Liturgy of the Hours: another approach

I have been praying the Daily Office according to the use of the Episcopal Church for most of my adult life. Daily Matins in the Rite One traditional language is part of what made me an Episcopalian, when I was in a congregation where weekday Matins was significant, with eight or ten people gathered every morning. And I hardly need mention Choral Evensong, which is pretty much the rest of what made me an Episcopalian.

It may thus be surprising that I am trying something different. As of this past Monday, the day after Whitsunday, I have moved to the Roman Catholic Liturgy of the Hours. An experiment, one might say.

Some years ago, I was with my sister at a thrift store in suburban Maryland. There on the shelf was a complete four-volume set of the Liturgy of the Hours, eighty cents per volume. As I learned, it had been in the care (I almost wrote “belonged,” but such things do not “belong” to anyone) of Alfonso Sanchez, S.J. – a Jesuit. From the looks of these volumes, he did not mess around; they are thoroughly well used. As they should be: Roman Catholic clergy and religious are bound by solemn vow to the observance of the Hours. But not laymen; that was left for the genius of Cranmer, who envisioned a church where everyone from peasant to queen would daily gather for Matins and Evensong in their parish churches and chapels. It has not turned out that way, unfortunately.

Once before I dipped my toe into these volumes for a week while on vacation, hastening back to the familiar Comfortable Words of the BCP when I returned home. But now that I am no longer responsible for leading public Matins in the church (excepting Sundays), the door is open for me to try this at greater length. So, on Monday, off I went: Volume III, Ordinary Time weeks 1 through 17.

Some preliminary observations:
- The rhythm of the day is different, heavily front-loaded (if one does the Office of Readings back to back with Morning Prayer, which I gather is common). Not so much in the evening; there is Evening Prayer, but it is much more lightweight than Anglican Evensong. One could place the Office of Readings there, I suppose; it can happen at any point of the day or night.
- The language is thoroughly pedestrian: ICEL texts for the liturgy, New American Bible for the scriptures, the Grail Psalter. It is a far cry from the BCP Rite One, but would probably flow naturally enough for someone inured to BCP’s Rite Two. The level of non-inclusivity for language about humankind is striking for someone who has been in a different environment for years, but these volumes date from the 1970’s, before that became a significant issue in most places. The ones I have may indeed be obsolete; I do not know if these texts were revised when they renewed (and greatly improved) the Mass translation a few years ago.
- There is a lot of Psalmody. Three psalms (or parts of longer psalms) at each office, including the Little Offices during the day. Overall, there is a four-week cycle which (at least in Ordinary Time) carries on independently of the cycle of Sundays and weekdays. Excepting on feasts and saints’ days, of which more below. I have not looked, but my suspicion is that some of the psalms show up more than once in the four weeks, otherwise it would feel more equal in weight to the Cranmerian system of reading it all through beginning to end every month, which system I have followed all these years. [Edited to add: There are a good many Canticles added to the mix, some of them familiar to Episcopalians from Rite Two Matins, many others in similar vein from Old and New Testaments. There may be enough of these to add 30% or 40% to the Psalter, and account for why the amount of psalmody feels like more than the BCP. It is definitely a lot more than the psalmody appointed in the BCP's Daily Office Lectionary, a six week cycle based on similar principles as the Roman Catholic approach, aiming to place psalms where they best fit in the rhythms of the day and week]
- But they leave out some of the juicy parts. I was shocked to learn some years ago that the Benedictines (and presumably others) omit the verses about your dogs drinking the blood of your enemies and the happiness of those who bash infants against the stones. And so they do; we had Psalm 69 this week – much of it, that is; not all.
- And there is not much Scripture. For all of the Hours excepting the Office of Readings, there is one little snippet, one or two verses in the manner of what we have in BCP Compline. Fine for meditation, but not much meat to it.
- In the Office of Readings, there are two lessons of more proper length, similar in size to the BCP Daily Office lessons. But no Gospels! Best I can tell in Volume III, not once in these seventeen weeks, other than little snippets in the other Hours. The norm is a lesson from the Old Testament or Epistles followed by a reading from the Church Fathers, generally relating to the Scriptural lesson just read or (on saints’ days) to the commemoration. I hope that I am mistaken about the absence of the Gospels. I am nervous from stepping so far away from Holy Scripture, which has brought me thus far in conversion of life.

