Category Archives: Daily Office

On the Choice of Offices

A correspondent sent me a note over the weekend, noting (correctly) that if one wishes to undertake the discipline of the Office, it’s good to pick one primary form and stick with it. His question, then, was which one:

  • The BCP Offices,
  • The Roman Liturgy of the Hours,
  • The Anglican Breviary,
  • The Monastic Diurnal + Matins

Others could be added to these…

It’s a good question and one that I spent some time wrestling with a few years ago. I can’t tell him, or you, or anybody else what to do, of course, but here’s the answer that I’ve come to and that works well for me.

I’m a Prayer Book Catholic within the Episcopal Church. Now—as we’ve noted before, the term “Prayer Book Catholic” isn’t exactly the same in England as it is in America due to the differing situations of our respective prayer books. However, I take it to mean that I am obliged to the prayer book and its system of devotion as understood and supplemented by the riches of the Western liturgical heritage.

Thus, for me, I am obligated to the Morning and Evening Prayer Offices of our authorized Book of Common Prayer—that’s part and parcel of what it means to be an Episcopalian.

Now, the Offices contain a number of permissions—like the liberty of antiphons and hymns—that open the door to the riches of our heritage found in books like the Anglican Breviary, the Monastic Diurnal, the English Office,  the Brevarium Romanum, A Monastic Breviary, and many others.  As a result, I have and use these other books to supplement my prayer book services both in terms of material and in terms of additional offices.

Indeed, this was part of the genesis of the St. Bede’s Breviary. I wanted to create something that was faithful to the rubrics of the prayer book, but that also could easily include the other items when I had the time and desire for them. As a result, I have my “House Use” that I use regularly and can choose from the other leaner versions as circumstances require. However, at the root is always the framework and content of the BCP Offices.

In Advent and Lent I like to add in the Little Hours and will often do so—or attempt to do so—from the Anglican Breviary or Monastic Diurnal or the Sarum Primer.  I say attempt because I don’t often succeed. My zeal for devotion frequently outstrips the time I have for it.

And that raises another important point. The BCP Offices are the least onerous of the list above. After all, it’s two Offices a day (only four if Noon and Compline are included). If I were to take the Anglican Breviary as a base office discipline,  I would be obligated to pray all of it. Even doing so in aggregation would be difficult, and at this season of my life I just can’t imagine being able to juggle it all consistently, day in and day out. I hope this will change some day—but can’t see it happening until the girls can drive themselves!

For me and the discipline I’ve chosen, the Anglican Breviary represents the best source for supplementary material. I want to be able to pull in its antiphons and hymns. More particularly, I’d love to be able to draw on its patristic readings to augment the Offices.

So, if some are you are wondering why I’m proposing the Anglican Breviary project while also talking about the importance of the prayer book, this is how it fits together. I know several people who faithfully pray the breviary and who have asked me to work with it; I’d also like to make it available to interweave with the prayer book itself.

At the end of the day, selecting an Office discipline is a balance of ecclesial identity, devotional continuity, and an honest appraisal of your own ability to stick with the choices you’ve made. The heart of the Office is the repetition of the Psalter. If you can’t consistently make it through the whole psalter in your chosen Office discipline, then you’ll want to reassess it and consider if you’ve bitten off more than you can chew, and what will work for you. It’s always easier to start with the shorter and more basic and graduate to more complex forms as you go.  But don’t be hasty about it either. Liturgical formation—like all other life-long habits—should be measured in months, seasons, and years rather than days and weeks.

On the Canticles

I got an email from a reader asking about the canticles. I realized that there were some sections of my chapters on the Office that didn’t make it onto the blog, and the canticle section was one of them. So—here’s a bit on the canticles…

—————————

Following each biblical reading is a canticle. When I first experienced Episcopal Morning Prayer, I was completely baffled by the canticles. The priest leading the group would call out a number; she never had any hesitation about what to pick. Some were often said, but others were never said. Too, several of the other people in the group seemed to know in advance what she was going to say. I had a hard enough time just finding the right number, since the first canticle that I saw was numbered “8”! Eventually, I got it all figured out, but I’ve never forgotten my initial confusion.

What I didn’t know was that the canticles numbered 1 through 7 are located in Morning Prayer: Rite I. Canticles 8 through 21 are in Morning Prayer: Rite II. All of the canticles in Rite I appear in contemporary language in Rite II, but not vice-versa. Furthermore, there is no inherent or logical connection between the Rite I numbers and their Rite II counterparts! So—your first challenge in negotiating the canticles is navigating through them.

There is a basic principle at work here… In each block, the one in Rite I and in the one in Rite II, the canticles appear in canonical/chronological order. Thus, the Rite I block starts with material from the Apocrypha, goes through the canticles from Luke in canonical order, then moves to the two compositions from the Early Church. In a corresponding fashion, the Rite II block starts with the material from Exodus, then goes to the canticles from Isaiah before moving to the Apocrypha but adds an additional one in before moving to the Luke material, and items from Revelation, ending with the Early Church compositions.

As with the invitatory psalms, the names of the canticles are given both in English and in a classical language, usually Latin. People and reference works may use either name, so it never hurts to be familiar with both.

Canticles 1 and 12 are “A Song of Creation” (Benedicite, omnia opera Domini). The Benedicite comes from one of the additions to the book of Daniel that is found in the Greek Old Testament, but not in the Hebrew version. It’s best understood as an expansion of the content and theme of Psalm 148 where all creation is called upon to worship and give glory to God. In the narrative, this is a song put into the mouth of Daniel’s three companions which they sang in the midst of the fiery furnace. As a result, sometimes this will be referred to as “the song of the three young men.” In the former prayer books, this canticle was used as the first canticle during penitential seasons when the Te Deum was suppressed. That’s not because there’s anything penitential about it—it’s one of the most joyful canticles around! Rather it’s because this was the second canticle found in the pre-Reformation prymers and Books of Hours; if the Te Deum—which was the first canticle in them—was dropped, this one was next in line. Hence, the tradition grew that the Benedicite should replace the Te Deum, and it subsequently entered and formed the prayer book tradition.

Canticles 2 and 13 are “A Song of Praise” (Benedictus es, Domine). This song comes from the same place as the previous canticle and, actually, comes right before it in the text. While the first one calls all creation to bless God, this is an example of such a blessing. It praises God, envisioning him enthroned within a grand temple having aspects of the Temple in Jerusalem (dwelling “between the Cherubim” is a reference to the mercy seat on the Ark of the Covenant which was kept in the Holy of Holiest, the inmost part of the Jerusalem Temple”) but being located “in the firmament of heaven.”

Canticles 3 and 15 are “The Song of Mary” (Magnificat). This is one of the most beautiful songs in all of Scripture and is Mary’s response to the dual greeting from her cousin Elizabeth and the yet-unborn John the Baptist. Based in part on the Song of Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1-10) and with echoes of Psalm 138 and 146, it admirably anticipates Luke’s Beatitudes (Luke 6:20-26)—and, indeed, they are well worth studying together. In the pre-Reformation system, Evening Prayer (their Vespers) only had one canticle—and this was it. As a result, it became the standard third canticle, the one after the first reading of Evening Prayer. It still holds this first place in both Rite I and Rite II services of Evening Prayer.

Canticles 4 and 16 are “The Song of Zechariah” (Benedictus Dominus Deus). This song was sung by Zechariah, the husband of Elizabeth and father of John the Baptist, at the prophet’s birth. This was the standard second canticle of Morning Prayer and was the chief canticle of the pre-Reformation version. I’ve always found the second part of this song, in particular, especially meaningful. Through the voice of Zechariah, we who pray this are commissioned and reminded of our duty to spread the Gospel—and are given a convenient summary of it focusing on forgiveness, mercy, light, and walking in the paths of peace.

Canticles 5 and 17 are “The Song of Simeon” (Nunc dimittis). Simeon, having waited all his life to see the Messiah, holds the infant Jesus in his arms at the end of his days and sings this song. With its themes of ending and new beginning, a growing light and a coming peace, it was used in the pre-Reformation system at Compline, the Office just before sleep. Adapted into the prayer book system, it became the fixed fourth canticle, following the second reading of Evening Prayer.

Canticles 6 and 20 are the “Glory (be) to God” (Gloria in excelsis). While it begins with the song of the angels at the birth of Christ, the rest of the canticle is a composition from the Early Church. Familiar to most of the Western Church from its use at the beginning of the Eucharist, its appearance here is an Eastern element; this was the standard morning canticle for the Eastern Churches.

Canticles 7 and 21 are the “We Praise Thee/You” (Te Deum laudamus). Another composition of the Early Church, the Te Deum was sung at Matins on Sundays and festivals. At the Reformation, the prayer book appointed this as the first canticle of Morning Prayer every day of the year except for the 40 days of Lent. Its connection with festivals was strong enough that, by the early medieval period, the Te Deum was sometimes used with some additional suffrages as a celebratory liturgy.

Canticle 8—the first of the canticles only found in Rite II’s contemporary language—is “The Song of Moses” (Cantemus Domino). It is “especially suitable in Easter Season” because this is the song sung by Moses and the Israelites after their deliverance from Egypt through the Red Sea. The Red Sea passage has long been understood as a symbol of Baptism and resurrection, and this connection is stated explicitly in the Easter Vigil’s own victory song, the Exultet.

Canticle 9 is “The First Song of Isaiah” (Ecce, Deus). Coming from the prophet Isaiah, this song concludes his vision of the messianic age to come. This song is to be sung in celebration of the recognition of what God has accomplished and the salvation wrought through his messiah. For us, it ought to be a reminder that we stand in the midst of the “already/not yet”; God’s promises have been fulfilled in the person of Jesus, yet we do not always perceive the fulfilment of these promises. The use of this canticle is a sign of hope.

Canticle 10 is “The Second Song of Isaiah” (Quaerite Dominum). This song comes from a place towards the latter part of Isaiah. It closes out a section that encourages the people, exiled in Babylon, to return and rebuild Jerusalem again to its former glory. It urges them to seek the Lord and to trust in the fulfillment of the divine word at a point when many doubted that the city would ever be rebuilt and the land reclaimed. The language of repentance makes it particular suitable in penitential seasons.

