Praying the Office devotionally vs liturgically: a primer

Fra Angelico

If we wish to prefer a petition to men of high station, we do not presume to do it without humility and reverence; how much more ought we to supplicate the Lord God of all things with humility and pure devotion.

Rule of St Benedict, ch 20

Yesterday I talked about the issue of adhering to the rubrics.  I want to say a little more on that topic today, since I think it is important to understand the issues around praying  Matins 'liturgically' or 'devotionally'.  The decision makes a difference in terms of what books you use, and how much you can adapt it to your own needs.

1.  What is liturgical prayer?

The Catechism of Trent makes a distinction between public and private prayer:

There are two sorts of prayer, private and public. Private prayer is employed in order to assist interior attention and devotion; whereas in public prayer, which has been instituted to excite the piety of the faithful, and has been prescribed for certain fixed times, the use of words is indispensably required. (On prayer)

Public prayer, or liturgy, refers to the official, public worship of the Church.

A number of Papal Encyclicals have touched on the question of the place of the liturgy, and its regulation prior to Vatican II, but the most important of these was probably Pope Pius XII's Mediator Dei, written to correct some of the excesses and errors that sprung up in the wake of the Liturgical Movement.  In it, he gave this of the which gave this run down on the things that constitute liturgy:

...the Church prolongs the priestly mission of Jesus Christ mainly by means of the sacred liturgy. She does this in the first place at the altar, where constantly the sacrifice of the cross is represented and with a single difference in the manner of its offering, renewed. She does it next by means of the sacraments, those special channels through which men are made partakers in the supernatural life. She does it, finally, by offering to God, all Good and Great, the daily tribute of her prayer of praise.  (MD 3)

Just to confuse things, though, 'public prayer' can be done in private - for example a Mass aid by a priest alone, or the Office said by one person at home - and private prayer can be done publicly, such as the recitation of the rosary in Church.

2.  What is devotional prayer?

Devotional, or private prayer, basically encompasses every other type of prayer, including formally approved and highly efficacious and valuable prayers such as the rosary and stations of the cross, as well as less formal types of prayers.

3.  How can the same text be said both devotionally and liturgically?

Imagine you are sick and cannot get to Mass.  Instead you read through the texts of the Mass while in bed, or perhaps watch a video of Mass.  Are you participating in the liturgy?

The answer is no.  Instead you are saying a devotion what was traditionally called a missa secca, or dry Mass.

But why isn't it liturgical?  First because  unless you are a priest, you don't hold the appropriate 'delegation' to say Mass.  But even if you are a priest, you are clearly not intending to say an actual Mass, including consecrating the sacrament in this situation.

Similarly,even though Scripture is used in the liturgy, simply reading Scripture by yourself, whether the readings set for Mass for that day, for study or lectio divina purposes, or as prayer (for example saying the penitential or Gradual psalms) is, on the face of it, a devotional exercise.

The same principles apply to the Office: to say it liturgically you need to be properly delegated to say it (and laypeople are so delegated), and you need to intend to engage in the public worship of the Church rather than just private prayer.  Of course, if you have the books in front of you, and start off saying the Office, it's a reasonable assumption that you intend to say the public prayer of the Church, you don't need to be explicit about your intention each time.

4.  Why pray liturgically?

The advantage of praying liturgically is because it is the work of Christ as priest, and of his body the Church, 'a sacred action par excellence, who efficacy no other action of the Church can equal and to the same degree' (SC).  In the Office we prolong the worship Christ gave to His Father on earth, and also participate in the heavenly liturgy.  The 1983 Code of Canon Law for example says:

In the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church, hearing God speaking to his people and recalling the mystery of salvation, praises him without ceasing by song and prayer and intercedes for the salvation of the whole world.  

Dom Fernard Cabrol, first abbot of Farnborough, writing in 1915, explains it this way:

Private prayer has a personal value, varying according to the degree of faith, fervour, and holiness of he who prays.  The Church's prayer has always, in itself, and independently of the person praying, an absolute value.  It is a formula composed by the Church, and carrying with it her authority...Liturgical prayer is superior to all others not only because it is the Church's prayer but also because of the elements of which is composed...liturgical prayer holds the first rank on account of its efficacy, or the effects it produces in the soul. (Introduction to Day Hours of the Church, vol 1)

5.  Why pray the Office devotionally?

As I noted yesterday, if you choose to pray the Office liturgically, you are obliged to follow the rubrics.  Sacrosanctam Concilium notes that:

Regulation of the sacred liturgy depends solely on the authority of the Church...Therefore, no other person at all, not even a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.

