Byzantine Divine Office--help please?

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Hello everyone,

My girlfriend and I are both Roman Catholic, but we are both considering becoming Byzantine Catholic at some point in the future. We have agreed that a good way to deepen our immersion in Byzantine devotion would be to pray the Divine Office of the Byzantine Rite.

The other day, I visited a friend of mine who is a deacon in the Ruthenian Church, and he let me look through his copy of Byzantine Daily Worship by Archbishop Joseph Raya, so that I could get an idea of what the Byzantine Office is like. However, after flipping through the book, I was left more confused than anything. The deacon said to ask him if I had any questions, but since he and his wife were trying to fix the fridge, I figured it wouldn’t be a good time to ask.

In particular, for each hour of the office (ex: Lauds, Prime, etc.) the book had a lot of psalms listed (like five or six) and many prayers as well, but it didn’t seem to be arranged in any kind of weekly cycle, like the Roman Rite Liturgy of the Hours. So, I am wondering, if I open up to Lauds for a weekday, and see a half-dozen or so psalms and prayers listed, would I pray all of those on a daily basis every morning during the week, or is there some special way that I am supposed to divide them up (pray this one on Monday, etc.)? Basically, is the Divine Office broken up into a weekly cycle of different psalms, etc., or is there just one big Lauds service that stays essentially the same and is prayed on every weekday?

Also, we have been looking at different prayer books online, such as Byzantine Daily Worship, the Melkite Horologion, and Let Us Pray to the Lord. It’s difficult for us to pick a suitable text, since we aren’t terribly knowledgeable about them. Is there anywhere where I could get a detailed description of the pros and cons of each of these volumes, or maybe even a youtube video explaining how to use these books? We will probably ask the deacon to walk us through it one of these days, but having another resource would always help.

Thank you all for your help!
 
Jeffgo said:
Hello everyone,

My girlfriend and I are both Roman Catholic, but we are both considering becoming Byzantine Catholic at some point in the future. We have agreed that a good way to deepen our immersion in Byzantine devotion would be to pray the Divine Office of the Byzantine Rite.

The other day, I visited a friend of mine who is a deacon in the Ruthenian Church, and he let me look through his copy of Byzantine Daily Worship by Archbishop Joseph Raya, so that I could get an idea of what the Byzantine Office is like. However, after flipping through the book, I was left more confused than anything. The deacon said to ask him if I had any questions, but since he and his wife were trying to fix the fridge, I figured it wouldn’t be a good time to ask.

In particular, for each hour of the office (ex: Lauds, Prime, etc.) the book had a lot of psalms listed (like five or six) and many prayers as well, but it didn’t seem to be arranged in any kind of weekly cycle, like the Roman Rite Liturgy of the Hours. So, I am wondering, if I open up to Lauds for a weekday, and see a half-dozen or so psalms and prayers listed, would I pray all of those on a daily basis every morning during the week, or is there some special way that I am supposed to divide them up (pray this one on Monday, etc.)? Basically, is the Divine Office broken up into a weekly cycle of different psalms, etc., or is there just one big Lauds service that stays essentially the same and is prayed on every weekday?

Also, we have been looking at different prayer books online, such as Byzantine Daily Worship, the Melkite Horologion, and Let Us Pray to the Lord. It’s difficult for us to pick a suitable text, since we aren’t terribly knowledgeable about them. Is there anywhere where I could get a detailed description of the pros and cons of each of these volumes, or maybe even a youtube video explaining how to use these books? We will probably ask the deacon to walk us through it one of these days, but having another resource would always help.