Canticle 11 is “The Third Song of Isaiah” (Surge, Illuminare). This song from the end of Isaiah, also from the time at the end of the Exile (around 520 BC or so), exhorts the people with a vision of the rebuilt Jerusalem. This vision of a preternaturally brilliant city that calls the nations to it influenced Revelation’s vision of the New Jerusalem as the Bride of the Lamb and, subsequently, the theology of the Church as a New Jerusalem. The images of light connect it strongly to the themes of both Advent and Epiphany.

Canticle 14 is “A Song of Penitence” (Kyrie Pantokrator). This canticle comes from the brief apocryphal book, the Prayer of Manasseh. Manasseh was crowned as king of Judah at the age of twelve somewhere around 700 BC and reigned for 55 years. He has the dubious honor of being the most evil king to hold the throne of Judah. The narrative of his reign in 2 Kings 21 is a catalogue of idolatry and slaughter. The retelling of it in 2 Chronicles 33, however, includes a scene of his repentance and makes mention of a prayer where he humbled himself before God and received forgiveness of his sin. Although our composition is likely not this prayer itself, it certainly represents what the prayer could have been! It is, as the prayer book note suggests, the perfect canticle for Lent and for other penitential circumstances.

Canticle 18 is “A Song to the Lamb” (Dignus es). While the Book of Revelation is known for its apocalyptic imagery and its abuse by those who would read modern political events through it, it should be better known as the book of the New Testament that contains the most songs! This one comes from the description of the heavenly throne room. We are treated in Revelation 4 through 6 to a vision of the throne room of God, where a set of concentric circles of worshipers arrays the whole created order in a ceaseless song of praise to God and to the Lamb. This is the celebration of the saints and angels and all creation in thanksgiving for creation and redemption.

Canticle 19 is “The Song of the Redeemed” (Magna et mirabilia). In an interlude between acts of judgment and the seven last plagues, the seer John sees  the martyrs singing a song described as “the song of Moses, the servant of God and the song of the Lamb” (Rev 15:3). This canticle is that song. From the introduction, then, the author of Revelation intended this song to be in conscious continuity with our Canticle 8, the Song of Moses.

Alright… Now that we’ve gotten through all of these—how do we go about using them and what’s the best way to arrange them? What canticle should you use when—and why?

There are several ways of answering this question. Like so much about the prayer book, it depends on your tradition—and that, in turn, gives us the simplest answer. Does your parish pray the Office together? If so, it’s best to find out what pattern they go with and use it.

If not, there are a variety of choices. I’ll talk you through three of them.

The simplest is a traditional pattern that has the least amount of variation. As I mentioned in discussing the canticles, the prayer books up until the present one had a fairly fixed order. There were four readings, two at each Office, and a canticle after each reading. The first canticle was either the Te Deum or the Benedicite—depending on the season. The three Gospel Canticles, the Benedictus, the Magnificat, and the Nunc Dimittis were the second, third, and fourth canticles respectively. The reason why these canticles appear in these positions is based on how Cranmer consolidated the eight hours of prayer down into two: Morning Prayer received the Te Deum from Matins and the Benedictus from Lauds; Evening Prayer received the Magnificat from Vespers and the Nunc Dimittis from Compline. Thus, the simplest way to arrange the canticles is to use this basic pattern.

One of the more complex options is the way that the prayer book recommends. After the Offices themselves, a means of deploying all of the canticles appears on pages 144 and 145. We’ll start with the suggestions for Morning Prayer on page 144. The basic idea here is that the Old Testament lesson receives an Old Testament canticle, the New Testament lesson receives a New Testament/Early Church canticle.  Sunday and Feast days retain the traditional canticles, though not in the traditional order; Wednesday and Friday—the traditional fasting days—receive the more penitential materials, especially in Lent. Additionally, in Lent and Advent the Te Deum and Gloria are replaced by other options. The easiest way to use this chart is to write it in where you intend to use it. As a result, in several of my prayer books I’ve copied it into the blank space at the bottom of page 84, and have also written the appropriate days and seasons at the top of the canticles themselves. (Don’t be afraid of writing in your prayer book if it’ll help you use it!)

The suggestions for Evening Prayer on page 145 assume the use of two lessons at Evening Prayer. If you are only using one lesson, use the second column and alternate between the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis. Otherwise, it alternates between the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis for the second canticle except on Sundays and Feast Days when both are used. On weekdays the first canticle rotates through a set of Old Testament options.

A third way to proceed is by a blend of these two. For those who want to retain the classical use of the Benedictus and the Magnificat but still experience the variety of new canticles that this prayer book offers, the Old Testament option for Morning Prayer can be followed with the Benedictus after the second lesson; the New Testament option for Morning Prayer can be used to follow the first lesson at Evening Prayer and the Magnificat used after the second lesson.

Daily Office: Psalms and Readings

Ok–having written the Calendar section in part as an extended apology for the Collect of the Day, we’re back to the Daily Office. I’m not including here my section on the Fore-Office and instead we’ll start with the Psalms and Readings. At this point it’s only right to give a shout out to Scott Knitter and Chris Yoder for their work in putting the psalms and readings respectively into some great spreadsheets. That material gives the overview essential for seeing the patterns described below.

————————————————

The Invitatory and Psalter

These are the elements of the Invitatory and Psalter:

Element

Required?

Variation (if any)
Opening Versicles Yes A little
Invitatory Antiphon No Seasonal
Invitatory Morning: Yes, Evening: Optional Morning: Seasonal
Appointed Psalms Yes Choice of Pattern

 

This section gives us a great big block of musical material, chiefly psalms, after a short dialog that gets things going. Most of this material is not optional as it forms one of the great theological centers of the Office. If the Office is a “sacrifice of praise,” then this is a big part of where that offering actually happens!

As mentioned above, the Opening Versicles of Morning Prayer (“O Lord, open our lips…”) come from Psalm 51 and were literally true in a monastic environment; most orders observed a Great Silence from the end of Compline to the beginning of Matins where no talking was allowed. These words would be the first words spoken in the morning. The Opening Versicles of Evening Prayer (“O God, make speed to save us…”) are from Ps 70:1 and reflect the breath prayer taught by John Cassian and the Desert Fathers. These are the normal opening versicles of the Offices from before the Reformation. In the English prayer books, they were included at Morning Prayer as well right after the morning versicles.

The only variation here is that the “Alleluia” gets dropped in Lent and Holy Week.

The invitatory antiphons are sentences used with the invitatory to communicate a sense of the season or occasion. Morning Prayer has them, Evening does not. Options are given for seasons and for Holy Days. (Lesser Feasts do not receive their own antiphon and would use the appropriate seasonal option.) The first part of the antiphon establishes a sense of the season or event; the second is an invariable call to praise, “O come, let us adore him” from Ps 95:6 (although our present prayer book rendering of this phrase is: “O come, let us worship/bow down”…). And, yes, the Christmas hymn “O Come All Ye Faithful” is a deliberate riff on the structure of the invitatory antiphon.

We’re not given any clear direction as to exactly how the antiphon is to be used with the Venite or other Invitatory Psalm (it’s not used with the Christ our Passover as it has its own internal Alleluia antiphon). There are two common ways to use it. The easiest is simply to use it before and after the psalm. The other, and more traditional, method is to include it several times within the psalm; the musical settings in the hymnal confirm that this should be done at each section break.

The invitatory is an opening song or psalm that literally invites the worship of God. The prayer book contains five different options for Morning Prayer and a single for Evening Prayer. Three of the morning options are all shades of the same text, Psalm 95. It’s customary to refer to the psalms by the first couple of words in Latin. The monks didn’t memorize the numbers, so they simply referred to the opening bits. This custom was continued by Cranmer at the Reformation and has stuck. In our case it’s particularly useful because our Venite, the first word of Psalm 95 is actually not identical with the psalm.   The Rite I Venite contains the first 7 verses of Psalm 95, then substitutes Ps 96:9, 13 in place of the condemnatory verses at the end of Ps 95. The Rite II Venite simply omits these verses. However, at points (particularly Fridays in Lent and Friday and Saturday in Holy Week) all of Psalm 95 is appointed. Psalm 100, the Jubilate, is also an option and was historically used when Ps 95 appeared amongst the Morning Prayer psalms. For Easter, the Christ our Passover (Pascha Nostrum) is provided. It must be used during Easter Week and may be used for the rest of the Easter season. I prefer to use it throughout the season, as it’s a good daily reminder that Easter is 50 days long. The Evening Prayer invitatory is an ancient hymn from the Greek Church, O Gracious Light. It doesn’t need antiphons nor are any provided.

At the heart of the concept of the invitatory is an invitation. The appointed texts urge those praying them to worship. Psalm 95 holds such a privileged place because it does it three times in rapid succession. It opens with a repeated call to worship in verses 1 and 2: “Come let us sing…let us shout for joy…Let us come…and raise a loud shout to him with psalms.” The call repeats in verse 6:  “Come, let us bow down.” The other element of Psalm 95 that made is so attractive is found at the end of verse 7: “Oh, that today you would hearken to his voice!” Although this passage logically goes with the next section of the psalm which gives the rebellion of the people under Moses as an example of what not to do, the Rite II Venite ends here. In addition to the call to come and worship, we are reminded to also listen and take heed of what God is telling us. The Rite I Venite preferred not to include any of the condemnatory section, but swaps in additional encouragement to praise from Psalm 96 and retains the notion that God is also coming to meet us in our worship.

The Jubilate contains these elements as well. It opens with an exhortation to worship: “come before his presence with a song” (Ps. 100:1), and repeats it “Enter his gates with praise; go into his courts with praise; give thanks to him and call upon his Name” (Ps 100:3).

The Easter time Christ our Passover is Cranmer’s compilation of Sarum antiphons drawn from the writings of Paul. The repeated “Alleluia” is its own internal antiphon, so it doesn’t need an invitatory antiphon to accompany it. As appropriate for the resurrection season, this text focuses on the passage from death to life and Christ’s victory over the grave. The repetition at the beginning of the second and third sections, “Christ . . . raised from the dead,” and the conclusion with its triumphant “all shall be made alive” is one of my favorite pieces of the Easter experience.

The Evening Prayer invitatory, O Gracious Light, served as the Eastern lamp-lighting hymn for centuries. In an electric-lit culture we usually miss the symbolic moment when the day moves from light to dark; this hymn helps remind us. At its heart, this is a simple hymn of praise to Christ as the Light of the world that praises the Trinity at the hinge of the day.

