NO LONGER MAY YOU USE THE FOLLOWING EXCUSES TO AVOID THE LITURGY OF THE HOURS

The Liturgy of the Hours is the official prayer of the Catholic Church.  SEE HERE  The ordained and those in consecrated life make solemn promises to pray it prayer every day.  Everyone else is encouraged to pray it.  When someone sees me for spiritual stuff, I try to encourage the praying the Hours but honestly, it is a difficult thing to do.

 

Firstly, if you were going to go all out and get the entire Liturgy of the Hours, a book called the Breviary, it is four volumes (there is talk of it going to five) and can be very expensive.  You could buy a less expensive version that is only one volume but at times it is difficult to use when others are using the four volume.  Things don’t always line up.

 

Then there is praying the Hours themselves.  It can be very tricky.  There are all kinds of page turning back and forth.  Even if you get the page turning down in one season, it can change slightly in the next.  There is a companion booklet printed every year just to tell you what pages you are supposed to be on.

 

Thirdly, there are things that you are just supposed to know.  That is one of the advantages of praying them in common (with other people) you get to know all the little intricacies by being with and praying with the community.  But what if you are pushed out the rectory door with your own book after a half hour of instruction?  It can be a little overwhelming and discouraging.

 

Lastly, it is just a bulky thing to lug around.  It seems every time I go on vacation we are in the middle of switching between two books.  I know I’m whining but lugging around books is not fun.  Or if you are taking a day trip and know you’ll be gone when you should pray, do you want to take an expensive book where it might get damaged?  The beech?  The pool?  Do you want to pack it on your bike ride?

 

Well here’s some happy news:  There is a FREE app called Ibreviary.  SEE HERE All the prayers are right there.  There is no page turning.  Most of the things that you are just supposed to know to pray are written out every time.  You can have it on your phone (which is probably with you all the time anyway) or your Ipad or what have you – or just plain bring it up on your computer.  On the phone there are even options for hands free scrolling and to have it read to you though this feature needs quite a bit of tweaking.

 

Easy, convenient, and inexpensive: the trifecta.  It may not (and probably should not) completely replace the Breviary, but if it is a choice between politely passing or praying, get it.  GET IT.  GET IT!

FRIDAY POTPOURRI: O YOU BEAUTIFUL DOLL . . .

Happy December 17th! Every year the Church switches the emphasis of advent from preparing for Jesus’ second coming to His immanent coming in the manger at Bethlehem. Today we begin the “O” Antiphons. These antiphons are the one sentence introductions (and conclusions) to the Gospel Canticle that is part of evening prayer or vespers, in turn part of the Liturgy of the Hours, the official prayers of the Church. Each day they proclaim one of the titles that the Old Testament uses for the coming Messiah. Tonight’s will be “O Sapientia,” or “Oh Wisdom.” You know these from the advent song, “O Come, O Come Emmanuel.” The proper verse for today would be, “O come now wisdom from on high, who orderest all things mightily . . .”

MONDAY DIARY: BRIEFLY WITH THE BREVIARY

An interesting phone call came in this week. One I don’t get very often. In fact, it has never happened before.

A man called and said that he bought a Christian prayer book and wanted instructions on how to use it. “I just want you to know that I am Protestant, but I want help in learning how to pray with this book.”

So I wondered what was in his Christian prayer book. Was it the rosary? So I asked a few questions and discovered it was the Christian Book of Prayer, a shorter version of the Breviary. These books contain the Liturgy of the Hours, the official prayer of the Catholic Church. All clergy and religious take an oath to pray this prayer daily for the sake of the Church, but in truth, all Catholics are urged to pray this prayer. We pray parts of it throughout the year as a parish and whenever I take someone on as a spiritual directee, they will learn how to pray this great prayer.

Bearing all of that in mind you can imagine my surprise when a Protestant called to ask for instructions. I told him it is one of those things where it was much easier to teach him how to pray it if I prayed it with him and showed him how it was done. He was quite excited at the prospect and we set a date.

“How much do you charge?” he asked.

HA! God bless him!

He came and while I was setting his ribbons for him in order to find the correct psalms to pray I had to ask, “So how on earth did you come across this book?” He explained that he was looking for some deeper, meditative prayer of a type he was not finding in his local church. It is a popular mega church in the area. He found the Christian Book of Prayer on line and ordered it and now needed someone to teach him how to pray it. So we did.

You know, it is interesting to view one’s faith from the perspective of an outsider. We are used to and take so much of our faith for granted. But there is much to it that is so foreign to other people. This occurred to me for the first time when I had to explain relics to someone who was not Catholic. THAT was eye opening.

So I explained to him that I was going to show him how Catholics pray the LOTH and that he would have to adapt it to his faith tradition. It became an opportunity to see the Liturgy of the Hours through his eyes. There were clearly some things that were not going to be part of his practice such as the Sign of the Cross and the Marian Antiphon sung at the end of Night Prayer. But as I paid attention to the all many Psalms prayed in a single day, the other Scriptural passages, the music, and the constant reliance on God I was once again bolstered by this great faith of ours.

When we got to the petitions the first one was for, “Benedict our pope and Richard our bishop.”