The Code of Canon Law spells out that this means using the approved books, rubrics and so forth.

Praying liturgically carries serious obligations which many of us may not be able to fulfil, in terms of fidelity to the rubrics, understanding of the texts and the amount of time needed to pray it.  Praying devotionally provides much greater freedom and flexibility.

Moreover the Church has always advocated that its adherents undertake a mix of types of prayer: Scripture enjoins us to pray without ceasing, and we cannot possibly pray liturgically all of the time!

Sacrosanctum Concilium, for example, says:

The spiritual life, however, is not limited solely to participation in the liturgy. The Christian is indeed called to pray with his brethren, but he must also enter into his chamber to pray to the Father, in secret; yet more, according to the teaching of the Apostle, he should pray without ceasing. We learn from the same Apostle that we must always bear about in our body the dying of Jesus, so that the life also of Jesus may be made manifest in our bodily frame. This is why we ask the Lord in the sacrifice of the Mass that, "receiving the offering of the spiritual victim," he may fashion us for himself "as an eternal gift".

Popular devotions of the Christian people are to be highly commended, provided they accord with the laws and norms of the Church, above all when they are ordered by the Apostolic See.

By praying some or all of the Office devotionally, we gain the benefit of forms of prayers sanctified by centuries of use, and can offer it for the benefit of others as we do our other prayers and sacrifices.

Mediator Dei confirms that both forms of prayer have value:

Unquestionably, liturgical prayer, being the public supplication of the illustrious Spouse of Jesus Christ, is superior in excellence to private prayers...But this superior worth does not at all imply contrast or incompatibility between these two kinds of prayer. For both merge harmoniously in the single spirit which animates them, "Christ is all and in all." Both tend to the same objective: until Christ be formed in us."

Coming up next

And that is it by way of introduction - next week, I'll start working through the opening section of Matins. 

The rubrics problem: say the black and do the red?

Source; Fr Z

The eighth degree of humility is that a monk do nothing except what is commended by the common rule of the monastery and the example of his superiors.

Rule of St Benedict, ch 7

Apologies to my non-Catholic readers for whom this will be less relevant, but today I want to focus on the issue of doing what the rubrics require.

In this post I'm going to sketch out a few of the implications of following the rubrics.  In my next post I'm going to looking in a bit more detail at the other option, viz praying the Office devotionally rather than 'liturgically' and just what that distinction really means.

This post is a bit long, since I thought it would be useful to some to provide a bit of historical context, so feel free to skim!

Safeguarding the liturgy

My starting point is this: the Office is the public prayer of the Church in the same way that the Mass and sacraments are.  This means that if you want to say it as such (ie liturgically) you are obliged to follow the official rules.

Sacrosanctam Concilium notes that:

Regulation of the sacred liturgy depends solely on the authority of the Church...Therefore, no other person at all, not even a priest, may add, remove, or change anything in the liturgy on his own authority.

The Code of Canon Law reiterates this principle and spells out that this means using the approved books, rubrics and so forth.

That means using the officially approved texts, viz the texts set out in the 1963 breviary, in Latin, in full, and according to the rubrics set out in that breviary; failure to do so is an abuse (though how serious obviously depends on the issues in question, motives, knowledge etc).

Books

That doesn't mean you literally have to use a 1963 (1962) breviary.

For the laity, the Divinum Officium website, for example, provides the Latin according to the Monastic Breviary 1962 rubrics , along with English translations for much of it.

And most of the traditional monasteries actually use the 1934 French-Latin Psautier Monastique as their 'base text' as it were (I'll give a fuller review of this book in the not too distant future).  Another, and probably better, option for most laypeople, given that the Psautier doesn't contain the Commons or readings, is to use an older breviary, and adapt it to the 1962 calendar.

In addition, many of the chants for Matins can't be found in any officially approved book.  But there there are some unofficial versions around, and there has always been a fair amount of leeway granted when it comes to the music.

