SPIRITUAL CONFERENCES ON THE MONASTIC OFFICE

GIVEN AT THE AD FONTES SUMMER SCHOOL

IN KRAIAI, LITHUANIA, 2013 & 2014


After Sunday Vespers:
What have we done?
A little while ago the priest intoned the Deus in adjutorium... and we replied with the
Domine in adjuvandum me festina... We bowed profoundly in worship of God the
Father, Son and Holy Spirit. We sang the psalms. We listened to the chapter and
sang the responsory. We have tasted todays Holy Gospel once more in the
Magnificat antiphon and sung again the Canticle our Lady first voiced at the
Visitation. Our prayers have ascended with the incencse and our cries have mingled
with those of the Church in the Kyrie. We have prayed as our Blessed Lord taught us
and we have answered the collect of the day with its plea for mercy and its succinct
reminder that we strive after heavenly goods with our Amen.
What have we done? My brothers and sisters, we have done the Work of God.
Be careful! For when we give ourselves over to doing the Work of God, Almighty
God works in us.
Do not be surprised, then, in these coming days - somewhere, in the rites and chants
and prayers of the Sacred Liturgy to find God at work, tugging at your heart,
prompting your soul, illumining your mind, in small ways if not large.
For the Sacred Liturgy celebrated faithfully and in all its richness, with that ars
celebrandi spoken of by Benedict XVI, is full of suprises: Gods suprises !
Be careful, my friends, for we have immersed ourselves in the Work of God; now
God may work in us.


After Monday Vespers:
In the monastic office of Lauds some psalms are repeated very frequently.
Psalm 51, Miserere mei Deus..., is sung every day other than I or II class feasts and
paschaltide. It is long. But it gives voice to our daily need to beg Almighty God for
mercy: for our present sins, for our past sins, for the sins of others for whom we
pray, for the sins of those who know not the need for mercy.
For the monk, psalm 51 is an almost daily reminder of the vocation of conversatio
morum of that constant need to turn around our way of life so that it more fully
conforms to that of Christ.
The miserere asks: Domine, labia me aperies, et os meum anuntiabit laudem tuam.
And nowhere more beautifully is this prayer answered than in monastic Lauds
which every day in every season and on every feast prays the Laudate psalms
psalms 148-150 Laudate Dominum de caelis... etc.
We should note that today, it is only the monastic office that retains this tradition, a
tradition that dates back to before Christ. Our blessed Lord himself would have
known and experienced the Laudate psalms prayed each morning. So apposite they
are and their loss to the Roman breviary (in the reform of 1911) was a real
impoverishment.
Only one who knows the mercy of the Lord can sing thus each day and in doing so
he can give voice to what the Lord has done for him and indeed what he has done in
the lives of others.
These four psalms, I think, are a profound summary of the monastic vocation,
indeed of the Christian vocation. That is why they are such pillars of the monastic
office of Lauds.

After Tuesday Vespers:
The Sacred Liturgy reveals her riches to us over a lifetime. It is impossible to
understand or digest all its riches in a week such as this, or even in years of
celebration and study. The liturgy always has something more to reveal to us
something of Almighty God working in His world, and many things about
ourselves.
These are the surprises to which I referred on Sunday. They are unexpected
nuggets, gifts of Almighty God, pure grace.
They can emerge from but one verse of a long psalm. Take for instance the great
psalm 118, which is so long that it is sung over many different offices in the monastic
rite.
It commences at Prime on Sunday. In the last verse of Sunday Prime (ps. 118: 32) we
sing: Viam mandatorum tuorum cucurri, cum dilatasti cor meum. I will run in the way
of your commandments when you enlarge my heart. The Prologue of the Rule of
Saint Benedict echoes this saying: For as we advance in the religious life and in
faith, our hearts expand and we run the way of God's commandments with
unspeakable sweetness of love.
Notice that the moral aspect, the keeping of the commandments, is consequential to
the enlargement of the heart.
We must attend first, then, to the heart. Or rather, we must allow Christ to do so.
And that is what we are doing in the Sacred Liturgy: allowing Him to work on us.
As Dom Idelfons Herwegen, Abbot of Maria Laach, wrote in 1912, Whoever lives
the liturgical life of the Church according to her venerable and hallowed ordering,
will find therein all the grades of perfection; his life will become a work of beauty,
and will attain its everlasting value in its progressive transfiguration. (Liturgys
Inner Beauty, 1955).
May the Sacred Liturgy we celebrate today touch our hearts!

