A little background. Off and on for
about 25 years I have participated to one degree or another in the
official liturgical prayer of the Church, the Liturgy of the Hours,
more traditionally known as the Divine Office (from Latin officium
“service,” “ceremony,” or “duty”). Honestly, through the
years, I've usually been a lot better about the Morning Office –
the Invitatory and Morning Prayer. But not always. There have been
long periods when I would lapse, usually out of pure laziness. I am
not, nor have I ever been, a morning person! Anyway, one such
period has been the past few months.
On an seemingly unrelated subject, I have
also of late been quite negligent about my daily walking routine for
exercise.
I think I've found a way to kill two
birds with one stone. I was commenting yesterday to a friend that I
really needed to get back to walking every day. I also mentioned
that my walking was always in the evening because … well, see
above: “I am not, nor have I ever been, a morning person!” He
replied, whether rightly or wrongly I do not know, that twenty
minutes walking in the morning, before breaking fast, is equivalent
to walking for an hour in the evening when your body has been more
recently fed and is thus less likely to draw on stored fat-cells for
energy. Hey, I don't know if that's true or not – but I'm going to
assume it's the case. But I know myself – am I really going to get
up a half-hour or 45 minutes earlier just to go out walking? I
thought, what if I can combine that with my neglected liturgical
prayer life?
The Divine Office is meant ideally to be
observed in a community. It originated, after all, in the early
monasteries near on 2000 years ago and was only later mandated for
individual non-monastic clergy as well as suggested for the laity,
where it is more typically prayed in silence, more as a reading. I
believe that if it is read actively and attentively, such prescribed
liturgical prayer is a real participation in the Church's communal
prayer life. Of course, like anything, if it is just skimmed and
rushed through, it can become an empty exercise. The mind and the
heart must be engaged. But, ideally, the Divine Office is an
oral service, to be spoken, chanted, or sung and heard. In a
monastic community, it can be a beautiful thing. Often guests making
retreats at monasteries or convents are invited to join the members
of the community in the chapel at the prescribed hours as I have done
from time to time over the years – always coming away with a
renewed determination to preserve the feeling of holiness and
connectedness with the universal Church in my individual
participation. Which usually lasts for a few weeks or months, then
my natural lassitude would reassert itself.
Yesterday, it occurred to me that there
may be a way to participate in the oral/aural Divine Office
virtually, by means of a podcast. I usually listen to
podcasts while I walk, so as not to feel like I'm wasting the time.
So I went to the iTunes store and did a search for “divine office”
and hit as the top result Divine Office – Liturgy of the Hours
of the Roman Catho... (I was searching on my iPhone). It has the
various liturgical hours as individual podcasts, posted (it appears)
at least a day in advance. Ah-ha!, I thought, and promptly
downloaded “Jun 11, About Today...,” “Jun 11, Invitatory
for...,” “Jun 11, Office of Rea...,” and “Jun 11, Morning
Pray....” (As of this morning, I see the hours for tomorrow, 12
June, also posted, with post dates of yesterday, obviously sometime
after I was connected – that's the reason I wrote, “at least a
day in advance.” It looks like late in the day maybe you can get
up through the day after next.) And this morning, I got up bright
and early (well, not quite so early – it's the summer, after all,
and the University is on break! – but early enough to be before the
day's heat really sets in – this is Louisiana, after all) and went
walking, listening to the Morning Offices. It was a very
uplifting experience.
Of course, it's not a perfect
participation – that would require me to have regular access to a
monastery or convent, which I do not. Hearing the songs and
recitations is, however, I believe, as good as reading them. The key
again is to keep the mind engaged and active, which can be done as
well (or poorly) when listening as when reading, to make the
participation truly a prayer. There are indeed considerable parts of
the Morning Office that I can, after more than two decades of
off-and-on individual participation by reading, I can recite from
memory (mainly the most common Invitatory Psalm, 95, and the Canticle
of Zechariah or Benedictus which is prescribed for Morning Prayer every day [Luke
1:68-79], as well as the Our Father and the Glory Be), so I can
subvocally pray along with the recording. No matter what format or
setting one uses, it is a matter of intention that makes it a prayer.
This morning, I found the actual website
for DivineOffice.org, which I
have linked to up at top right in place of what had been a link to
Universalis.com.
DivineOffice.org gives the text of the psalms, songs, and readings
for the day, just as Universalis.com does. The crucial difference is
that DivineOffice.org uses the official translation of the texts
while Universalis.com uses their own translation, with the official
translation available only for a fee. Universalis' is not a bad translation, but it is not the one used liturgically through most of the English-speaking world.
It is my hope that the need, for the
benefit of my physical health, to get back into a regular walking
regimen, plus the need, for benefit of my spiritual health, to
get back into a regular participation in the Divine Office, will be
enough for me to overcome my normal tendency to just roll over and
hit snooze again on the alarm! We'll see.
No comments:
Post a Comment