Thank you all for your help!
Click to expand...
It depends upon how much time you want to take in prayer. Also the various versions use modern or older styles of English. The BDW is back in print (alleluiapress.com/) and there is also the Byzantine Seminary Press book (used by the Basilian sisters): Let Us Pray to the Lord - Part I. Eastern Christian Publication has an online subscription for The Byzantine Daily Office (BDO) in three e-mail versions:
  • complete (6 x 10 minutes per day)
  • lite (3 x 6 minutes per day), and
  • propers (1-2 minutes per day).
ecpubs.com/daily-office.html

There is also an paperback ACROD edition: The Hours of Prayer - A Book of Devotion

There are also these:

Holy Transfiguration Monastery’s Mega Horologion or Great Book of the Hours
Jordanville Unabbreviated Horologion
English translation of the Unabbreviated Horologion printed at the Pecherska Lavra in Kyiv
St. Tikhon’s Horologion
English edition of the Ukrainian Basilian Molitvoslov
New Skete Horologion
 
Vico, thank you for the book suggestions. A few of the ones you mentioned are ones that I had not heard of.

I’m still wondering, is the office arranged in a weekly cycle, or are the same psalms prayed every day?
 
Jeffgo said:
I’m still wondering, is the office arranged in a weekly cycle, or are the same psalms prayed every day?
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Jeffgo, regarding the psalms, the answer is both. There are are certain psalms that are read at each hour, for example, “The Six Psalms” (3, 37, 62, 87, 102, and 142) near the beginning of Matins. Then there is also a weekly cycle of groups of psalms, kathismata, that are assigned to be read at matins and vespers each day of the week. Look at orthodoxwiki.org/Psalter for the details.

Anyway, by now you have no doubt noticed that it is difficult to condense the Byzantine “Office” into a single breviary-like book. It takes more like 12+ books to pray through the complete office. I would suggest finding a Byzantine rite parish nearby to visit (Catholic or even Orthodox) that has Matins and or Vespers, so you get a better feel for it.
Then start small. Daily “Small Compline”, for example, is shorter and less complicated, and most Eastern Catholic and Orthodox prayer books will have it.
 
Jeffgo,

I would highly recommend not saying Vespers or Matins as a beginner. These are parochial services, and they are not designed to be said privately, although that can be done. No YouTube video will be able to help you navigate them especially through out the year. If you are going to start, work on the little hours. which are monastic in origin. They are meant to be memorized (for the most part), and while there is some seasonal variability, they remain the same every day. BDW will get you thought those services well enough for most of the year. The Melkite Horologion will do a better job of getting you through the year, and has the advantage of having the different permutations of the hours. The small hours are Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Compline, and Midnight

As noted, in order to say the entire office, with everything (which is not really feasible for one person, mind you), is a big undertaking. When I say Vespers at home (omitting the priest’s and deacon’s parts), it takes me 40-60+ minutes, depending on the rank of the saint, and day of the week. Matins usually runs me 1.5-3 hours. To get through these services, if you really want to do them in toto, using the Melkite materials, you will need around 28 different books. While it is something worth doing, it takes work to get there. But fear not. You can’t look at the Byzantine Hours in the same way as the Latin office. It is Liturgy, and and integral part of the worship of the Church. It is also extremely flexible-if you look at the rubrics as rules, you will lose your mind. Our office is designed to prepare you for the eternal, heavenly worship, so there are places to cut, trim, places for substitutions. If you celebrate Vespers and Matins in full, observing every rubric as written and intended, together in an all-night Vigil, it will take you from sundown to sunrise, and beyond. In US parish practice, Vespers runs 30-60 minutes, and Matins for Sunday about an hour. So you can see, there is a huge variety of what can be done or not done. Further, for those without a parish, there are several rules designed to be used by individuals or small groups that can take the place of the office. These involve certain numbers of Jesus Prayers and prostrations, or reciting sections of the Psalter.

For a beginner or some one who is busy, the ECPubs daily office (which is morning and evening prayers, and the daytime small hours) is the way to go. They give you those services every day without having to potentially consult different books or flip back and forth.

Let us know what other questions you have.

In Christ,
Adam
 
In all seriousness find a good priest and listen to his counsel. It’s very easy to get carried away with this kind of thing and do way too much. Especially when it’s all new to you. It’s far more beneficial to diligently pray five minutes every day than to try and pray the entire horologion and get burned out. Trust me on this. I speak from experience.
 