The appointed psalms come next. As I have said, this is the historical and theological center of gravity of the Office, and the next chapter is devoted to exploring the psalms within their Office context. The main decision at this point is which psalm scheme to adopt. The book gives a choice of two; the first appears in the Daily Office lectionary while the second is found in the section of the prayer book containing the psalms.

The first option is the lectionary cycle. This cycle spreads out the 150 psalms across seven weeks. The cycle begins on the first week of Advent, the first week after Epiphany, the eighth week after Epiphany (if there should be one…), the second week of Easter, with Trinity Sunday and Proper 2, Proper 9, Proper 16, and Proper 23. The earlier iterations of the cycle often are not complete because of a number of proper psalms around Christmas, the length of the Epiphany season, proper psalms for Holy Week and Easter, and on what Proper the season after Pentecost begins. The last three cycles, though, are only interrupted by occasional Holy Days.

If you look at the layout of this particular lectionary, a pattern emerges. Psalms were specifically picked for Saturday evening, Sunday morning, and Sunday evening. Next, the many parts of the lengthy Psalm 119 were assigned to Wednesdays, alternating between evening and morning. Then, the remaining psalms were distributed to each week, trying to balance out the number of verses and placing some penitential/passion psalms on Fridays (i.e., Pss. 22, 51, 69, and 88). Psalm 95 falls in the evening—thus you need not worry about it appearing right after you’ve used it as the invitatory at Morning Prayer! (Psalm 100, though, falls on Tuesday morning of week 6.) The pattern shows that the emphasis was upon having appropriate psalms for public worship on Saturday nights and Sundays. In addition to this, provisions are also made for dropping verses of psalms or whole psalms that might be deemed offensive or problematic to congregations. On the balance, each Office prays just under 30 verses of psalms.

The second option is the monthly cycle found within the psalter itself. On turning to page 585—the first page of the Psalter proper—you’ll see a note in italics right above the title of Psalm 1: “First Day: Morning Prayer.” On page 589 before the start of Psalm 6 is another note: “First Day: Evening Prayer.” These notes are given for thirty days, morning and evening. If a month has a 31st day, the psalms given for the 30th are repeated. On the average, this cycle provides about 45 verses of psalms for each Office. (The longest is the evening of the 15th with 73 verses; the shortest is the evening of the 2nd with 24—most counts fall between the high thirties or low fifties, though.)

The monthly cycle foregrounds the catechetical role of the Office. That is, it emphasizes the continuous repetition of the psalms for the purpose of learning them. It presents a less flexible cycle that is not particularly responsive to seasonal awareness. Most of the people I know who use this cycle (myself among them) only deviate from it for the Principal Feasts. This can lead to unusual combinations when a particular angry psalm might show up on a happy festival or a joyous one occur where it doesn’t seem to fit. Often it’s in these moments that I learn something important—either about the psalm or the occasion—that had always been present; I just hadn’t noticed it before. The odd combination cast it in relief and made it stand out.

In contrast, the eight-week lectionary covers the psalms, but over a longer period. Its strength is that it lends itself to occasional use. That is, the monthly cycle is used best and works best when it is prayed daily. The eight-week cycle is specifically set up so that the days when newcomers might appear—as on a Saturday or Sunday service of Evensong or Morning Prayer or even a mid-week Wednesday—it neither assumes nor requires a previous discipline. Similarly, using proper psalms for Holy Days is the better option if a parish that doesn’t normally pray the Office together decides to hold an Evensong.

The Lessons

These are the elements of the Lessons:

Element

Required?

Variation (if any)
Old Testament Lesson Morning: Yes, Evening: Optional Daily
Canticle Yes, if reading Variable
New Testament Lesson Yes Daily
Canticle Yes Variable
Apostles’ Creed Yes None

 

This section contains the biblical readings and the sung canticles. It concludes with the Creed which reminds us of the Church’s interpretive lens for the Scriptures.

The Daily Office lectionary provides for three readings per day over a two-year cycle: an Old Testament reading, an epistle reading, and a gospel reading.  Both Morning and Evening Prayer can accommodate—and have traditionally had—two biblical readings each for a total of four per day. As a result you’ve got a choice—you can use the three readings as appointed and distribute them through the Offices (usually two at Morning Prayer and the third at Evening Prayer), or you can find another reading. The normal way to do this is to use the Old Testament reading from the off-year and place it as the first reading for Evening Prayer.

In terms of completeness, the lectionary does a good job with the New Testament. Of the Gospels, all of Matthew and Mark are read each year. Luke is missing about 50 verses (4% of its length) but these are the genealogy and the iconic birth story and his appearance in the Temple at age 12 which get play in the Eucharistic lectionary. John is missing about 80 verses (9% of its length) and these are all sections from the passion and resurrection narratives which, again, are well represented in the Eucharist.

Of the New Testament apart from the Gospels, the large stand-alone books of Acts, Hebrews, and Revelation are read in their entirety each year. We read 97% of both the Pauline Epistles and the General Epistles. Missing from the General Epistles is one section from 1 Peter 3 dealing with wives being submissive to their husbands; most of the material missing from the Pauline Letters, mostly from 1 Corinthians and 1 Timothy, similarly deals with the social roles of women and slaves.

When we come to the Old Testament the percentage drops. Overall, across both years—or in one year if you read two readings—we read just under half of the Old Testament. When you look at it by category, we read more percentage-wise of the Minor Prophets than any other grouping (72% as opposed to the others in the 40%’s) due mostly to the brief length of these books. By year, Year One reads through about 22% of the Old Testament and contains more of the Histories and the Major Prophets. Year Two reads about 25% and contains more of the Minor Prophets, the Law, and the Wisdom literature. There is some overlap where certain passages are read in both years (apart from the Holy Day readings) and this occurs mostly in Isaiah, the Histories, and Genesis and Exodus, but it accounts for under 10% of what is read each year.

Why so little of the Old Testament by percentage? It’s pretty simple: math. The gospel readings and other New Testament readings average to be about eight verses and seven verses long respectively. If you want to keep the length of the three readings balanced, than this is the problem you’re going to have to face. The Old Testament readings currently average a little under ten verses in length. If you were going to get through the entire Old Testament, you’d have to more than double that amount!

To put it another way, the original Daily Office lectionary scheme that Cranmer came up with when he compiled the first Book of Common Prayer, went through most (but not all) of the Old Testament each year. Readings were typically assigned by chapter not verse; thus, on January 4th, for example, you’d read Genesis 5 in the morning with Genesis 6 in the evening. The corresponding New Testament and Gospel readings which were of an equal length went through the full cycle three times in a year! That’s a lot more reading than what we have now. In fact, looking over the almost 500 years from then to now, we’ve seen the length of the readings steadily drop over time. The goal is to get people to pray the Office and read their Scriptures. The trend has been to reduce the time it takes by reducing the amount of Scripture required.

Just as in the eight-week psalm cycle, the Daily Office lectionary has two different things going on for the sake of occasional use. For the most parts, biblical books are read through continuously. That is, a reading will generally stick with a book and read straight through it or, when it does skip material, it usually does so sequentially. However, this sequence is interrupted for Sundays. A different cycle of readings appear on Sunday for the benefit of those who only experience the Offices once a week—or less—and who may have occasion to experience a Sunday reading and not any of the others.  Thus, the Daily Office lectionary will jump on Sundays to a different place and pick up a different story than what has been read through the rest of the week.

Electronic Anglican Breviary?

An odd confluence of events has come together over the last few weeks which has led me to seriously consider an idea that I’ve had on the back-burner for a long time.

Is there interest in an electronic edition of the Anglican Breviary?

In functionality it would be like the St. Bede’s Breviary (but with fewer preference issues!), and would offer a completely free and open-source use experience. If the situation warranted it, a mobile app for a modest price might accompany it. In addition, material from the Anglican Breviary—in particular, a wealth of seasonal and sanctoral antiphons, hymns, and patristic readings—would also become available to supplement the St. Bede’s Breviary.

In order to do it free, however, within a reasonable amount of time, and to keep my family fed at the same time, I would need to do it as a Kickstarter project. So, on an initial informal trial basis, I’m attempting to gauge whether it would be worth the time to put such a proposal together. If you are interested, click below:

Late Medieval Thoughts on the Office: Purpose

I always like to get a little perspective on questions of liturgy from different periods by looking at vernacular catechetical sources. That is, rather than looking at the conversations that clergy and the learned were having—because they were operating with shared assumptions—take a look at what they were teaching to the unlearned and hopefully were revealing just what those assumptions were!

So—here are two late medieval English vernacular texts that explain the purpose of the Office. The first is from the Myroure of Oure Ladye, the second is from the Henrican Rationale of Ceremonial from the early 1540’s.

The Myroure

Chapter 1: how and why God’s service is said each day in seven hours.

Sepcies in die Laudem dixi tibi. These are the words of the prophet David saying thus to our Lord: “Seven times in the day I have said praises to you.”

All reasonable creatures were made to know, to love, and to praise God and therein to have their endless joy. While our souls are imprisoned in these deadly bodies, we cannot – due to corruption and heaviness of these same bodies – continually accomplish that godly praising as they do who by death are made free from thralldom to the flesh and have come to the end of their joy, that is, the presence of God. Therefore our mother holy church ruled by the Holy Ghost, knowing the frailty and feebleness of her children, has set us every day seven hours. At least in these we ought to be occupied in the service and praise of God that is to say: matins, prime, terce, sext, none, evensong, and compline.

What Solomon says is true, that a righteous man falls seven times a day, and the number of all wickedness is named under seven deadly sins against which the holy church has ordained seven sacraments and is given seven gifts of the Holy Ghost. Therefore, to get remission of our sins, and to thank God for his gifts, we say praises to him in the said hours, seven times each day. Since God made all things in six days and fulfilled them in the seventh day and rested, therefore doing thanks to God for all his works and for all that he made, each day we praise him seven times. Also because the life of man is divided into seven ages where we have spent our time idly or evilly therefore we thank God for our life and seek recompense for such negligence; seven times a day we do service to God. All of this life passes under seven days where the people of this world who are given to active life are occupied in getting their livelihood – and ours – so that they may not freely attend each day in all these times to praise God with their tongues. Therefore we who are called to contemplative life ought to praise God for them – and for us – every day seven times that we may say to our Lord with David, “Lord God, I praised you seven times in the day.”

Chapter 2: why these seven hours rather than others.