But it does mean that if you want to pray Matins liturgically you need to use a version of the psalter that is approved for liturgical use for example - and that does not include the King James Version used in Monastic Breviary Matins (and there are other reasons, in my view, to avoid that version of the psalms even for study purposes, which I will come to in due course).

Latin

Similarly, if you want to pray this particular form of the Office liturgically you need to pray it in Latin, consistent with the direction in Pope Benedict XVI's Universae Ecclesiae.

As far as I can find, there were a few very limited indults granted to particular monasteries to pray the Office in the vernacular prior to Vatican II, but nothing that applied generally to the 1962 books (and even then, the indults were for translations whose approval for liturgical use has subsequently been revoked in any case).

But note that some others far more qualified than I am in Canon Law have argued differently!

If you do decide to pray the Office in Latin, you need to at least be able to pronounce it correctly, and have a general sense of the meaning of the text.  Fortunately, there are plenty of resources around on the net, including recordings of all of the psalms being read aloud, which I think are adequate to getting you up to speed sufficiently to satisfy this requirement.

Again, there are good reasons for praying the Office in Latin other than just complying with the rules in my view, and I'll come back to this when we get to looking at the psalms in particular.

A little history

On this blog, I'm basically following the 1962 books, since if you want to use the full traditional Benedictine Office based on a calendar aligned with the Extraordinary Form, they are the ones that are still technically in force.

It should be noted though that relatively few are actually using those rubrics in full.

In large part that is a product of history.  My understanding of the story is as follows (but please do let me know if I've got anything wrong, or there is anything you can add to fill it out).

Prior to Vatican II, the Vatican regulated the liturgy for all religious orders.  The books for the Office for individual congregations of Benedictines were all officially approved by the Congregation for the Sacred Rites in its various incarnations.  Individual calendars could vary from it only to the extent approved by congregation for divine rites (in its various incarnations).  Monasteries obviously added in local feasts, but in accordance with the rules set out in the rubrics.

Since Vatican II, that power of approval has effectively been delegated to individual congregations or monasteries. In 1965, the religious orders were given a license to experiment, and pretty much all monasteries were forced to 'update' their liturgy in various ways.  In the case of the Benedictines, a set of broad principles were eventually promulgated, as well as an official calendar.  For this reason, the traditionally inclined monasteries that operated continuously through this period, such as Fontgambault and its offshoots, and Jouques, have generally adopted the 1979 calendar and assorted other changes to the rubrics.

The traditional monasteries that started outside the system, either aligned with the SSPX, or as independent monasteries, such as Le Barroux, presumably felt freer at the time to modify those of the 1963 rubrics which make little sense (such as the abolition of I Vespers of the Office of Our Lady and for Class II feasts).  One could also argue that this approach is consistent with the effective delegation of control over the Office to monasteries more generally.  Either way, when these monasteries were formally approved under the Ecclesia Dei provisions, their liturgies were either de facto or explicitly approved.  In the case of newer monasteries, I suspect their liturgy is covered in their individual (approved) constitutions.

Diversity and its limits

The net result is that even among the traditional monasteries, there can be wide variations in how the Office is said that don't just reflect longstanding things particular to their congregation.

Oblates of a monastery can, I think, plausibly argue the right to follow the rubrics of the monastery they are attached to, particularly where, as is is the case for some monasteries, they send out ordos, and/or provide podcasts to help you do just that.

For others, Ecclesia Dei and Universae Ecclesiae clarify that the 1962 books can still be used, even if they were outright suppressed (which the Benedictine equivalents weren't; what appeared to be suppressed was rather the calendar associated with them).

Individual laypeople, however, are not monasteries and so do not, in my view, have a license to depart from the officially approved rubrics if they chose to take up this option.

Say the black, do the red?

The bottom line is that, if you are praying the Office liturgically, I think you you need to start from the principle of  'say the black and do the red' as Fr Z has famously put it.  It is perhaps not quite that simple - longstanding legitimate custom can, in some cases, override the written rubrics.  But the general principle holds.

And that creates a problem, since given the length and complexity of Matins, most laypeople will struggle to be able to say it in full, in Latin and according to the rubrics.

There is another option, though, and that is praying it as a devotion, and I'll talk a little bit more about what that really means in the next post.