It has been 47 years since the new Liturgy of the Hours (U.S. edition) first appeared in English in 1975, but the Second Vatican Council’s strong admonition (SC §100) that pastors ensure at least Sunday and Feast day Vespers be celebrated regularly in parishes is very far from being a recognizable reality in the American church.
In fact, the terms “divine office,” “breviary,” or “liturgy of the hours,” if they (rarely as they do) evoke anything at all, are usually still associated with the priest’s private prayer book, rather than the common patrimony of the whole church, the daily cycle of prayer that complements and extends the Mass and completes the liturgical cycle.
Now, Bishop Robert Barron’s “new evangelization” outfit, Word on Fire, has made an announcement that might help make a dent in that depressing reality, and work toward giving the Liturgy of the Hours the proper place in the actual life of the church that it deserves.
Its new monthly “Liturgy of the Hours” subscription-based booklets, modeled after the popular “Magnificat” booklet format and business model (which has recently seen a TLM-based “Benedictus” counterpart arise) seems to be a design with simplicity, ease of use, uniformity and compliance with the content and norms of the actual Liturgy of the Hours (as opposed to the various adaptations and simplifications like Magnificat magazine’s, which make it impossible to actually pray the Divine Office in common).
In addition to being generally useful and affordable (currently offered at $7/month for a subscription), it also strikes me as aesthetically pleasing and well-designed:
The booklet will not contain the complete cycle of offices, but it will have Morning Prayer (Lauds), Evening Prayer (Vespers), and Night Prayer (Compline), a great start both for individuals who are new to praying the divine offices, and for parishes intending to begin regular public celebration of one of these hours. Perhaps, pending successful results of this model, Word on Fire might consider having a separate Office of Readings and/or Daytime Prayer supplement, or expand the original concept with these hours to make for a complete cycle.
The WoF announcement was met with some immediate criticism online as to the business model of a disposable booklet being an example of the “throwaway culture” Pope Francis so often rightly criticizes. I generally sympathize with this line of thinking, and of course it would be ideal if the “Golden Age” of quality, lasting breviary-printing à la Benziger Bros., Desclée, Mame, Pustet et al. in the early 20th century were revived.
But let’s be realistic: the underlying twin problems to be solved are a lack of lay knowledge and interest, and a lack of clerical interest in helping generate lay knowledge and interest. And these will never be solved by simply printing nicer, but equally complex breviaries, that people have no interest in mastering.
My personal hope, perhaps a bit naïve and over-optimistic considering the extent and depth of the problem above, is that this new initiative will catalyze not only some individual lay interest, but also consequently create a demand for more public parochial celebrations, and thus start reviving a level of knowledge and comfort with these prayers that many will be able to graduate to the more complex and permanent books for the divine office. If this happened in the next few years/decades, I would think the initiative to have been worth it, monthly disposable subscription-model and all.
After all, as Pope Paul VI said in his Marialis Cultus (1974), “No avenue should be left unexplored to ensure that this clear and practical recommendation [of praying the Liturgy of the Hours in common] finds within Christian families growing and joyful acceptance.”
In this spirit, I will continue following this project with cautious optimism. May God give the increase!
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This reminds me of a project I had undertaken in my last year before departing diocesan seminary formation: my own typesetting of the LOTH based on the old Benzinger editions (beautiful line art, double-column type, includes chant pointings from the editio typica) whilst using the upcoming translation of the psalms.
If I had the resources (more of the newly translated elements, for starters), I could’ve one day brought it to print. Maybe I’ll go back to work on it and perhaps it will see the light of day.
Does anyone have access to the newly translated materials? I have the psalms and canticles incorporated thus far.
USCCB is working on releasing a hymnal with the complete new hymnody sometime later this year. As for the other texts like the 4-week psalter’s collects or intercessions, I doubt they’ll be available until after LOTH2.0 is published in full
Lovely video, recorded in Holy Cross Monastery, Chicago, and St John Cantius Church, Chicago.
I’ve participated in many public celebrations of the LotH, in a university Newman Center, in some parishes, and in other community settings such as the Secular Discalced Carmelites. Sad to say, the results never fail to be cringe-worthy.
I have been blessed to attend some Vespers & Compline services using the older 1961 Roman Breviary (or the Dominican equivalent) and I actually felt like I had attended a worship service…but could not fully participate in it, of course because of the limitations of my Latin and ability to read the musical notation.
The newer LotH is “accessible” but the very traits that make it so, also make it less liturgical and frankly better suited for private reading than public singing / chanting. Not exactly a book for a worship service, perhaps tool of private meditation. The older Breviary at least is clearly worship and clearly liturgy, but hard to imagine how it could be adopted by large numbers of laity in a public setting. I’m just not convinced that it’s possible for the Church to have its cake and eat it too.
The Divine Office (not getting into the Old Covenant Temple background of the Psalms) was originally conceived by, and for, MONKS. Even its suitability and appropriateness for regular diocesan clergy has been called into question more than once in the history of the Church, and it’s not impossible that one day it will cease to be obligatory for all except those in religious orders. (As Tom pointed out in a previous post, the obligation of non-religious saying the office wasn’t even a thing in the first millennium of Christianity, and even then only in the West.)
Notwithstanding any of other “calls” in Vatican II that were good and necessary and of the Holy Spirit, it is conceivable that SC §100 was just an off-key note. Maybe, as a “development of piety” (analogous development of doctrine), for the Divine Office to go from being exclusively for monks in choir, to be for not only all clergy but even laity, is a bridge too far, and not the will of the Holy Spirit after all. Sometimes the leaders of the Church ask something of the people, and the sensus fidelium answer is a no.