After Wednesday Vespers:
The Divine Office or the Liturgy of the Hours is a rite to be celebrated, not a text to
be read or a set of prayers to be said. Here, this week, each of the seven day hours
of the monastic office are being celebrated liturgically with the appropriate chant,
ritual and ministers.
Liturgically celebrated the Divine Office is at its best as it were: not only can the
words of sacred scripture and the other texts impact upon us, so too the melodies
can give voice to our soul, the ritual can bow our very being and not just our body in
adoration, the splendour of the solemn celebration of Lauds and Vespers can allow
us to glimpse the glory of the heavenly liturgy and of Almighty God.
And yet, for many, the liturgical celebration of the Divine Office is rare. So much so
that some regard the Office as prayers to be read rather than liturgy to be
celebrated. It can almost become a book of liturgical devotions that takes its place
alongside or sometimes even after other devotions or forms of prayer.
How did you first discover the Divine Office? If first you encountered it liturgically
celebrated, as we are doing this week, you probably would probably find reading
the Office somewhat less optimal.
Yet, if you first encountered the Office in circumstances where its liturgical
celebration was seen as an extra which was rarely applied and even then in a
minimalistic way, you might find what we are doing here over the top too much
fuss over the liturgy when one could be doing something else.
But the Sacred Liturgy is the Work of God, the Opus Dei. Saint Benedict teaches us to
put nothing before it.
In celebrating the Opus Dei as well as we possibly can, not only do we give Almighty
God the Worship that is His due, we are nourished and formed in His ways.
Thus formed we can better pray the Divine Office privately (when necessary) in the
right spirit: in a liturgical spirit. When we do so, even though we may not have the
aid of the chant or ritual, our approach to it as a liturgical celebration as an action
of Christ and of His Church rather than as a text to be read like any other, will
open to us more of the treasures it contains.

After Thursday Vespers:
Terce, Sext and None are beautiful, succinct offices which punctuate the day. Their
hymns alone are enough to recall us to the things of God amidst the many things
which occupy our days.
As a result of the distribution of psalms to other hours, Terce, Sext and None repeat
the same psalms from Tuesday to Saturday inclusive. A happy result of this is that
they, their antiphons and tones, readily become familiar.
Such repetition is very useful. One can become quite comfortable with these small
offices quite quickly. And when the demands of their singing and celebration recede,
there is more room for the prayer the connection with Almighty God at work in the
Liturgy that the ritual demands of the Sacred Liturgy facilitate.
One could ponder many beautiful aspects of these little hours, but I confess that I
have a favourite. There is one jewel that shines most brightly amongst the many
others. It is psalm 120, prayed at Terce per hebdomadam.
Throughout, this psalm speaks of the Lords unfailing care of Israel a worthy
reminder for any child of the new Israel early in the working day. Then, the final
four verses (5-8) pray most beautifully for Israels safety and protection:

Dominus custodit te;
Dominus protectio tua super manum dexteram tuam.
Per diem sol non uret te,
neque luna per noctem.
Dominus custodit te ab omni malo;
custodiat animam tuam Dominus.
Dominus custodiat introitum tuum et exitum tuum,
ex hoc nunc et usque in sculum.

Tomorrow morning, before Terce, look at this psalm again. And when you come to
chant it, fill those final four verses the names and the faces of your loved ones of
friends, of children, perhaps of people a long way away, and of others, who need the
Lords unfailing care and protection. For what is prayer for others if it is not love
applied through the eyes of God?
Let the psalmists words give voice to the prayers of your heart. Let the Churchs
Sacred Liturgy carry them to heaven as a sweet offering in the sight of Almighty
God.

After Friday Vespers:
Dirigatur, Domine, oratio mea; sicut incensum in conspectu tuo. This short verse and
response that occur before the Magnificat in ferial vespers have a lot to teach us.
I come to the Divine Office with my prayer perhaps with my heart full of joy at
the mercy of God I have experienced and the blessings I have been given. Perhaps,
more often, I arrive with a heart that is tired because of so many things concerns
and worries, the burdens of each day and even of the days ahead. I may even come
with a heart that is wounded, or scarred by sin.
In praying the Divine Office all and any of these realities can be transformed into
prayer. I can ask the Lord to take the prayers of my heart and make them like
incense in his sight: a sweet-smelling offering that rises heavenward.
This is what the solemn celebration of Lauds and Vespers so beautifully celebrates in
its use of incense.
But it celebrates something more. The incense is used ritually. It is used
hierarchically. It is used ecclesially.
And so too, our prayers which we send up to heaven with the incense are no longer
ours. They become the Churchs prayer. The Church gives them wings, as it were.
Let us not underestimate this. The Divine Office forms a large part of the Churchs
Sacred Liturgy even if we must pray it by ourselves. In taking my place in
celebrating it I, and my prayers, are no longer simply my own. They become part of
the Churchs prayer. And I place myself at the service of the Church by giving voice
to her prayers also.
This commercium, this exchange, is integral to praying the Sacred Liturgy and is
particularly poignant in the Divine Office. From it we each have much to gain.

