Divine Office

Deus, in adjutorium meum intende. Domine, ad adjuvandum me festina.
O God, come to my assistance. O Lord, make haste to help me.  

   For the last few years I have added to my prayer life a brief form of the Divine Office, the praying of the Psalms. As mentioned sometime in the past, the Divine Office is the official public prayer of the Church.  All seven "hours" consist of  Matins (around midnight), Lauds (3 a.m.) Prime (6 a.m.) Terce (9 a.m.) Sext (noon), None (3 p.m.) Vespers (6.p.m.) Compline (9 p.m.).  Matins and Lauds are usually prayed together. Believe me, I don't stay up or wake up at midnight to pray. Those in religious orders often do, "in choir," or chanting together, one group chanting a line; the other group chanting the next line.  This is what we few do after Mass on Sunday with our resident nun. We chant "in choir."

    My "Office" is said silently, in my mind, and sometimes I read the psalms and prayers in Latin. Having read them often in English, it isn't hard to maintain a grasp of the meaning of the verses. Usually, though, I do read them in English for better understanding and better meditation.

   Why the Psalms? And why the Divine Office at all?  The history of praying the psalms goes back to the first centuries of the Church. They actually were the only expression of the Christian's personal prayer life. The practice was to pray all 150 psalms every week.  Amazing as it seems to us now, in the time of St. Jerome, around the fourth-fifth century A.D., farmers could pray the psalms from memory while they plowed their fields. Workmen sang them in their shops and women prayed them during their housewifely duties. Children, therefore, learned them early. Memorization of the psalms was necessary for ordination to the priesthood or entrance into a convent.

   They were not, as you see, just an obligation for priests. The people lived the psalms.  The saints of antiquity - Origen, Eusebius, Gregory of Nyassa, Hilary, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine gave homilies on the psalms in their Sunday sermons. We know this from their writings that we can access today.  Sadly, after the great Church Fathers of those early centuries, praying and understanding the psalms fell off. The Church, however, continued to maintain that Her official prayer life must be made up principally of the psalms. They appear, also, in various parts of the Mass.

   This Old Testament prayer form contains the whole of prayer sentiments. We need only realize that they can be interpreted in light of  the New Testament and prophecy.  The psalms include those of petition, lamentation, suffering, atonement, thanksgiving, and even curses. The curse psalms are really expressions of protest against sin, not to curse someone. We can apply them to our own lives, to the crises in the Church, and to our relationship with God and our neighbor.

   Catholics read them in context of the Faith. The Old Testament does not contradict the New. The truths are the same. The Holy Ghost inspired both.  As an example, Psalm 120, Levavi oculos (I have lifted up mine eyes unto the hills...) was David's prayer as he fled his son, Absolom. In light of the New Testament we can call upon God to keep us, to give us courage and strengthen us, to protect our soul, now and forever. Turn to any of the psalms and find the correlations. They are not just for the past. They are for now and the future as long as there is life.

    In my abridged version, the introduction states what I have just noted, and the following:
 We see in the psalms  "images of the mighty struggle between hell and God's kingdom, between Satan and the Church at large or in an individual soul. The battle involving hell and God....continues through time, and in every age the Church in her breviary has prayed the three final petitions of the Our Father: forgive us our trespasses, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from evil."

The psalms must be prayed truthfully, genuinely. The Prayer Before the Divine Office is offered to help us pray in union with the Divine intention itself.  Our Lord prayed the psalms, so did Mary and Joseph, and the Apostles.

                                                                          ************
Aperi Domine 
     Open my mouth, O Lord, to bless Thy holy name: cleanse also my heart from all vain, evil and distracting thoughts; enlighten my understanding, inflame my will, that I may worthily recite this Office with attention and devotion, and deserve to be heard in the presence of Thy divine Majesty. Through Christ our Lord.  Amen.

     O Lord, in union with that divine intention with which Thou didst praise God on earth, I offer to Thee these hours.

                            ***********************************************

11/14/11