However, for those who do have more time, perhaps occasionally, and wish to add more Offices in the day from time to time, there are simple options to add Prime (yes Prime!), Terce, Sext, None and Compline. This means that it really is the Office for those who do not have many hours in each day to devote to singing the psalms. Here are my reasons for suggesting that lay people look at the Anglican Ordinariate Office:įirst, convenience and simplicity: the psalm cycle is designed such that it is possible to sing the whole Office with just two Offices in the day - the hybrid Morning and Evening Prayer which allow us, one might say, to sing four Offices as two, and to sing the whole psalter in the course of the monthly psalm cycle. As he told me, the 'English Anglican cathedrals and choral foundations are in the midst of a golden age, as regards both attendance and music, and clearly meet a very deep need'. I heard recently from Mgr Andrew Burnham in England, who was instrumental in producing this, that this continues to this day. The Anglican Office has a proven record not only in enabling laity as well as clergy to pray the Office but also as a public celebration of Morning and Evening Prayer. I think that this, the indications are that this provides great possibilities for lay people especially to start praying the Office. I have had it for a week or so now and from what I have seen I am excited. So we have psalms, traditional hymn, readings, both the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis and again structured prayers. Similarly, Evening Prayer, like Choral Evensong, looks a bit like a running together of Vespers and Compline in form. Other than the psalms, there is a traditional hymn, an old testament canticle or the Te Deum (depending on the day), and structured prayers.
The morning readings are correspond exactly to those of the Office of Readings in the Roman Rite (with some approved alternatives for the second reading for English readers). I am wondering if this is what the old Anglican Office of 'Mattins' always was. In essence, Morning Prayer is like a merging of the Matins (the Office of Readings) and Lauds. The Customary follows the general scheme recommended for the Ordinariate (you can read this at the bottom of this article.
#Ordinariate divine office free
You can get hold of the Customary from which promises free delivery worldwide and sells it at a reduced price. It has been recently approved for continued use in England and Wales as I understand it. As a preview I use the version produced for England and Wales, which is in the Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham. Now that the texts have been set for the Mass, I am hoping that we will see a final version of the Office soon in the US very soon. It has taken time, quite reasonably for the approved and final versions for the texts to come forth. I wrote about the general principle of this when Pope Francis strengthened the mission of the Ordinariate in an article called Has Pope Francis Saved Western Culture? Certainly, some I have met are reluctant to acknowledge any legitimate case for a value for the the vernacular in the liturgy for fear that it would undermine the argument for an exclusively Latin Mass. A piety focused on he Mass and the Rosary is wonderful of course, but one oriented to the Mass and the Liturgy of the Hours is even better I suggest, and for me that means going to the English for the latter.Įver since Pope Emeritus Benedict created the Anglican Ordinariates, I have felt that it has given the move for greater dignity and beauty in the liturgy in the English a huge boost. I have often wondered if this question of language is why some traditionalists are not enthusiastic about the Liturgy of the Hours - tending to promote a piety that excludes it. The Mass is Latin does not present the same difficulty for me - the bulk of it is repeated and so with relatively little reference to additional texts I can participate. Reading or singing Latin while looking across the page at a translation on a regular daily basis does not work for me. I am not a Latin scholar and generally, and certainly in my personal reading in order to pray the psalms properly I need to be able to understand the text as I read it. Whatever our thoughts on the appropriateness of the vernacular in the Mass, I do think that the availability of the Liturgy of the Hours in the vernacular is one great gift of the Council.
It holds a key, I believe, to the evangelization of the culture (if you want to know my arguments, I have included them in both books, the Little Oratory and the Way of Beauty). I am a great enthusiast for the Liturgy of the Hours.
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