After Saturday Vespers:
What is it that gives the Office of Compline its attraction, its popularity?
Perhaps it is the simple fact that it signals the proximity of sleep and rest.
Possibly it is its unchanging form in the monastic rite once familiar it makes few
demands of us save, perhaps, a particular hymn tone for a season or feast. And of
course, with such familiarity its words and tones easily connect us with Him before
whom we bow in confession of our sins and in worship.
It is a most beautiful office indeed, for its presentation of the unchanging sober
reality of the devils intent in the lectio brevis, in its demand that we examine our
consciences at the end of the day, in its granting of absolution, in its consolation that
one who dwells in the embrace of the Almighty shall be protected in the day of
trouble, in its begging of the angels protection throughout the night as well as the
intercession of our blessed mother. Our cleansing with holy water completes this
getting ready for bed.
Sober cautions, consoling reminders, powerful sacramentals: that is what the Church
gives us in the Office of Compline.
After Compline it is often difficult to get up and go. It often leaves us in silence a
silence required for the monk by the silentium magnum of the Rule of Saint Benedict.
There is great wisdom in this. We need this silence, this space, after the work of the
day, after its victories and its falls.
If as a result of this week you take but one Office home with you, as it were, take the
Office of Compline. Its power will not fail to nourish.

After Monday Vespers:
Domine labia mea aperies: et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam. O Lord, open my lips:
and my mouth shall announce your praise. These words break through the silence of
the night. They open the Office of Matins. They are the first words heard by the
monk each day the first prayer he hears each morning.
It is a temptation for us to feel quite virtuous having risen very early to be at matins,
and certainly, presence at the night office is a clear fruit of zeal for and fidelity to the
Work of God.
However this small prayer teaches us each day that before we can announce the
praise of the Lord, He the Lord must first open our lips. That is to say that our
praise of Almighty God comes from His action upon us. It is the Lord who opens our
lips, our hearts and our minds. Certainly, we may ourselves will to keep them closed
and stay away from His influence. We may choose sin and its fruits and be very far
indeed from announcing the praise of the Lord.
Yet when we do choose to place ourselves before Him, as we do when praying the
Divine Office and in celebrating the Sacred Mysteries, the Lord is there ready to
open our lips, to give voice to our wish to praise Him, to take our prayer beyond
anything we could do by ourselves. And he does this by immersing us in the prayer
of the ecclesia, of the Church, which is the Sacred Liturgy.
At Matins a sole voice prays Domine labia mea aperies. The whole monastic choir
responds et os meum annuntiabit laudem tuam. Many lips continue that response until
they fall silent again after Compline.
Let us make that prayer our own so that, opening ourselves to the power of the Lord
and allowing it to work within us, he may give us voice to announce His praise in
ways greater than any of us could imagine until the end of our days.

After Saturday Vespers:
Benedicamus Domino. How many times do we hear these words sung at the end
of the office? At the end of each of the eight hours of the monastic office eight
times.
This recurring liturgical practice teaches us something about the monastic vocation
which after all is nothing other than the Christian vocation lived with a specific
fervour. The lesson is simple: we are called constantly to bless the Lord. Constantly.
Throughout the day. Throughout every day.
That sounds fine; very pious even. But monks have their good days and their bad
days as do we all. And it is precisely here, in the very fatigue, anxiety, guilt, fear,
worry and all the other burdens and emotions with which we arrive at the Divine
Office that the lesson of these two short words becomes concrete: the Churchs
liturgy calls us to bless the Lord no matter what weighs us down, for in Him is
found mercy and fullness of redemption, as we pray in psalm 129 at vespers on
Tuesday.
Nothing in this world save our own obstinate will can exclude us from this reality,
and even then the Lord waits for us lovingly, looking for our conversion and
repentance. This is why the Church has us respond to the cantors Benedicamus
Domino with Deo gratias we are called ever to give thanks for the reality of the
Lords love and mercy for each one of us no matter how imperfect, damaged or
sinful we are or have been.
Some monasteries also use this small verse and response extra-liturgically at times
when a monk has reason to speak with another when conversation is not normally
permitted. In this context it is a powerful reminder that both our conversation and
our acts should indeed bless the Lord and give occasion for thanksgiving to
Almighty God.
Whether sung to the beautiful festal tones given in the Antiphonale Monasticum for
Lauds and Vespers, or in the simpler tones given for other liturgical days and the
smaller hours, or indeed whether used in the course of daily interaction, these four
words call us to greater faith and hope in the face of the daily realities our particular
vocations. Let our lives indeed bless the Lord so that we can give heartfelt thanks to
Him in this life and the next.

Alcuin Reid