But now, you might ask why these seven hours – that is to say, matins time, prime time, and so forth – are assigned by the holy church for the praise of God rather than other hours since there are so many more hours in the day and in the night than seven. To this I answer that these hours are more specially privileged than others because of the great works that God has wrought therein for which he is everlastingly to be praised. Therefore we read that Saints both in the old law and in the new praised God in these hours. For David the prophet says to God this concerning himself: Media nocte surgebam ad confitendum tibi, that is, “Lord, at midnight I rose to praise you.” He also says this: Vespere, et manet meridie narrabo et annunciabo. That is, “At morning, at prime time, at noon, and at evening time, I shall tell and show your praises.” Also Daniel the prophet worships God three times in the day kneeling, according to the exposition of St. Jerome, at terce, sext, and none. Also Peter and John went up into the temple to pray at the hour of none, as it is written in the Acts of the Apostles. St. Paul and Silas, being in prison, prayed to God at midnight, and then the earth quaked and all the prison doors opened and all the fetters and bonds of the prisoners were loosed. Our Lord Jesus Christ also prayed, not only in one part of the night, but all the night he remained awake in prayer as the gospel tells. At the beginning of the holy church, the clergy and the common people – both men and women – rose to praise God four times in the night. First, at the beginning of the night when people are accustomed to go to bed. Second, at midnight. The third, a little before daybreak, and the fourth time at the morning. At evening, our Lord was taken by the Jews, bound and scorned. At midnight he was born. Before day he despoiled hell, and in the morning he rose from death to life. Therefore on some feasts matins are yet said at evening, and in some orders at midnight, and in some before day, and in others, at various times of the night. In some churches they say matins in the morning time.

At prime time, our Lord Jesus Christ was led to Pilate and accused. In the same hour after his resurrection, he appeared to Mary Magdalene, and another day he appeared to his disciples as they were fishing at the same hour. At the hour of terce, our Lord Jesus Christ was scourged, crowned with thorns, and scorned. The same hour, after his resurrection he appeared to the women coming from the sepulcher. On Pentecost Sunday at the same hour he sent the Holy Ghost down upon the apostles. At sext, our Lord Jesus Christ was nailed on the cross, and fed with vinegar and gall. At the same hour after his resurrection, he appeared to the apostle St. James, and on Ascension Day at the same hour he sat and ate with his apostles. At the hour of none, our Lord Jesus Christ cried and he gave up his soul to death. At the same hour, a knight opened our Lord’s side with a spear and smote through his heart from which came water for our baptism and blood for our redemption. On Easter day, he appeared at the same hour to St. Peter. At evening time, our Lord Jesus Christ on Shere [Maundy] Thursday ate with his apostles and ordained the holy sacrament of his holy body and blood. At the same hour on Good Friday, he was taken down from the cross. On Easter day at the same hour, he met with two of his disciples going toward Emmaus, and made himself known to them in the breaking of bread. At compline time, our Lord Jesus Christ on Shere Thursday at evening prayed and sweat blood. At the same hour on Good Friday, he was buried. On Easter day at the same hour, he appeared to his disciples gathered together in a closed place for fear of the Jews, and said to them, “Peace be with you.” Thus you may see that not without great cause are these hours set and ordained to be specially occupied in the serving and praising of our Lord God rather than other hours of the day.

The Rationale

The service used in the Church daily in some places or upon the Sundays and other feasts in all places, that is to say to have matins, prime, hours, evensong, and compline, whereof the most part is of Scripture, as the Psalms, and many times the legends (certain things added by man well reformed) are very godly and expedient both for that the ministers prayeth and giveth and thanks to God for themselves and for the people, and also that by the example of their prayers, they move and excite the people to pray with them. And therefore, for the adorning of the same service, surplices, copes and other vestures and ceremonies in the doing thereof are very laudable and comely.

The sober, discreet and devout singing, music and playing with organs used in the church, for the service of God are ordained to move and stir the people to the sweetness of God’s word the which is there sung [and not understanded (contained but struck out in one of the two manuscripts…)], and by that sweet harmony both to excite them to prayers and devotion and also to put them in remembrance, of the heavenly triumphant church, where is everlasting joy with continual laud and praise to God.

Some Thoughts…

Coming to these texts with the classic distinctions between “monastic” and “cathedral” ringing in my ears, I’m struck at how “cathedral” these descriptions appear—particularly the second. The emphasis on prayer/praise and on the the visual aspect of the ceremonies figure quite large in the standard definitions.

Note the comments in both that the singing of the hours is a means of joining the chorus of the Church Triumphant. Not just joining an angelic chorus, but particularly the saintly dead.

The offices are seen as edifying, but—particularly in the second—edifying by means of their example rather than their content. Seeing and hearing the song of the Offices should put the people in mind to pray themselves and join the saintly chorus. Of course, at this point, the services remained in Latin as Henry retained the Sarum Rite even after his separation from Rome.

“Cathedral” Conundrums

My writing has hit a snag…

I was on a pretty good roll, then page proofs for the St Augustine’s Prayer Book took me away, then focus on some web projects, and with both school and ballet starting up again for the girls the household’s been crazy, and now I’m trying to get my head back into it.

The real problem, though, is that I’m trying to make sense of the distinction between “cathedral” and “monastic” prayer in the Daily Office in a way that’s clear, accessible, and transparent. At the end of the day, the spirituality of the Daily Office goes in one of two major directions based on whether you take a “cathedral” or a “monastic” approach to it. I think I’ll be doing the Office a disservice if I don’t tease that out. On the other hand, so much of the scholarly literature that attempts to define these terms and isolate their characteristics is not terrible clear especially since—at the end of the day—“cathedral” and “monastic” are extracted ideals that don’t actually fit terribly well onto the historical practice. To complicate matters, there is considerable prejudice for the “cathedral” style and against the “monastic” style in the writings of the Liturgical Renewal Movement. To try and put the problem in a nutshell, it’s this: they see “cathedral” prayer as the communal prayer of the whole church and “monastic” prayer as the individualistic prayer of a spiritual elite. In keeping with the LRM’s central focus on worship as the activity of the whole people of God, you can see why they privilege the first over the second!

In line with LRM norms, the framers of the ’79 BCP tried to introduce quite a bit more “cathedral” elements into what they saw as Cranmer’s “monastic” re-write of the Offices.  It’s not until I started digging into this particular angle of this aspect of the problem that I realized exactly what had been done to the Office in the ’79 book. The pieces are falling into place. The Anglican Office really is “monastic” at heart. But the current prayer book attempts to fundamentally imbue it with a “cathedral” character, and understanding how, why, and what that means and communicating it in a coherent and non-technical way is not easy…

This project as a whole is making me realize two big things. First, I’m coming to consciously see myself as participating in the first generation of a post-LRM critique. As I’ve said before, the LRM did many wonderful things, the Church is richer for its work—but it operated out of a number of fundamental assumptions that have to be re-explored. Second, there’s something about being a layman with an interest in lay devotion that gives me a different angle on a field that’s been principally written about and dominated by priests. I’m questioning some of the standard sine qua nons of liturgical scholarship as reflecting a clerical bias… More on this later—time to get the girls up and get the day rolling!

The Services of the Daily Office

Writing continues… Here’s the next installment on the Daily Offices. At this point, I’m starting to head into the actual structure and the nuts & bolts of the Office. I start with an overview. The next part will pick up with an examination of the various elements in their respective offices.

—————————————–

The Anatomy of the Daily Office

The Services

When we consider the Daily Office—the regular prayer services of the Church and our official public services on all days of the year that aren’t Holy Days—we see that there are a number of items that fall under this heading. They are grouped together at the front of the prayer book:

  • Rite I (Traditional language)
      • Concerning the Service (p. 36)
    • Daily Morning Prayer: Rite One (pp. 37-60)
    • Daily Evening Prayer: Rite One (pp. 61-73)
  • Rite II (Contemporary language)
      • Concerning the Service (p. 74)
    • Daily Morning Prayer: Rite Two (pp. 75-102)
    • An Order of Service for Noonday (pp. 103-107)
      • Concerning the Service (p. 108)
    • An Order of Worship for the Evening (pp. 109-114)
    • Daily Evening Prayer: Rite Two (pp. 115-126)
    • An Order for Compline (p. 127-135)
  • Daily Devotions for Individuals and Families
      • [Concerning the Services] (p. 136)
    • In the Morning (p. 137)
    • At Noon (p. 138)
    • In the Early Evening (p. 139)
    • At the Close of Day (p. 140)
  • Additional Directions
    • [Directions]
      • Morning and Evening Prayer (pp. 141-142)
      • When there is a Communion (p. 142)
      • Order of Worship for the Evening (pp. 142-143)
    • Suggested Canticles at Morning Prayer (p. 144)
    •  Suggested Canticles at Evening Prayer (p. 145)
    • Psalm 95: Traditional (p. 146)

Let me make a few orienting observations here.

First, a distinction is drawn in the title of some services as “Daily” and others as “An Order…” Four services earn the “Daily”: Morning and Evening Prayer in Rites One and Two. (The brief devotions receive the term “Daily” as a class rather than individually.) This title reinforces their importance and their place in the Church’s understanding of the liturgical round. The others beginning with “An Order…” are recommended but do not have quite the same stamp of authority or necessity that the others do.

Second, you can’t actually pray either Morning or Evening Prayer with just the contents of this section! You need at least three other pieces to complete the service. They are:

  • The Collects for the Church Year
      • Concerning the Proper of the Church Year (p. 158)
    • Collects: Traditional
      • [Collects for Sundays of the Church Year] (pp. 159-185)
      • Holy Days (pp. 185-194)
      • The Common of Saints [for Days of Optional Observance] (pp. 195-199)
      • Various Occasions (pp. 199-210)
    • Collects: Contemporary
      • [Collects for Sundays of the Church Year] (pp. 211-236)
      • Holy Days (pp. 237-246)
      • The Common of Saints [for Days of Optional Observance] (pp. 246-250)
      • Various Occasions (pp. 251-261)

The Psalter (pp. 581-808)

  • Daily Office Lectionary
    • Concerning the Daily Office Lectionary (pp. 934-935)
    • [The Lectionary] (pp. 936-995)
    • Holy Days (pp. 996-1000)
    • Special Occasions (pp. 1000-1001) [Different from the “Various Occasions” of the collects]

Third, instructions on how to do the services are scattered throughout the book. This can be confusing… The majority of what you need to know can be found in the service itself. However, directions on who should do the service are found in the brief “Concerning the Service” notice found just before it; some directions on possible points of confusion get short answers in the “Additional Directions” at the end of the section. Items specific to the Psalms and the Readings may be found in the notes prefacing the Psalter and the Daily Office Lectionary; clarifications on the Calendar are tucked away amongst the collects.