And that brings me to what may be the most significant point for my ongoing use of these books: it presumes a context that does not exist for me, of daily attendance at Mass, which is where they are assuming you will hear the Gospel. It presumes that one will more properly feed upon Holy Scripture outside of the Hours, for example in Lectio Divina at some point during the day. I could do this, and must if I continue this path. But the thorough reading of pretty much all of the Old and New Testaments in a two year cycle, with the Gospels more often than that, is one of the treasures of the Anglican/Episcopal approach, seen all the more clearly by comparison to the Roman Catholic method.

In a similar vein, there are no Creeds, and no confession in the Liturgy of the Hours. Again, it presumes that you will have the Credo at Mass (at least on Sundays and major feasts) – and the Catholics have their own way of dealing with Confession, which for a religious or clergy, is indeed Confession with capital “C.” Not a general confession said by all together in the liturgy.

After two or three days I began to find my way through the services well enough. Then came the first exception: the memorial of the Venerable Bede, Priest and Doctor, May 25. The saints’ days are in a different part of the book, with their own texts, and much flipping of pages. Part of the propers come from the Common of Doctors of the Church (page 1763 and following) or the Common of Holy Men, Religious (page 1858 and following). Or for what they call “memorials” and we call “lesser feasts” one can go ahead with parts of the normal daily texts. But not all. I sat down at home for Morning Prayer that day, a Friday – when I had overslept; it was already nearly sunrise when I did this, and I needed to get on the road to the church and my duties – and I almost threw up my hands and quit. It was complex, and took much longer to find the right things, I was in a hurry, and not very recollected spiritually.

Whatever form is followed, the Officium is like that sometimes.

But the second reading at the Office of Readings (once I got to it) was a wonderful letter on the death of Saint Bede, by Cuthbert, which made my day. Oh how I want to be someone like that!

One gains appreciation for what Cranmer meant in his preface to the First Book of Common Prayer (our BCP, page 866) where he wrote that in the medieval Office “… that to turn the book only, was so hard and intricate a matter, that many times, there was more business to find out what should be read, than to read it when it was found out.” I said an “Amen” to that on Friday. The Daily Office in the Anglican/Episcopal manner can be prayed by any layman who can read even a little: I remember a young gentleman back on the island where I first encountered these things who could indeed barely read; his schooling had ended with the third grade. But he could puzzle out the scriptures in the Authorized Version and the liturgical texts in the Rite One language well enough to read lessons at Matins and sometimes serve as Officiant, and he found it worth his while to do so. It is a person like him that Archbishop Cranmer had in mind as the foundation of the Anglican Church. In the Roman Catholic form, one must be considerably more determined, ready to pore over the rubrics and flip lots of pages, or receive good instruction, or best of all, the modelling of one’s elders in the religious house where one is discovering this manner of prayer. To be fair, the normal garden-variety Ferial Day is not that hard to follow in the Roman books – but there are a lot of saints’ days.

One last surprise: the hymnody. Large amounts of it: a hymn at each of the Hours. I am a little disappointed that the great corpus of Latin office hymnody is largely absent (excepting Night Prayer, where several of the greatest office hymns are given in Latin as well as English), but on the whole the selections were well chosen, with good representation of then-modern authors such as Fred Pratt Green and Fred Kaan. It surprises me how “Protestant” the hymnody is; there is little difference from what one would find in a Presbyterian or Methodist hymnal of the period. For example, the hymn for Morning Prayer on the memorial of Saint Bede was "For all the saints" (page 1864) by the Anglican bishop W. W. How, tune Sine Nomine by the English agnostic R. Vaughan Williams. But for the Latin office hymns, our Hymnal 1982 is a better source.

While it is convenient to have the hymn text right there with the office, I worry about having the selections fixed in place for who knows how long. Have they revised these since the 1970’s? For one thing, there has been a lot of excellent Roman Catholic work since then which should have a place here, to say nothing of hymnody from other sources – world music, for example, entirely absent from these pages. Again, that was barely on the radar in the 1970’s.