“You probably want to skip over those huh?”

“The pope is a great man. I have no problem praying for him.”

I was a bit stunned and could only mutter, “Thank you.”

When we were done he asked if I could recommend a book on Lectio Divina. “I just happen to have a work sheet here to help you pray it. Let’s try it together with a passage from Scripture.” And we did.

Why is this man not Catholic?

I wish I could be a fly in the wall when he returns to his church and shows them what he has been praying. Will it go over well? Maybe it will direct him to the Catholic Church or simply make him a better prayer in his own church. In any event, it made me more appreciative of our prayers.

FRIDAY POTOURRI - GUEST BLOGGER ON POINT COUNTER POINT

Response to last Friday’s “Keeping it Real”

Fr. V. makes excellent points. Symbolism is important and we are to use real flowers, candles, etc. for the Liturgy of the Church. When it comes to the iBreviary, I must admit my own hesitation in using it at first. I decided after getting it to try it out for a couple of weeks and then make a decision. I did so and even asked my spiritual director about it. When all is said and done, the point is that one is still praying the Divine Office regardless of the medium as long as the medium prints the correct official liturgical texts (which “iBreviary “does). While I understand and appreciate the use of the leather bound book in hand, do we want to say that is the only “real” way? For instance, what if on Tuesday’s Holy Hour I included the praying of Evening Prayer (the Liturgical texts recommend this actually). For the people to participate in praying those prayers, I would need to give them all prepared leaflets as “worship aids,” which would have been made with a computer, copied by machine, and thrown away or recycled afterward. Are we not praying Evening Prayer or not being reverent of the texts because we do not use books?

Comparing the Breviary to the ritual books of the Mass is helpful because the Office is also the public prayer of the Church very connected with Holy Mass, but remember that there are rubrics that dictate the use of such books - the carrying and kissing of the Book of the Gospels for instance. There are no rubrics like this concerning the Breviary (none that I could find anyway). So treating the Breviary reverently with a kiss (which is what I often do after praying an hour) is praiseworthy but not required nor irreverent if it is not done.

This question raises another in my mind. I wonder if when the printing of books became more common that monasteries ran into similar concerns. To my knowledge, “back in the day,” monks would sing the entire Office from memory. If someone suggested to them the use of books, did they question its authenticity because books were a modern convenience? I just wonder how that transition happened because monks, friars, and nuns now all use books (I think so anyway).

The originator and co-inventor of the iBreviary application is an Italian priest named Paolo Padrini. He stated in an interview, “‘iBreviary’ is not only a text that can be read on the web, but - and it's this the [sic] great innovation - an ‘action’, that involves man and God: the prayer” (read short interview at http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/01/05/interview-father-pao.html). Prayer is that dialogue of God with man and man with God in the sanctuary of his heart. Someone could look like they are praying from a book, but are merely reading the prayers whereas one using iBreviary is actually praying them - it is not the book or phone making the difference as much as the person’s heart and faithful intention or lack thereof.
Whatever one uses, the point is to facilitate prayer. Perhaps the iBreviary simply smacks too much of modern technology and the evils that unfortunately can come with it. For those people it will not facilitate prayer, so they should not use it. For some it is beneficial in helping bring them closer to God in prayer throughout the day and facilitates prayer through its convenience. Great! They should use iBreviary! As in many things, the Catholic “both/and” solution applies here. Both can be used. For myself I use both - the book while in our chapel, the iBreviary while I am out and about. Especially as a diocesan priest when schedules change and emergencies happen, I find it helpful.

Oh and by the way, in case the above arguments are not enough, the issue can be somewhat settled in that “iBreviary” has been approved by the Vatican Council for Social Communications (see article at http://www.cathnews.com/article.aspx?aeid=10778). It is not a matter of doctrine, but is nice to know that there is nothing officially “wrong” with using it.

ARE YOU A REGULAR?

A young, relatively newly married man said to me the other day (and it is mentioned to you with his expressed permission) that he wanted to go to confession. He knows that when he spends too much time away from the sacrament that it starts effecting his relationship with his “lovely wife”. When things are not quite so he knows that it is time to get to the sacrament, to spend time evaluating what it going on in his life and make amends with the help of God’s grace in the sacrament.

Though not strictly required of us, the regular reception of the sacrament will have a profound change on your life. It is not an overnight change. It is a slow change that takes time to realize. One day you will wake up and just know that life has been quite different. Or the opposite will happen (which I hear about more often) when one has been away from the sacrament for a spell and it is has dawned upon the person that things are not quite right. Like the former case, it was not an overnight discovery. It took time to drift off course before the situation was fully appreciated.

Something similar happened to me and my classmates in the seminary concerning the Liturgy of the Hours (LOTH), which, as you may well know, as priests we promise to pray daily. Seminarians are given a number of years to practice praying the LOTH before they are required to do so because it does demand a certain amount or discipline and can be more difficult habit to wear into than one might imagine.