Fourth, the Rite II services and the Daily Devotions agree in dividing the day into four chief liturgical sections: Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night. The Patristic and Medieval Churches had their own counts for daily liturgical divisions (6 and 7+1 respectively); we have one as well. The fact that we have one at all hearkens back to the Patristic and Medieval models, but the fact that the count is less than both of the earlier models reflects our intention that these hours not be burdensome and ought to be practically possible for the regular working person—not just a monk or hermit.

When it comes to services that you might experience in churches, Morning and Evening Prayer are the big ones. In my years as an Episcopalian, I’ve seen Morning and Evening Prayer done in a number of ways in a number of places. However, as the official public services of the Church on non-Holy Days they’re not as common as you might expect. You’d think that cathedrals at the least would offer these daily: some do, but more don’t. I think that sends an unfortunate message, or rather, fails to communicate an important value that we claim to hold in common. Noonday prayer is less common than the big two. I’ve only experienced it in churches that have a special vocation to keeping the full liturgical round like St. Mary the Virgin, Times Square.  It tends to be a small group or individual office. Compline too tends to be individual or small group due to its nature as a bed-time office. I’ve seen it done regularly and publicly, only in intentional liturgical communities like monasteries or seminaries. It’s not uncommon to use it to conclude evening church meetings or during multi-day retreats, though. Additionally, there seems to be a growing interest in the use of Compline as a choral experience: both St. Mark’s Cathedral in Seattle and Christ Church, New Haven, have famous Compline services that utilize the office to create a place of chant, candles, and beauty as a means of inviting a wide range of people—Christians, seekers, and non-Christians alike—to experience Christian liturgy as a place of holiness.

I don’t recall that I’ve ever seen an “Order of Worship for Evening” done. To the best of my knowledge, it was an interesting idea with classic roots that was new to this prayer book, but it has never generated the interest that its framers hoped it would.

The Daily Devotions are, by their very nature, not intended to be public church services—these are individual or household liturgies. I honestly can’t say how much they’re used; I can say that I don’t hear very much about them around the church. I think that may be a missed opportunity for us… Personally, I’m fond of them as a father of small children; they instill the concept of regular ordered prayer, but are not too long or burdensome for even young children. Early on, our family adopted the devotion “At the Close of Day” as bedtime prayers for our girls. Since it’s short and sweet, both of them had (quite unconsciously) memorized it even before they were able to read. I’ve frequently thought that a colorful laminated placemat with the text of the “In the Morning” and “In the Early Evening” devotions on either side might be a wonderful way to get these little offices into the kitchens and consciousness of families with children.

The Structure of the Offices

The structures of Morning and Evening Prayer closely mirror one another. It’s readily apparent from looking at how they’re put together that these are twin offices meant to complement and reinforce one another. Noonday prayer and Compline share in the same overall movement as the main offices, but the elements are not necessarily fit together in the same way. Compline, in particular, cleaves closer to models of older liturgies, and therefore follows a slightly different logic than the other three. An Order of Worship for the Evening has its own internal structure and possibilities, some of which mirror the offices, others of which do not—it’s doing a different thing and should be considered apart from the other liturgies in this section.

If we put the elements of the four prayer offices in parallel with one another, you’ll see the common elements emerge. Optional elements are in italics, common elements are in bold:

 

Morning Prayer

Noonday Prayer

Evening Prayer

Compline

[Fore-Office]

 Opening Sentence Opening Sentence Versicles
Confession & Absolution Confession & Absolution Confession & Absolution

Invitatory & Psalms

 Opening Versicles Opening Versicles Opening Versicles Opening Versicles
Invitatory Hymn Invitatory
Appointed Psalms Appointed Psalms Appointed Psalms Appointed Psalms

Lessons

 OT Scripture Reading OT Scripture Reading
Canticle Canticle  
NT Scripture Reading Scripture [Sentence] NT Scripture Reading Scripture [Sentence]
Canticle Canticle Hymn
Apostles’ Creed Apostles’ Creed

The Prayers

 Brief Suffrages
The Lord’s Prayer The Lord’s Prayer The Lord’s Prayer The Lord’s Prayer
Suffrages Suffrages
Collects Collects Collects Collects
Hymn   Hymn Canticle
Concluding Prayers Concluding Prayers
Blessing Blessing Blessing Blessing

We’ll get lost in the details in just a moment, but first I want you to notice the arc that we have here. In all cases, we start with Scripture and then we move to prayer. One way to make sense of this pattern is that we start with edification and then we move to praise—but that’s not the best way to think about. This is the Office; it’s all praise! It would be better to say that we begin with praise that reveals and reminds us who God is (and, specifically, who God is for his people through time), then we continue with praise that offers our response to who God is.

The large headings printed in Morning and Evening Prayer divide the offices into four natural parts that can also be applied to Noonday Prayer and somewhat to Compline. (There’s no initial heading which is why I’ve supplied one—though in brackets—in the chart above. I suppose it’s as optional as its contents.) These headings reinforce the character of the arc that we’ve just noticed. The pattern starts with the psalms highlighting again their crucial function in the Office ecosystem. Notice that the presence of psalms is never optional. This book of divine praises is the Scriptural centerpiece of the Office. Then we move to the Scripture readings. I do think that the heading “The Lessons” in Morning and Evening Prayer is an unfortunate choice of words. It reflects a hold-over mentality from the early Reformation era that locates worship’s purpose in its instructional value. Even “The Readings” would be a better way to label what is about to occur that doesn’t prejudice the purpose of these Scriptures in the same way that the term “lessons” does.  Then we move to the prayers. We get several different kinds of prayer in these sections but several cut across the four offices: the Lord’s Prayer, suffrages, collects, and blessings. Our prayer is not all of one type and our offices lead us through a variety as it schools us in the arts of praise.

Now we’ll consider the various elements in detail and do some thinking about what they do for us and how they connect to each other. Because of the differences between the Offices, I’m going to treat Morning and Evening Prayer in parallel first, then will discuss Noonday Prayer and Compline separately.

[To be continued…]

The Essence of the Office

This post follows on the other on the Sacrifice of Praise and Thanksgiving to complete my thoughts on the Essence of the Office.

————————————

The essence of the Daily Office must be found on one hand in Paul’s exhortation for Christians “with gratitude in your hearts [to] sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God” (Col 3:12), and, on the other hand, to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17). The two central themes here that we must keep before our eyes are the idea of the use of songs and poetic praises of God and also continuous prayer springing from deliberate acts of periodic prayer. As we consider the Daily Office and its various parts and acts, we will return time and time again to these two basic principles that form its foundation.

Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs

The Anglican mystic Evelyn Underhill (†1941) in her book Worship reinforces the poetic character of the Daily Office and the significance of that quality:

Liturgical worship shares with all ritual action the character of a work of art. Entering upon it, we leave the lower realism of daily life for the higher realism of a successive action which expresses and interprets eternal truth by the deliberate use of poetic and symbolic material. A liturgical service should therefore possess a structural unity; its general form and movement, and each of its parts, being determined by the significance of the whole. By its successive presentation of all the phases of the soul’s response to the Holy, its alternative use of history and oratory, drama and rhythm, its appeals to feeling, thought, and will, the individual is educated and gathered into the great movement of the Church. . . . Nevertheless since its main function is to suggest the Supernatural and lead men out to communion with the supernatural, it is by the methods of poetry that its chief work will be done. . . . [P]oetry still remains a chief element at least in the Daily Office, which is mainly an arrangement of psalms, canticles, and Scripture readings. (Worship, p. 119)

 She goes on to remind us of the interpretive errors that occur when we attempt to read poetry literally and miss its deeper sense and direction. As she sees it, poetry in the liturgy has three main purposes:

(1)    It is the carrying-medium of something which otherwise wholly eludes representation: the soul’s deep and awestruck apprehension of the numinous. . . .

(2)    It can universalize particulars; giving an eternal reference to those things of time in and through which God speaks to men. . . .

(3)    It is a powerful stimulant of the transcendental sense . . .

All these characters of poetry are active in good liturgy, and indeed constitute an important part of its religious value. Moreover, poetry both enchants and informs, addressing its rhythmic and symbolic speech to regions of the mind which are inaccessible to argument, and evoking movements of awe and love which no exhortation can obtain. It has meaning at many levels, and welds together all those who use it; overriding their personal moods and subduing them with a grave loveliness. (Worship, p. 120)

Great art—great poetry—is that which can capture our minds and hearts, and suffuse reality with a new light, a new perspective. It helps us see our ordinary, everyday world as not so ordinary, and cracks open everyday reality to help us see the beauty, the glory, and the wonder that is concealed therein. It helps us see new possibilities; it helps us see grander movements.

This is my best perspective on Scripture: it invites us into a different way of seeing the world and our relationships within it. It invites us to experience the whole cosmos arrayed around the throne of God as portrayed in the heavenly throne-room depicted in Revelation 4-6, and leads us to speculate about what it means to live in a world where justice, mercy, and loving-kindness are fundamental guiding principles. We are invited to recognize our own world transformed and suffused with the light of God and to function as mirrors, lenses, and crystals, reflecting—focusing—diffusing—the divine light, casting it through our facets upon the world and people around us.

The Office with its language of poetry reminds us and orients us to this level of understanding and reflection. Too, it can help us get beyond a literalism and dogmatism that can either frustrate or limit our sense of the holy and the divine. The Athanasian Creed can be a hard pill for many to swallow. On one hand, it’s chalk full of complicated and philosophical technical terms. On the other, it ends with a declaration of damnation containing a certainty that seems to arrogate to itself a judgment properly left with God alone.   The Episcopal Church has never been comfortable with it; Bishop Seabury (†1796), the first American Episcopal bishop, wrote that he was never convinced of the propriety of reading it in church, yet did want to include it along the same lines as the articles of faith to show that we hold the common faith of the West. Indeed, the 1979 revision is the only American prayer book to include it. Especially as modern people, we don’t know what to do with it—but the monks did! They sang it as a canticle complete with antiphons at Sunday Prime, the poetic and musical setting potentially subverting its dogmatism and softening its philosophical formality in song.

