Daytime Prayer in the Roman Office: A (Very) Brief Historical Overview

From about the mid-first millennium until 1911, when Pope Pius X radically rearranged its psalm distribution, the divine office of the Roman rite had a never-changing psalmody for the “little hours” of the day: Prime (First Hour, 6 a.m.), Terce (Third Hour, 9 a.m.), Sext (Sixth Hour, 12 noon), and None (Ninth Hour, 3 p.m.). Namely, the longest psalm in the Psalter, Ps. 119 (118 in Septuagint/Vulgate numbering), was distributed in its entirety through these hours, to be repeated every day without fail.

When Pope Pius rearranged the psalms of the breviary, one of his overriding principles was the restoration of the recitation of the entire psalter in a week in such a way as to minimize repetition and reduce the immense burden on priests. Considering that all the day hours of every day of the week had been taken up by one very lengthy psalm in the prior practice, these hours proved to be a most convenient place to spread out other psalms, most of which had been assigned to the also very long night-vigil hour of Matins.

A result of Pius’s reform was that what was previously wholly unchanging, suddenly became completely variable: every little hour of each day of the week had a different psalm selection, with no repetition at all between them.

Although this move certainly advanced the pope’s goal of reducing and distributing the burden of the daily Offices and making a full weekly psalter more feasible, it also lost something of the “anchoring” character of these hours, whose invariability provided an easier way to memorize their contents as associated with a particular time of day, and afforded a respite of recurring familiarity in the middle of a busy workday.

When the Consilium tasked with carrying out the liturgical reforms called for by Vatican II treated of these daytime hours, several options were on the table, occasioned by the very different precedents of the pre- and post-1911 Roman usages. The question of Prime was the easiest, since the ecumenical council itself directly called for its abolition (Sacrosanctum Concilium, 89d). But what to do about the remaining three daytime hours?

Some, notably including Consilium secretary Msgr. Annibale Bugnini, advocated for the reduction of the three hours to only one, perhaps to be said at midday, and included in the psalter’s overall distribution following Pius X’s precedent (so, no repetition from day to day). Others criticized this approach and pointed to the need to keep especially religious houses and communities in mind that would want to keep the immemorial custom of assembling every three hours during the day. If no other hours were provided, what would they pray? Bugnini and some others argued that the abolition of the other hours might open up the possibility of other, non-liturgical forms of prayer at these times. However, in this case, it was not Bugnini’s view that ended up prevailing.

The Consilium came up with a creative way to re-appropriate and incorporate both streams of tradition — that is, an unchanging component that characterized these hours for the many centuries before 1911, but also a changeable psalter-portion that helps carry the burden of distributing the overall psalter, now to be distributed over four weeks, rather than one.

The compromise struck was that one of the three hours would have a variable psalmody, assigned according to the day of the week and integrated into the four-week psalm distribution. It would be up to the individual or community praying to decide when it would be most convenient to say these proper psalms of the day — at midmorning (Terce), midday (Sext) or in the midafternoon (None). Priests, deacons and some religious who were not bound by a full choral office obligation, would only be obligated to do this one, variable hour, at one of these three traditional times most convenient for them.

But others, who wanted to mark the remaining two hours, and those monasteries and religious houses with a commitment to a full Office “in choir,” would now have the opportunity to pray an unchanging set of “Complementary Psalmody,” drawn from the first nine Gradual Psalms, Pss. 120(119) through 128(127), assigned by groups of three to the three main times of day. This psalm distribution is nothing new either: here, the Consilium drew from psalm schema of St. Benedict for his monastic offices, and in continuous use in the Western Church since the early 500s. (In the traditional Benedictine office, these psalms are repeated at Terce, Sext, and None every day between Tuesday and Saturday.)

With this solution, the Consilium arguably found the “best of all worlds,” suitable and useful enough for busy secular priests, laypeople and the domestic church, mendicants, choir-monks and cloistered nuns alike; a solution that is richly traditional (indeed, drawing from the best of multiple traditions), flexible, and creative — as is the hallmark of a living and fruitful tradition.

Daytime Prayer: A “Breviary Hack” for Some Special Days

As noted above, when Pius X made all daytime hours variable, one of his goals was to reduce or eliminate repetition altogether. This principle, as many know, remained very much operative in the Consilium’s work overall, and the divine office was no exception. Because the Gradual Psalms assigned as a “Complementary Psalmody” for the two optional daytime hours are considered “complementary,” they do not form a part of the four-week psalter otherwise distributed throughout most of the other hours. Thus, there are some days when they come up in the regular course, particularly at Vespers (Evening Prayer).

In this quest to avoid repetition, on any day when a Gradual Psalm otherwise assigned to an optional daytime hour is said at Vespers, the breviary indicates that if the corresponding daytime hour is said, then the variable daytime Psalms of the Day must be used at that hour, and the Complementary psalms at the other two hours, in order to avoid the repetition of that psalm.

For example, on Friday of Psalter Week II, Psalm 121(120) is assigned as the second psalm at Vespers. Correspondingly, the breviary instructs that for Daytime Prayer, “the complementary psalmody from series II [Sext/Midday] and III [None/Midafternoon] is used.”

That is to say, if one is to say Midmorning Prayer/Terce on this day, then the psalms of the day must be used at that hour (because Ps. 121 is assigned in the Complementary Psalmody to Terce). However, if Terce is omitted, this does not apply, since the sole purpose of this rule is to avoid saying Psalm 121 twice in one day.

There is just one little oversight in the design of the breviary that makes it easy for these days, with specifically assigned times for the psalms of the day, slip through — since most days it is up to the person praying to decide at which hour he/she wants to say the variable psalms instead of the unchanging ones. These days are only indicated by a note after the psalms of the day for that given Midday Prayer.

So, for the little “breviary hack” that I have found to be very helpful in avoiding having to dig around rubrics: I sat down once with my breviary and a pencil, and for any of these few special days, I indicated before the psalmody, which hour the psalms of the day are assigned to:

This has eliminated any hassle in scrambling to remember or look up whether a particular day’s daytime psalms can be said at any time or if they are assigned to a specific hour.

Conclusion

There may be many things for which the Consilium could be rightly criticized and taken to task in its breviary reform (most notably the selective censorship of some psalms, and psalm- and canticle-verses that were deemed too “psychologically difficult”).

In the case of the arrangement of the hours of Daytime Prayer, however, I think the reform struck a truly excellent and helpful balance that restores the unchanging, anchoring feature for two of the three hours of prayer that were lost in St. Pius X’s 1911 reform, while still providing some of the variability of Pope Pius’s arrangement.

It wisely draws from the (less tedious and better-suited, in my opinion) Benedictine arrangement of assigning the Gradual Psalms for the unchanging parts, but also tips the hat to the old Roman secular use, by distributing Psalm 119 (118) across the four weeks as the first psalm/psalm-portion of the variable Daytime psalmody, from Tuesday of Week I through Saturday of Week IV.

Every divine office arrangement and tradition has its strengths and weaknesses, and arguably, this Daytime Prayer arrangement is one of the greatest strengths of the modern Roman breviary.

Agree? Disagree? Questions or additional thoughts? Comment below, or feel free to contact me privately.