Sometimes we would be up until midnight or one or two in the morning studying and come to the realization that we have not said compline or vespers and so one or the other of us might say, “It’s late and we have to get this done, let us skip prayer tonight.” Over a number of years of this we were able to come to this conclusion: When we stuck to prayer, we accomplished our work in a better and timelier fashion. Scientists attribute this to the brain’s need to switch gears from time to time in order to work at its best capacity. I would call it God’s design to get us to pray!

These habits of holier living are tools for us to live better lives. Like many medications, they may give a nice boost on the short term but their full effects are in the regular regimented doses.

THE OFFICIAL PRAYER OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH

You know that there is an official energy bar for the Olympics and that your favorite sports team has an official airline, and there is also an official prayer of the Catholic Church. I love this prayer though I will admit I did not always. It was a drudgery for a long time but now it is as important to me as sitting down to eat (and sitting down to eat I take very, very seriously.)

It is called the Liturgy of the Hours. Clergy and religious are required to pray it daily and it is highly recommended that ALL Catholics pray it. It consists of five parts and is prayed throughout the day, sanctifying the day and keeping us united in mind of God. There is of course Morning Prayer (Lauds) and Evening Prayer (Vespers), which are the most important of the lot. They are the hinges upon which all the other prayers turn. They consist of psalms and canticles, readings, responsorials, petitions, and the Our Father. Midday Prayer is much shorter but similar. Night Prayer (Compline), which is my favorite, leads us off to sleep and ends with placing ourselves in the care of the Blessed Virgin. There is also the Office of Readings, which can float around and be said at any time including the night before.

You might not think so but this can be difficult to work into your schedule. That is why they give us such a long time in the seminary to get used to it before we take a vow to pray it daily.

Sometimes there is a great temptation to skip it. We used to study for tests late into the night (well, morning actually) and someone would say, “Why don’t we skip Night Prayer tonight?We’ve got to get this done.” But experience taught us to do otherwise. We found that if we stopped for prayer work went more smoothly and more quickly. If we did not stop the work would drudge on more painfully and longer.

It is also a tricky thing to catch on as to the “how” of it. My suggestion is to ask your parish priest if you could pray part of it with him one day to get the hang of it. (Ideally it is supposed to be prayed in public anyway.)

To get access to the prayer you could buy the four-volume set but unless you are into it and taking it very seriously I probably would not recommend that to you straight off. (It can be quite an expense.) There are a number of single volume versions the most popular probably being The Shorter Christian Book of Prayer. Then again Rich, who has started praying it with me, says that HERE is a daily post of the prayer and even better, HERE is a daily pod cast where you can pray it along and learn the ins and outs of the Church’s official prayer.

As it is supposed to be the public prayer of the Church you might also consider gather a few people to pray it. Even if you only did Night Prayer once a week in this way, the universal prayer of the Church would at least find some exposure to the very Body of Christ for which it was intended.

That being said, you probably pray a version of the Liturgy of the Hours now though perhaps you do not realize it. The Rosary is called the "Poor Man's Psalter" as the 150 Aves correspond to the number of psalms, the prayers that make up the majority of the prayes of the Liturgy of the Hours. It is said that in early times, the people wanting to pray as the monks did but not having the resources to do so would pray the Rosary, meditating on the Life of Christ, and uniting their prayers with the monks who chanted the Divine Office.

TRIAL BY FIRE

Have you already made a mental list of what you would throw in the car to save if a forest fire was heading your way? I did. And I am afraid my car would look something like the Clampets on their way to Beverly Hills if I were successful in packing everything on that list. Wanting to save the hand carved wooden statues in the church alone would fill the car past capacity. (Whom would I leave behind?)

Actually you probably make similar decisions every day. There are only twenty-four hours in a day and usually twenty-five hours worth of things to do. All of a sudden you are forced to evaluate what stays and what goes, what is essential and what must be left to providence. Early casualties are usually sleep, eating well, and exercise. Unfortunately prayer is also on the quick to ax list. God, like family, has to always be there waiting for us and so it easy to think, “He will be here tomorrow,” and put Him on the back burner.

I’m no less guilty in that strategy than anybody else. In the seminary they gave us a number of years to get used to saying the Liturgy of the Hours before we were required to pray it daily. There was some wisdom in this as we came to realize the importance of prayer on our own. Late at night, studying for a final, having much more to cover and eyelids already growing heavy someone would say, “We haven’t even prayed Evening Prayer yet,” and there was a great temptation to say, “I think we could miss it just this once.”

Sometimes we did, and sometimes we didn’t. Then over time we noticed something interesting: when we stopped to pray, the evening progressed more quickly and smoothly. When we skipped prayer, the work we set out to finish took much longer and was more painful. On our own then we learned never to sacrifice prayer on the altar of business.

A saint once said, “People should pray for an hour a day. Very busy people who do not have time to pray should pray for two hours.” When one thinks of all that a pope has to do and how much of their day is spent in prayer and how much they still accomplished should alone give us pause to think twice before jettisoning prayer.

When the fire is coming and we can only fit the essentials on the calendar before taking off on our day, make sure there is room for prayer. It is an essential. It is not one more thing to do; it is one more person with you to help you with your load.

Thank you for your kind words yesterday as one of the casualties of busy week at the parish was the blog post!