After speaking of the eight individual hours that formed the Daily Office in the West, Underhill draws them together and unites them with their purpose:

The complete Divine Office, then, . . . is best understood when regarded as a spiritual and artistic unity; so devised, that the various elements of praise, prayer, and reading, and the predominately poetic and historic material from which it is built up, contribute to one single movement of the corporate soul, and form together one single act of solemn yet exultant worship. This act of worship is designed to give enduring and impersonal expression to eternal truths; and unite the here and now earthly action of the Church with the eternal response of creation to its origin. It is her “Sacred Chant,” and loses some of its quality and meaning when its choral character is suppressed: for in it, the demands of a superficial realism are set aside, in favour of those deeper realities which can only be expressed under poetic and musical forms. (Worship, 124-5)

The more we sing of the Office, the more in touch we are with these melodies, harmonies, and rhythms of which she speaks. Yet, even if we are reading it alone in our rooms, we can still find the cadences there.

On a purely literary level, we can go through the Office step by step and note the presence of the poetry and music at every step. The psalms form the heart of the office. We respond to the Scripture readings with canticles, most of which are infused and inspired by the psalms—or songs like them. The suffrages themselves are verses of psalms recombined and related to one another in new ways. The collects and prayers speak in the language of the psalms and Scriptures.

As we pray the Office and sing it—whether aloud or in our hearts—we are incarnating the Pauline injunction to sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God and to one another. As its poetry becomes more deeply a part of us, as these songs become more fully implanted within our hearts, they leads us to a more beautiful lens for locating God at work in our world.

To Pray Without Ceasing

This notion of having the songs and psalms implanted in our hearts and consciousness leads us in to the second principle, to pray without ceasing. If we wish to learning the meaning of this phrase, we must turn our eyes to the Desert Fathers and Mothers for it was they who devoted their entire efforts to live its meaning.

The fourth century was a tumultuous time for the Church as Constantine’s Edict of Milan in 313 meant an end to persecution and brought with it a tacit sign of imperial favor. (Christianity wouldn’t actually become the official religion of the empire until 380 under Theodosius.) While the easing of restrictions against Christianity brought in a wave of converts—some no doubt embracing it for political gain—this same easing equally triggered a crisis of spirituality. For decades, Christian authenticity had been bound up with martyrdom; fidelity to the way of the cross was identified with the willingness to die a martyr’s death. With martyrdom at the hands of the authorities no longer an option, where was an earnest Christian to turn?

The answer came in the form of the desert. Christians who sought to embody the commands of Scripture sold their possessions, renounced family life, and sought lives of prayer and austerity in the deserts, either on their own or in the company of like-minded souls. This way of life, which would flower into monasticism and feed the church spiritually for centuries to come, was popularized by bishops and theologians who wrote inspiring accounts of the lives of simple men and the spiritual riches they uncovered. The great bishop Athanasius (†373) penned the Life of Antony which chronicled the life and spirituality of one of the earliest desert saints and spread word of the movement across the Greek-speaking world. Not to be outdone, the ascetic and scholar Jerome (†367), living in a monastery in Jerusalem, wrote a number of lives that sought to supplement (or replace) the Life of Antony, bringing knowledge of the desert life to the Latin-speaking church. The first great systematic works of Western Christian spirituality, John Cassian’s (†435) Institutes and Conferences, were written for the benefit of his monastery in Gaul, containing remembrances of his youthful spiritual dialogues with heroes of the Egyptian and Palestinian deserts.

As we sift through the literature of the early monastic movement and the desert saints who founded it, we come back time and time again to this injunction to “pray without ceasing,” to praying of some form of the Daily Office, and a fundamental belief that the use of the Office was the key to praying without ceasing. The characteristic pattern of desert life is captured in a brief description of how Antony lived:

The money he earned from his work he gave to the poor, apart from what he needed to buy bread, and he prayed often, for he learned that one should pray to the Lord without ceasing. He also listened attentively to the Scriptures so that nothing should slip from his mind. He preserved all the Lord’s commandments, keeping them safe in his memory rather than in books. (Life of Antony 3, Early Christian Lives, p. 10)

Note the way that work, prayer, and memorization of the Scriptures are interconnected here. This way of life is further clarified by an episode where a desert hermit was disputing with a group of uber-pietists called the Euchites or Messalians concerning prayer without ceasing:

Some of the monks who are called Euchites went to Enaton to see Abba Lucius. The old man asked them, ‘What is your manual work?’ They said, ‘We do not touch manual work but as the Apostle says, we pray without ceasing.’ The old man asked them if they did not eat and they replied they did. So he said to them, ‘When you are eating, who prays for you then?’ Again he asked them if they did not sleep and they replied they did. And he said to them, ‘When you are asleep, who prays for you then?’ They could not find any answer to give him. He said to them, ‘Forgive me, but you do not act as you speak. I will show you how, while doing my manual work, I pray without interruption. I sit down with God, soaking my reeds and plaiting my ropes, and I say, “God have mercy on me; according to your great goodness and according to the multitude of your mercies, save me from my sins [Ps 51:1,2].”’ So he asked them if this were not prayer and they replied it was. Then he said to them, ‘So when I have spent the whole day working and praying, making thirteen pieces of money more or less, I put two pieces of money outside the door and I pay for my food with the rest of the money. He who takes the two pieces of money prays for me when I am eating and sleeping; so, by the grace of God, I fulfill the precept to pray without ceasing.’ (Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 120-1)

This blend of piety and practicality is found throughout this early literature. The life described is one filled with basic manual labor—weaving ropes or baskets made from the leaves of the desert palms or scratching out subsistence gardens from the rocky soil—suffused with constant prayer. Indeed, the Egyptian monks in particular were famous for prayers that were “brief but frequent.”

The prayer recited by Abba Lucius is an adaptation of the start of Psalm 51. Reading through the Life of Antony and the description that Athanasius gives of Antony’s struggles in spiritual travail, a pattern emerges. At a great turning point in Antony’s life, during a struggle with demons that left him both physically and spiritually battered he retained his faith and focus by ceaselessly chanting, “If they place an encampment against me, my heart will not fear” (Ps 27:3). When people came from the cities, hoping to find him dead, he would pray verses from Ps 68:1-2 and Ps 118:10. Throughout the literature, the words of the psalms are constantly appearing through their prayers and discussions. In truth their whole conversations are shot through with Scripture, but consistently the psalms predominate. In fact, the Egyptian “brief but frequent” prayers that appear in the corpus are almost always drawn from Scripture and the psalms. One of the works of Evagrius of Pontus (†399) consists entirely of one-liners from Scripture to be used for prayer in a host of situations organized in relation to the eight vices identified by the desert monks.

For these monks—many of whom were illiterate—Scripture came through hearing. Preeminently, Scripture was heard and memorized in the Daily Offices. The foundation of the Office gave them the words they needed to meditate in the midst of their work and to truly pray without ceasing no matter what they were doing.

Perhaps the preeminent connection between the Scriptures, the psalms, and praying without ceasing comes from the second conference on prayer recorded by John Cassian. Abba Isaac says that the whole goal of the monastic way of life can be summed up like this: “This, I say, is the end [goal] of all perfection–that the mind purged of every carnal desire may daily be elevated to spiritual things, until one’s whole way of life and all the yearnings of one’s heart become and single and continuous prayer” (Conferences 10.7.3). Cassian’s companion Germanus asks how this sort of focus can be achieved. The reply from Abba Isaac is that there is one particular formula for meditation that can secure this result:

The formula for this discipline and prayer that you are seeking, then, shall be presented to you. Every monk who longs for the continual awareness of God should be in the habit of meditating on it ceaselessly in his heart, after having driven out every kind of thought, because he will be unable to hold fast to it in any other way than by being freed from all bodily cares and concerns. Just as this was handed down to us by a few of the oldest fathers who were left, so also we pass it on to none but the most exceptional, who truly desire it. This, then, is the devotional formula proposed to you as absolutely necessary for possessing the perpetual awareness of God: ‘O God, make speed to save me; O Lord, make haste to help me’ [Ps 70:1]. (Conferences 10.10.2)

Yes, this is the line that is used as a verse and response to open each of the prayer offices. No, that’s not an accident.

John Cassian makes the explicit connection between the Daily Office and the continuous prayer of the Egyptian monks in his other big book, the Institutes, but he does so by framing it in the midst of one of the disputes about monastic practice. By the end of the fourth century, there were two major centers of monastic practice—the deserts of Egypt and the deserts of Palestine. They had different ways of praying the Daily Office. The Egyptian model was the same in format as what appears to have been done in many of the early cathedrals of the period—one public service in the morning and another in the evening. Twelve psalms were sung, then there was a reading from the Old Testament, then one from the New Testament. That was it for the day. The Palestinian model was to gather more frequently. Jerome, writing from his monastery in Bethlehem, advises this:

Further, although the apostle bids us to ‘pray without ceasing,’ and although to the saints their very sleep is a supplication, we ought to have fixed hours of prayer, that if we are detained by work, the time may remind us of our duty. Prayers, as everyone knows, ought to be said at the third, sixth, and ninth hours, at dawn and at evening. . . . We should rise two or three times in the night and go over the parts of Scripture which we know by heart. (Letter 22. 37)

and instructs the parents of a young virgin dedicated to the church to train her in the same way: “She ought to rise at night to recite prayers and psalms; to sing hymns in the morning; at the third, sixth, and ninth hours to take her place in the line to do battle for Christ; and lastly to kindle her lamp and to offer her evening sacrifice” (Letter 107.9).

The Egyptians responded rather harshly. One characteristic response comes from the Egyptian-trained Epiphanius:

The Blessed Epiphanius, Bishop of Cyprus, was told this by the abbot of a monastery he had in Palestine, ‘By your prayers we do not neglect our appointed round of psalmody, but we are very careful to recite [the prayer offices of] Terce, Sext and None.’ Then Epiphanius corrected them with the following comment, ‘It is clear you do not trouble about the other hours of the day, if you cease from prayer. The true monk should have prayer and psalmody continuously in his heart.’ (Sayings of the Desert Fathers, p. 57)

Thus, he suggested that by having more set hours of the day, the monks were neglecting this continual prayer of the heart and instead were satisfied only to pray when the clock told them it was time to do so. Frankly, this is kind of a cheap shot. An argument could equally be made that since the Palestinian monks were hearing the psalms more, they had better opportunity to memorize them and keep them always in their hearts—but the (Egyptian) sayings don’t see fit to give us the Palestinian abbot’s response!

