RB Reflection: 12 June 2008

Feb. 11 - June 12 - Oct. 12

In winter time as defined above,
there is first this verse to be said three times:
"O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth shall declare Your praise."
To it is added Psalm 3 and the "Glory be to the Father,"
and after that Psalm 94 to be chanted with an antiphon
or even chanted simply.
Let the Ambrosian hymn follow next,
and then six Psalms with antiphons.
When these are finished and the verse said,
let the Abbot give a blessing;
then, all being seated on the benches,
let three lessons be read from the book on the lectern
by the brethren in their turns,
and after each lesson let a responsory be chanted.
Two of the responsories are to be said
without a "Glory be to the Father"
but after the third lesson
let the chanter say the "Glory be to the Father,"
and as soon as he begins it let all rise from their seats
out of honor and reverence to the Holy Trinity.

The books to be read at the Night Office
shall be those of divine authorship,
of both the Old and the New Testament,
and also the explanations of them which have been made
by well known and orthodox Catholic Fathers.

After these three lessons with their responsories
let the remaining six Psalms follow,
to be chanted with "Alleluia."
After these shall follow the lesson from the Apostle,
to be recited by heart, the verse and the petition of the litany,
that is "Lord, have mercy on us."
And so let the Night Office come to an end.

Due to the fact that the amount of typing required to get this chapter into the email was something I couldn't face so early in the morning, I lifted it wholesale from the OSB.org website.

For someone like me who loves liturgical books, and rubrics in those books, this chapter is a treasure trove, a view into the liturgical life of the 6th Century. One thing is clear, they chanted fourteen psalms before daylight. Fourteen! Do you chant more than three in a single day?

I'm not making a comparison between us as Lay Cistercians in the early 21st Century and Benedict's community in the 6th. We are not in the same situation. Not even the Trappists have fourteen psalms at Vigils. What is clear, though, is that the Work of God was so important to Benedict that he left nothing to chance. That is the lesson for us today.

We must not leave our prayers to chance, we must approach them with the same reverence and clarity which Benedict used when he set out the numbers of psalms for his monks. Yesterday I wrote that the little hours during the day can be covered with a short Hail Mary, or Our Father, and I stand behind that, yet, our Lauds and Vespers must not be so lackadaisical.

From today's spectacular arrangement of Vigils, a feat we should admire considering he had very little in the way of references to guide him, let us take the lesson that the Work of God is serious business. The life given to God must be one that is serious in its prayers. God demands all of us, "our selves, souls and bodies," as the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, puts it. Or, as Frank Sinatra sang, "Why not take all of me?"

May God bring us altogether to everlasting life.