(BTW, almost all the other ecumenical councils had some admonitions that were non-starters, so I’m not picking on Vatican II at all. Please do not read this as some trad rant!)
I guess my main concern with this take is that it completely ignores the cathedral office tradition that defined a lot of 1st millennium popular worship, and the fact that the divine office is an integral part of non-monastic life in most of the Eastern churches. Yes, it became an almost exclusively monkish and priestly private thing… in the West.
If bringing back public celebrations of the office for non-monastic environments is a bad idea, as you suggest, what would you recommend instead?
If the Cathedral chapters once had a high degree of lay participation, so much that they “defined a lot of 1st millennium popular worship”, that is intriguing. I have learned a lot of liturgical history here & there but I have never heard anyone make that claim before. Any source you can cite? I’d be interested in reading more.
While it is debatable, in my opinion probable that the cathedral / canon versions of the Office ultimately have monastic origins. The whole practice of the liturgy of the hours started with the desert fathers in the East and spread outward to the rest of the church, significantly changing form as it was adopted by diocesan / cathedral clergy eat & west, later by mendicant friars, and then morphing even further into the current LotH which I take to have been intended as a more “lay friendly” version of the Office than the 1961 and earlier versions.
I confess ignorance of the Eastern practices though; I have not yet tried to wrap my head around the complexity of the Byzantine liturgies. Given that complexity, lay participation in any of their Hours is also very intriguing. I wouldn’t have thought it practical.
I’d refer e.g. to Taft’s “The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West,” one of the best and most exhaustive historical and theological treatments of the same. The idea that the offices were a later monkish development that spread to others is… highly contested, to say the least.
But as for what to recommend instead, I guess it depends on what the goal is. If we want people coming to the parish church to worship together, we have the Mass…and with Mass attendance so dismal and getting worse since before I was born, I personally couldn’t justify focusing on anything other than that. Catholics need to come back to the Church, period.
If it’s true that once upon a time, people came in droves to cathedral chapters and their Vespers services etc., well, that presupposed a certain level of Catholic culture and commitment that obviously doesn’t exist right now. Maybe that’s why SC § 100 leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth; Pope St. Paul VI and the council fathers had good intentions, but their optimism about the average Catholic’s level of commitment and even belief was clearly very far off the mark even in 1963. Today less than a third of Catholics even believe in the True Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
Let’s get our sacramental house in order before we tackle extra-sacramental worship services.
I sympathize with your point, but I actually think that practically speaking, counterintuitive as it may seem to you, doubling down and yelling louder “IT’S REALLY REAL” and just to prove it adding X more masses on the schedule, will not advance the shared goal.
I think in those who are already skeptical or disbelieving, that just multiplies the red flags and their sense of “the gentleman sure does protest much.”
Whereas, rebuilding a robust liturgical life that doesn’t revolve solely around a multiplicity of masses and the other sacraments, would create both a better foundation and perhaps even a less intimidating or “same-old,” easily-written-off point of engagement with the religion.
E.g., I see all the time at the local Orthodox parish completely new people showing up for Saturday Vespers, and thus getting captivated, involved, and perhaps eventually converted.
I was not suggesting doubling down or yelling or adding more masses on the schedule or any such thing. All I was saying is that the problem of poor Mass attendance is objectively more important than the problem of LotH non-attendance; I don’t claim to have the magic formula to fix either! 🙂
Thank you for your comments about “rebuilding a robust liturgical life” and “point of engagement with the religion”. I was bothered that you seemed to take for granted that more Hours being prayed in public in community is a good thing in and of itself, an assumption that is far from self-evident. But if it can serve some real good outside of itself, then yeah I wouldn’t be against that at all.
It’s just sad that I’ve never seen a public LotH with the laity done WELL, even once. Been to pre-Vatican II Vespers that were beautiful but the congregation was more like an audience at a concert. Been to more bad LotH hours prayed in community than I care to remember, which is what convinced me from my own experiences that the LotH was designed (perhaps unwittingly?) to work better in individual recitation than in a group setting. Maybe I wouldn’t feel so pessimistic on the topic if I ever had experienced a success story.
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Could you let me know, does Word on Fire integrate some of the updated psalms, magnificat/benedictus translations already put out by the USCCB in book form or are they using the older material?
My understanding, Michael, is that it’s all the older material, in order to make sure it still aligns with breviaries and online divine office apps and can be used to pray in common.
Dare I say it, the Mass has become more and more secular in nature. No wonder many don’t attend. Why should they both coming to church, when much of the words, actions and music are what they get outside of the church. Why bother? Been to Masses where the … het hem… sacred music …sounded as tho one were in a bar. etc. etc etc. I totally understand why many don’t attend.
It often starts with the pre-Mass atmosphere, which can feel like everyone’s waiting for a movie to start and just chatting up a storm…as they would in so many other contexts. My parish has a long tradition of silence in church before Mass, but I can’t imagine why other than that it’s been that way for a long time; nobody insists on it. The church looks and feels traditional, and the tabernacle is in clear, central view, so maybe that’s part of it. I can’t imagine how a chatty congregation would be inspired to keep silence without being scolded or condescended to (which wouldn’t work, anyway). Might be a long process of suggesting and encouraging silence and teaching why it’s better.