In light of this argument between the two parties, John Cassian tries to take a middle path. After explaining the Egyptian system, and before talking about how to pray the day hours, he says this:

For, among [the Egyptians as opposed to the monasteries of Palestine and Mesopotamia] the offices that we are obliged to render to the Lord at different hours and at intervals of time [i.e., the day offices of Terce, Sext, and None] to the call of the summoner, are celebrated continuously and spontaneously throughout the course of the whole day, in tandem with their work. For they are constantly doing manual labor alone in their cells in such a way that they almost never omit meditating on the psalms and on other parts of Scripture, and to this they add entreaties and prayers at every moment, taking up the whole day in offices that we celebrate at fixed times. Hence, apart from the evening and

Morning Prayer for 4/25/2024

gatherings, they celebrate no public service during the day except on Saturday and Sunday, when they gather at the third hour for Holy Communion. For what is offered [freely] is greater than what is rendered at particular moments, and a voluntary service is more pleasing than functions that are carried out by canonical obligation. This is why David himself rejoices somewhat boastfully when he says: ‘Willingly shall I sacrifice to you.’ And: ‘May the free offerings of my mouth be pleasing to you, Lord.’

 So, John Cassian is, in essence, admitting that the Egyptians have a more perfect practice: the two Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer give the stern Egyptian monks all they need in order to pray without ceasing for the rest of the day. But then he goes right ahead and tells his monks to do the three day hours in Palestinian fashion! The Egyptian way may be better, but the Palestinian is easier—and is likely better training for those still needing to learn their psalms.

In essence, we can say that these two groups show us two different ways of using the Daily Office to learn how to pray without ceasing. The “Egyptian” model is to only have two long Offices with psalms and readings at both. The “Palestinian” model is to have shorter and more frequent Offices with psalmody, leaving the reading of Scripture for the long Office at night. The Palestinian model wins decisively in the West; Benedict expresses in his Rule what has become normative in the West: eight liturgical services of prayer with an additional monastic business meeting—Chapter—that itself acquires liturgical material. Indeed, this pattern of frequency in corporate recitation of the Offices gets taken to its extreme in the monasteries of Cluny to the point that up to a full eight hours of the day were spent singing liturgies!

With the creation of the Book of Common Prayer at the Reformation, Archbishop Cranmer put the Anglican churches onto the other path. Whereas for centuries the Western Church had followed the Palestinian model, Cranmer turned us back to the Egyptian model. Up until our present book, our Offices had consisted of just what the Egyptian Office had: psalms, a reading from the Old Testament, a reading from the New Testament and prayers, all done twice a day. (The 1979 book gives a “Palestinian” nod with the introduction of Noon Prayer and Compline.)

If prayer without ceasing is our goal (and why shouldn’t it be?) we must recall that the Egyptian model is the harder path. In order to fulfill the call, we would be wise to take their advice. Pray the long Offices as they’re appointed, but then—throughout the day—make our private prayers “brief but frequent.” Take a verse that strikes you in the morning. Ponder it through the day; make it your prayer. Repeat it to yourself as you sit in silence. Whisper it to yourself as you work. Roll it in your mind while you eat. Make it part of your prayer without ceasing.

This, then, is the essence of the Office—to make our spiritual sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. By speaking in “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God” our hearts are lifted and our minds expanded to see a world imbued with God. As we take the words of the psalms and the Scriptures into ourselves, we provide ourselves with the basic resources to “pray without ceasing.” The practice of the Office—whether together or alone—builds up in us the pattern of praise and points us in the way of the habitual recollection of God.

The Daily Office: Sacrifice of Praise

Here’s a section where I’m going into the essence and the spiritual logic behind the Office…

——————–

The Sacrifice of Praise and Thanksgiving

When the Church Fathers spoke of the chief morning and evening services of the Daily Office—Lauds and Vespers in the Western Church—they often did so with reference to the Temple sacrifices. A classic example is Isidore of Seville (†636) whose encyclopedic writings formed the basis for most Western treatments of the liturgy for almost a thousand years. In describing Vespers, he writes:

Vespers is the end of the daily office and the setting of another daylight. Its solemn celebration is from the Old Testament. It was the custom of the ancients to offer sacrifices and to have aromatic substances and incense burnt on the altar at that time. [David], that hymn-singing witness, performed a royal and priestly office saying: “Let my prayer be counted as incense before you, and the lifting up of my hands as an evening sacrifice” (Ps 141:2). (De Eccl. Off., 1.20.1)

Isidore asserts a few things that we need to look at more carefully. First, he finds Vespers in the Old Testament. Second, he clarifies this remark by talking about sacrifices, particularly around the offering of incense. Third, he mentions David, citing a psalm in support of his statements. What’s he talking about, and in what sense do we take this?

Looking through the legislation in the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures, we find a double reference to what Isidore was describing. Numbers 28:1-8 gives a summary:

The LORD spoke to Moses, saying: Command the Israelites, and say to them: My offering, the food for my offerings by fire, my pleasing odor, you shall take care to offer to me at its appointed time. And you shall say to them, This is the offering by fire that you shall offer to the LORD: two male lambs a year old without blemish, daily, as a regular offering. One lamb you shall offer in the morning, and the other lamb you shall offer at twilight also one-tenth of an ephah of choice flour for a grain offering, mixed with one-fourth of a hin of beaten oil. It is a regular burnt offering, ordained at Mount Sinai for a pleasing odor, an offering by fire to the LORD. Its drink offering shall be one-fourth of a hin for each lamb; in the sanctuary you shall pour out a drink offering of strong drink to the LORD. The other lamb you shall offer at twilight with a grain offering and a drink offering like the one in the morning; you shall offer it as an offering by fire, a pleasing odor to the LORD. (NRSV)

So—lambs, bread, and wine. This legislation is described again at the end of Exodus 29; Exodus 30 then gives directions for the incense altar right before the Holy of Holies in the inmost part of the temple and states: “Aaron shall offer fragrant incense on it; every morning when he dresses the lamps he shall offer it, and when Aaron sets up the lamps in the evening, he shall offer it, a regular incense offering before the Lord throughout your generations” (Exod 30:7-8). This is where the incense is coming from in Isidore.

Although these twice daily offerings are described separately, we find them joined together in some of the standard summary statements of priestly activity in the Temple. Thus, when King Abijah is trying to persuade the people of Israel to join Judah again he argues, “We have priests ministering to the LORD who are descendants of Aaron, and Levites for their service. They offer to the LORD every morning and every evening burnt offerings and fragrant incense, set out the rows of bread on the table of pure gold, and care for the golden lampstand so that its lamps may burn every evening” (2 Chr 13:10b-11a). When we think about services in the Temple, then, this was a big piece of the daily activity: the twice daily burnt offerings of food and incense. The best description that we have from the time of the Temple is in Ecclesiasticus 50:12-21 where the service is described while praising the Simon, son of Onias, high priest from around 219-196 BC. While interesting in its own right, the only point that we need to observe from this description is that it includes a description of the Levites singing a psalm at the time of the sacrifice. This agrees with the much later—and much more comprehensive—description of this ceremony in the Mishnah (the 3rd century AD written collection of Jewish oral teaching) where set psalms are given for each day.

To recap, then, there were daily temple sacrifices at morning and evening where prayers would be prayed, psalms sung, and sacrifices performed—both food and incense. This is the Old Testament precedent that Isidore is referring to. (Note: I’m not suggesting that there is any direct liturgical link between the sacrifices and the Offices only that the pattern is similar and that common elements are likely due to a Christian appropriation of what they read as Old Testament practice.)

These offerings of food, drink, and incense are the type that anthropologists refer to as “alimentary offerings.” That is, in these sacrifices, the community is feeding the deity; in traditions that include images or statues of the gods, they may be clothed at this time as well. Now—it’s easy to dismiss these as primitive and pointless, but to do so is to miss their deeper meaning. Only the very young or unsophisticated believed that the gods needed these feedings or would perish without them. Indeed, Psalm 50 explicitly mocks this shallow understanding: “If I [, the Lord,] were hungry, I would not tell you, for the whole world is mine and all that is in it. Do you think I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats? Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and make good your vows to the Most High” (Ps 50:12-4, BCP).  Rather, what’s operative behind these ceremonies is that the community is taking some of its common supplies—food, drink, things that people could use—and is choosing to give them up. The fact that useful (and sometimes even scarce) belongings are being exclusively devoted to the deity is a symbol of the community’s dedication to their god. That’s what’s really behind this: these sacrifices are an act of self-dedication showing through the community’s sacrifice what kind of material loss they are willing to incur for the sake of fidelity to their deity. This kind of sacrifice, then (and there are other kinds that we’ll talk about later…) demonstrates dedication because a limited good is being directed towards the god rather than the community’s (or individual’s) well-being.

Psalm 141 with its spiritualization of the sacrifice is pointing to something important when the psalmist asks that the prayer itself be considered a substitute for or (perhaps more precisely) an act of worship united—though at a distance—with the act of sacrifice: “Let my prayer be set forth in your sight as incense, the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice” (Ps 141:2, BCP). Even though the psalmist isn’t burning any lambs, the act of prayer itself reflects an act of sacrifice. A good that is inherently limited—time itself—is being voluntarily dedicated to God.

Thus, if the morning and evening sacrifices of the Temple are seen as acts of communal self-dedication to God, the morning and evening prayer of the Church mirroring these sacrificial acts are also acts of self-dedication. We are voluntarily giving up twenty to thirty minutes at each time to God—time that could be spent doing a hundred, a thousand, other things—and are choosing to spend this most precious resource in the praise of God.

There are two direct links that the Church has chosen to appropriate from the Old Testament legislation that puts us in connection with the spirit of these sacrifices: the use of psalms and the presence of incense. When we sing the psalms at morning and evening prayer, we are uniting our voices across time not just with the early Anglicans of Archbishop Cranmer’s day, not just with Isidore’s Spanish monks, but with the Levites serving God in the Jerusalem Temple. We are separated by centuries, yet united in song.