The cycle is one week long.
The common psalms for each hour are several; the rotating ones are by day of the week.

Keep in mind, the Byzantine Hours were developed for monastic use. Adaptations for home use are common.

Communal use is usually sung; private use is often merely recited spoken, possibly sotto voce.

Matins communally has a set of readings; privately or in the absence of a priest, these are often omitted.

Private use also routinely replaces the litanies with just the people’s responses (just the “Lord Have Mercy”); the opening invocation “Blessed is our God…” is typically altered to “Through the prayers of our Holy Fathers”…

Metropolitan Cantor Institute has a set of adaptations for Reader’s hours (which are also the private version in addition to being the public communal version in the absence of a priest or deacon), approved but not imposed.

Oh, and the propers for the day of the week can be augmented by or replaced by the propers for the day from the Menaion.

This is why many strongly endorse the prepared versions from the same people who print Theosis magazine.
 
Thanks to all of you for the responses. I has signed up for a one-month subscription to Eastern Christian Publications’ “Byzantine Divine Office” e-mail service. I have started praying with that, and I am greatly enjoying it. I would like to get a prayer book and start praying it, using the e-mailed daily office from EC Publications as a guide to help me figure out how to use it. I am thinking of getting Byzantine Divine Worship by Archbishop Raya. Would that one be suitable for my purposes (ie: is the stuff that’s in EC Publications’ Daily Office all found in there)?
 
Jeffgo said:
Thanks to all of you for the responses. I has signed up for a one-month subscription to Eastern Christian Publications’ “Byzantine Divine Office” e-mail service. I have started praying with that, and I am greatly enjoying it. I would like to get a prayer book and start praying it, using the e-mailed daily office from EC Publications as a guide to help me figure out how to use it. I am thinking of getting Byzantine Divine Worship by Archbishop Raya. Would that one be suitable for my purposes (ie: is the stuff that’s in EC Publications’ Daily Office all found in there)?
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ECP is pulling material from several sources - the Horologion, the Menaion, and the adaptations for reader services. I’ve not seen HG Raya’s version, but I suspect it’s an older translation, and may not include the menaion. So, it will be close, but there will probably be bits that aren’t in it (prokimenia, kontakia, and some other bits).

To say the hours according to the full rubrics, in the full year round mode, you need an horologion (which HG Raya included in his BDW), a menaion, and a Pentecostarion. And the Epistle and Gospel books. It’s quite a task. Which is why ECP makes good money preparing it!
 
Jeffgo said:
Thanks to all of you for the responses. I has signed up for a one-month subscription to Eastern Christian Publications’ “Byzantine Divine Office” e-mail service. I have started praying with that, and I am greatly enjoying it. I would like to get a prayer book and start praying it, using the e-mailed daily office from EC Publications as a guide to help me figure out how to use it. I am thinking of getting Byzantine Divine Worship by Archbishop Raya. Would that one be suitable for my purposes (ie: is the stuff that’s in EC Publications’ Daily Office all found in there)?
Click to expand...
Each set of books has advantages and disadvantages. One important one is which translation is used. Do you want older style language or modern?, English or Slavonic? or both? Which version of Psalms?

The various books will include portions or all of the daily cycle:
  1. Vespers (Daily or Great),
  2. Compline (Small or Great),
  3. Midnight Office,
  4. Matins,
  5. First Hour,
  6. Third Hour,
  7. Sixth Hour,
  8. the Typica (substitutes for the Divine Liturgy)
  9. Ninth Hour.
The BDW contents are here:

alleluiapress.com/
*
Let Us Pray To The Lord - Volume I Daily Office* has these contents:

easterngiftshop.com/Item/Praylord1
 
Ok, I have ordered Byzantine Daily Worship by Archbishop Raya. Thank you all for the help.
 
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