9/12/2023 0 Comments Divine office fmStill, I only really got the hang of the prayers and the structure when I gave in and purchased a one-volume paper copy ( Christian Prayer) in January 2021. It sounds complicated, but it isn’t at all. Then we say brief intercessions, the Our Father, and a short closing prayer. Following that, we pray the Canticle of Zechariah in the morning (“Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel he has come to his people and set them free”) and the Canticle of Mary in the evening (“My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my savior”). When Morning prayer is the first of the day, we read, “Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will proclaim your praise,” and continue with the invitatory, Psalm 95: “Come, let us sing to the Lord and shout with joy to the Rock who saves us.” Both Morning and Evening prayer involve two thematic Psalms and a Canticle, taken from the prophets or the epistles. I focused my pandemic-era spiritual efforts toward Morning and Evening prayer in particular. However, wherever the Office appears in Christendom, it always involves the Psalms. Some hours are combined in certain traditions. The number of hours differs, sometimes more, sometimes less. I have attempted to pray the hours in this context, but praying the hours takes on many different forms from East to West and across denominations. Thus you should pray a powerful prayer at this hour, imitating the cry of him who prayed and all creation was made dark.” Nones is around 3 P.M., the death of Christ and his descent into Hell.Īfter the Second Vatican Council broke down many barriers within the Roman Catholic Church, the name Liturgy of the Hours came into wider use, and the Church explicitly invited lay people to pray alongside ordained priests and religious brothers and sisters. Sext, which is said around noon, is when, as Hippolytus the Roman wrote, “Christ was attached to the wood of the cross, the daylight ceased and became darkness. Terce, or the third hour of the day (said at around 9 A.M.), is when the Holy Spirit is said to have descended upon the Apostles. We praise God in the morning we lift our hands in thanksgiving to God in the evening. Each of these hours is imbued with meaning. Matins, Lauds, and Vespers are all considered major hours, and the remainder are minor hours with shorter readings. In the Roman Catholic Divine Office they consist of Matins (or Office of Readings), Lauds (Morning prayer), Terce, Sext, None (all of which are Daytime Prayers), Vespers (Evening prayer), and Compline (Night prayer). Paul sets before us: to “pray without ceasing.” This seems almost doable when there are traditionally seven canonical hours in the day. For Christians, the desire is to accomplish that impossible task St. The Divine Office (the strange use of the English word ‘office’ comes from the Latin opus, or work Opus Dei means “work of God”) emerges from the ancient Christian tradition of praying the hours, which in turn has its roots in the Jewish tradition of daily prayers in the morning, afternoon, and evening. They’ve provided structure when my life lacked any other external scaffolding, they’ve helped me stay compassionate and soft-hearted in the face of a grueling pandemic, and over time, the Psalms have invited me deeper into prayer and toward contemplation. At long last, spurred by lockdown and the lack of in-person Mass, I finally have made these prayers a part of my daily life. I’ve been acquainted with the Divine Office since college, amounting to a long and desultory decade-long relationship. The Divine Office is the corporate prayer of the Roman Catholic Church, recited primarily by priests and religious sisters and brothers, but it has always had an intriguing aura of mystery to me. I recommitted myself to praying Divine Office via the iBreviary app ( link) for the thousandth time as a devotional practice. Inspired by these cloistered nuns, I decided I would indulge in cultivating my own little convent of one. I had a similar mindset to many in my relatively privileged cohort-we were going to stay home, embark on new hobbies and skills, improve our lives. In hindsight, the advice (exercise, fun, and prayer) is funny, a little hopeful, and certainly deeply unaware of the severity of what was really going to happen during the course of the next two and a half years. In March 2020, I happened upon a brief video ( source) in which cloistered Catholic nuns shared advice on social distancing ahead of impending regional lockdowns in the United States.
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