Likewise, when we choose to use incense—and this usually occurs either at the most formal expressions of public worship or, on the other end of the spectrum, as the act of an individual worshipper praying alone—we should use it in direct remembrance of the incense offered to God in the Temple ceremonies. We’re not trying to recreate the Temple sacrifices or to put ourselves under Old Testament ceremonial legislation, of course, but—like the psalms—we offer it in spiritual unison with the offerings of God’s people through time. Thus, when incense is used at the Offices, it should be used to cense the altar alone and not the people around it. We’re not at this time using incense as a holy purifier but we are offering it directly to God as a sacrifice in and of itself and as a visual representation of the prayers themselves ascending to God’s throne.

By putting substantial prayer offices at the hinges of the day—morning and evening—therefore, the Church joins its worship spiritually and symbolically with the twice daily sacrifices God commanded the Israelites to perform in Scripture. As with their worship, we are sacrificing something of value—our time—to God as an act of dedication. Praying the psalms, saying the prayers, lifting up our hands with or without incense, we are uniting ourselves with the full people of God across time as we offer our own sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving.

Daily Office: Psalms

I’m now heading into the Office section of the Prayer Book Spirituality Project. I’m wrestling a bit with the organization… In particular, I’m trying to decide if the Psalms should receive their own chapter or if Psalms stuff should be folded into a more integrated discussion of the Office. I haven’t decided.

That hasn’t stopped me from writing, though…

So—here’s a section that will go *somewhere,* I just don’t know where yet.

——————————-

At the heart of the historic discipline of the Office is the Psalms. Recitation of the psalms has always been a central part of the practice and, not only that, many of the other elements in the Office are either borrowed from or directly inspired by the Psalms. As a result, it’s worth taking a closer look at them.

The Psalms (capitalized) refers to a book of the Old Testament containing 150 chapters. These chapters are, for the most part, discrete poems or songs known as psalms (not capitalized) that involve the relationship between God and his people, whether individually or corporately. What makes them unusual, given our typical perspective on the Bible, is their direction. That is, we ordinarily consider the Bible to be God’s self-revelation to humanity—God’s Word, revealing himself to us. The Psalms, though, are a set of prayers from humanity to God noteworthy for their emotional vulnerability and self-disclosure—feeling often more like humanity’s self-revelation to God!  Thus, the Psalms are a paradox of sorts: divine revelation laying bare the soul of humanity.

Having noted this unusual state of affairs, I now wish to turn to the question of authorship—who wrote the psalms, and how and why does that matter in our reading of them? One view, deriving from modern biblical scholarship, asserts that we don’t know who wrote the psalms—they are largely an anonymous collection. Another view, the traditional view handed down by the early and medieval Church, asserts that King David was the author of the psalms. Yet a third perspective is given by the psalms themselves that help us nuance and appreciate the importance of both perspectives.

By looking at language in relation to dialect shift over centuries, their possible original settings, relationship to other scriptural texts, and parallel material from the Ancient Near East, modern academic scholarship of the Bible sees the Psalms as a collection of material spanning several centuries from a diverse set of sources. Some psalms give a pretty clear indication that they were connected with worship in the Temple; others don’t have a temple anywhere near them. Some are connected to court life; others are written in the voice of the poor pleading for justice against rich oppressors. Some connect the king and Temple worship in ways that require a setting in Solomon’s Temple before its destruction by Babylonian armies in 587 B.C.; others reflect upon that act of destruction and one famously records the lament of those taken exile into Babylon and taunted to sing the songs of their homeland for their captors. Some are gems of theological complexity and subtlety; others reflect a more simplistic conception of God and the human-divine relationship. Some are placed in the voice of the king, yet others (like Psalm 131) are heard more easily in the voice of a young mother.

So what meaning do we take from this? For me, this breadth of the collection, the diversity of the voices, the anonymity of the writers gives me the sense of being in contact with a whole people of God at prayer. This anonymous collective is part of the great cloud of witnesses just as I am—just as I will be when twenty-five centuries have covered my own tomb with dust. From this perspective, the authors who wrote the psalms may be nameless and faceless but are by no means either voiceless or soul-less. Indeed, that is what gaps the chasms of time between then and now: an earnest cry—whether it be joy, or devotion or fear—that I recognize within my own breast as well. Thus, the diversity of the collection and the anonymity of its myriad authors and editors binds us to our heritage of the sons and daughters of God moving through time.

On the other hand, the tradition has insisted upon the person of King David as a centerpoint around whom the psalms are hung. While modern scholarship agrees that at least a few of the psalms contain linguistic and conceptual markers consistent with David’s time and place—and that therefore could conceivable be by him—it rejects the notion of Davidic authorship of the full Psalter as inconsistent with internal evidence from the psalms themselves. Whether it’s historical or not, there is some spiritual value for us in seeing the psalms in relation to David, so it’s worth looking more closely at why this attribution was so important to the Church through the ages.

The first reason is because the biblical narratives about David frequently connect him with music. According to 1 Samuel 16:14-23 even before the episode with Goliath, David was taken into Saul’s service precisely because his music soothed the king. Even after rising to high rank commanding the king’s armies, David still played daily for the him—indeed these music sessions twice became opportunities when the increasingly deranged Saul attempted to kill David lest he usurp the throne (1 Sam 18:5-12; 1 Sam 19:9-10)! Three songs ostensibly from the hand of David appear in 2 Samuel: the first his lament at the death of Jonathan and Saul (2 Sam 1:17-27), then an adaptation of Psalm 18 (2 Sam 22), and finally a song before his death (2 Sam 23:2-7) that names him “the sweet psalmist of Israel.”

Later biblical materials build on this aspect of David’s legacy. Chronicles portrays David as setting up all of the details of the Temple’s worship even though the structure wouldn’t be built until the reign of his son Solomon. Even later still, the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus honors his musical achievements as much as his military ones saying,

In all that [David] did he gave thanks to the Holy One, the Most High, proclaiming his glory; he sang praise with all his heart, and he loved his Maker. He placed singers before the altar, to make sweet melody with their voices. He gave beauty to the festivals, and arranged their times throughout the year, while they praised God’s holy name, and the sanctuary resounded from early morning. (Ecclus 47:8-10)

A more profound reason why the Psalms are connected with David is due to the fullness of the picture that we get of him in the Samuel-Kings material. While the pages of Scripture are filled with memorable people, few are drawn with great emotional depth. Two characters of the Old Testament stand out as fleshed-out emotional beings: Job and David. The view we get of Job is one-sided, though. Due to the purpose of the book, we see Job in various stages of lament and despair. In David, however, we see a man at full-stretch: the passionate lover, the exuberant warrior, the reverent monarch, the penitential father. We see him at his best and worst, in his highs and in his lows; he experiences the complete emotional range that the Psalter explores. In him we can make this anonymous collection personal and individual. We can see how events in his life might have prompted the cries of despair or the calls of joy, and find the parallels in our own.

A final reason why the early and medieval Church emphasized so strongly the Davidic authorship of the psalms is because they saw the psalms as deeply prophetic. They understood David to be uttering divinely inspired praises. But, even more particularly, they saw him engaging in an act of divinely-facilitated clairaudience reaching across the centuries: he was writing in the tenth century B.C. what his descendant Jesus—Son of David—would be feeling in the first century AD. In insisting upon the Davidic authorship of the Psalms, the Church could assert that they gave a unique perspective into the interior life of Jesus. The gospels tell of his deeds and allude to how he felt; having established the genetic connection, the psalms lay bare his own prayers and tribulations.

As modern people, it’s harder for us to embrace this perspective whole-heartedly than it was for our ancestors. Nevertheless, the Christological reading of the psalms has an important place in our spirituality. Granted—it does require some rather creative interpretive gymnastics to explain how some psalms show the psychology of Jesus! However, despite these problematic bits, the Church is saying something profound in attributing the emotional range and depth of the psalms to Jesus. It is another way to explore and ponder the full humanity of Jesus. Only a Jesus who feels deeply, passionately, fully, is a completely human (while completely divine) Redeemer. Indeed, this perspective brings us full circle to the paradox of revelation with which we began—how are human prayers to God part of God’s self-revelation to us? Seeing them in and through Jesus’ own self-communication to the Father clarifies how the revelation of the depths of our own humanity connects to divine self-revelation.

Having looked, now, at the modern idea of corporate anonymous authorship alongside the early and medieval understanding of Davidic authorship, I’d like to wrap up by adding in a body of scriptural material that can serve as a mediating, uniting, term between the two. The psalms in the prayer book are lacking one contextualizing piece that you’ll find when you look up the psalms in a Bible: the superscriptions. These are brief headers that appear at the start of most of the psalms—only 24 lack them in the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. These headers aren’t original to the psalms but have been added in the process of compiling and editing them together. Therefore, they likely tell us less about history and more about interpretation. Often, these superscriptions give instructions to the choirmaster or give a tune name. (The tunes themselves have been long since forgotten.) Some superscriptions, however, attribute the psalm to either individuals or groups.

Predictably, 73 of the psalms are attributed directly to David, 14 of which are connected with specific incidents in his life. However, several other names also appear: one is attributed to Moses, two to Solomon, three to Jeduthun (this one’s unclear—this could be a person’s name…or an instrument), then groups identified in Kings and Chronicles with Temple Levites, eleven to Asaph, and twelve to the Sons of Korah of whom Heman and Ethan get explicit shout-outs.

Religious traditions hate a vacuum, though—so in the Septuagint, the translation of the Old Testament into Greek that occurred in Alexandria sometime around the second century B.C., superscriptions were added onto twenty-two of the psalms lacking them, leaving only Psalms 1 and 2 without them. Significantly, Psalms 146 to 148 are attributed to Haggai and Zechariah, writers and leaders of the post-exilic period!

In essence, therefore, the interpretative tradition reflected in the superscriptions enable us to have it both ways… On one hand, they explicitly refer to a wide range of people all of whom were involved in the creation, editing, and compiling of the Psalter. They give enough names to confirm our sense of the Psalms as a communal document in process over a long period of time. Also, they forestall simplistic attempts to pigeonhole the psalms as strictly Davidic. On the other hand, they solidly connect the psalms to a significant, emblematic figure of history—David—who stands forth not only as a heroic figure, an anointed leader, and a cultic pioneer, but also as a thoroughly flawed human being who, nevertheless, was a “man after God’s own heart.”