But one week does not give me the right to pass judgment; I submit my reflections with humility, knowing that much would become clear only with continued use. I hope to stay with it through the summer and perhaps through all of Ordinary Time, but not beyond that unless I have a change of heart. It is instructive, and is helping me to a better understanding of my own tradition.

[Edited 6/17/18 to add: I didn't make it even one month; back to the BCP for me, though with an increased understanding of the Daily Office in both its Roman and Anglican forms. More on this in the next posting.]

Give the glory to the Lord, and the Lamb

Last night (May 6, the Sixth Sunday of Easter) was our final choral evensong of the season. As is our custom, it was sung by the combined youth and adult choirs. Because most of the youth choir was at last summer's RSCM Course, we were so bold as to attempt some music that would otherwise be more than we could handle, for we had sung it at the Course.

I could write of the Howells "Collegium Regale" Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, and what a privilege it was to conduct this. I hope that I will never forget the delicate shimmering beauty of the opening, at first just the youth choir trebles and altos with the adult women joining a bit later. Or the four young choirmen singing the tenor lead that begins the Nunc Dimittis. Or the magnificence of the "Glory be to the Father...", which was profoundly moving.

I could write of how fine it was to be Organist for the Britten "Rejoice in the Lamb," the anthem for this evensong, and of my high regard for my friend Jean who directed this and played for the Howells, plus a significant prelude, and urged me to prepare a careful plan for the warmup rehearsal, timed to the minute for each item that we needed, and in the event, essential.

I could write of the Smith Responses, and our teen chorister Charles who was superb as Officiant. And I could write of my friend Nora, who was Preacher for the evening. And the David Hogan "O gracious Light," and the closing hymn, "The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended," with the descant by John Scott (may he rest in peace) that we sang at last summer's Course. This proved the perfect ending to the service and was, again, profoundly moving for me and probably others.

But of all these things, what impressed me the most was the Psalmody, the three Psalms appointed for the Sixth Evening. I had thought we would need considerable rehearsal, because the two choirs do not routinely sing psalmody together, nor do they rehearse together. Nor was it a small group; with the combined choirs, we numbered about twenty-five. With psalmody, small is often best, for the ensemble is easier to achieve. And familiarity with one another's singing is essential. For best results, the group should sing Psalms together every day. Or several times a day, as the brothers and sisters of Religion do in the monastaries and convents.

We were arranged in divided choir, the adults on Cantoris, the youth on Decani. I reminded them to watch one another across the middle, and most of all to listen. We launched into Psalm 32: "Happy are they whose transgressions are forgiven..." After a couple of verses, I quit playing. Then I walked to the back of the church, my arms folded so that I would not try to direct them.

They were flawless. Well, not quite; psalmody is never flawless. But they were extremely good. And they did not need me, or any direction, or even accompaniment. They could have gone right through the full set, which they did later in the service (Psalms 32, 33, and 34), but it was clear that for rehearsal, all that was needed was a couple of verses of each to remind them of the chants.

If there is one thing of which I am proud with these choristers, it is this: they have learned to sing the Psalms. David Willcocks used to say that the psalmody was what made a choir like the one he directed at King's what it was (and is). The psalms require sensitivity to diction, pacing, and most of all attentive ensemble with the other singers. I can attest on our more humble scale that much of what progress has been made during my tenure has been the result of the psalmody, both the Anglican Chant of evensong and the plainsong that is our staple for the morning Eucharists.

Getting through all of this music in good order was an accomplishment for our parish choir, young and old. But last night, I was numb to it, immediately carried off by concerns for the traditional end-of-season pizza supper (which went well), and some administrative concerns that appeared via e-mail, and by the Sunday evening routine of bulletin-making. The best I could say at that point was that I was glad it was done. But today is better; I can see what a Good Thing last night was, both in sum for all of the choir and individually for many of the choristers - and probably in many ways which I will never know, for them and for others. For a while longer, it remains my privilege and vocation to work with them and perhaps make a bit of difference. For this I offer my thanks to the One who calls us and whom we praise in song.

Soli Deo Gloria.