli dictis credidisti: * Dum Virgo Deum et hominem genuisti, et post partum, Virgo, inviolata permansisti.  V/.  Gabrielem Archangelum scimus divinitus te esse affatum: uterum tuum de Spiritu Sancto credimus imprægnatum: erubescat Judæus infelix, qui dicit Christum ex Joseph semine esse natum. * Dum Virgo Deum et hominem genuisti, et post partum, Virgo, inviolata permansisti. Gloria Patri et Filio et Spiritui  Sancto.

(And immediately, without resuming the respond from the asterisk:)

Inviolata, intacta, et casta es Maria,

quae es effecta fulgida caeli porta.

O Mater alma Christi carissima,

suscipe pia laudum praeconia.

Nostra ut pura pectora sint et corpora,

te nunc flagitant devota corda et ora.

Tua per precata dulcisona,

nobis concedas veniam per saecula.

O benigna!

quae sola inviolata permansisti.

The Prose takes up inviolata, the second-last word of the Responsory, expands upon it, and concludes by repeating it and then at last singing the last word, permansisti.

This recension of the Inviolata is proper to the Order; the Roman version reads integra not intacta, reverses lines 5 and 6, and adds O Regina! O Maria! after benigna.

Candlemas, the Purification of Our Lady, the Presentation of Our Lord, the Meeting (Hypapante) of Our Lord in the Temple – a great feast, which some have argued to mystically represent the End of the Year of Grace: our entry, in Christ, into the Heavenly Temple, there to be hid forever with Christ in God.  We carry candles at the procession before Mass, calling to mind the Five Wise Virgins who husbanded their resources, equipped to go out and meet the Bridegroom with lamps burning bright when He came, and so worthy to enter into the Nuptial Feast before the doors were shut.

First Vespers of Septuagesima - O.P. Responsory &c.

As is the custom when a new book of Scripture is about to be begun at Matins, at first Vespers to-night the Dominican Rite inserts a Responsory from the set of Historia (as they are called) for that book – Genesis:

(Genesis ii, 1 & cf. ii, 2; Genesis i, 31a.)

R/.  Igitur perfecti sunt cæli et terra et omnis ornatus eorum: complevitque Deus die septimo opus suum quod fecerat: * Et requievit † Ab omni opere quod patrarat.  V/.  Viditque Deus cuncta quæ fecerat: et erant valde bona. * Et requievit.  Gloria Patri, et Filio, et Spiritui Sancto. † Ab omni opere quod patrarat.

(R/.  So the heavens and the earth were finished and all the furniture of them: and on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made: * And he rested † From all his work which he had done. V/.  And God saw all the things that he had made, and they were very good. * And he rested.  Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost. † From all his work which he had done.)