Liturgy of the Hours

  • Thread starter Thread starter ericka1701
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
E

ericka1701

Guest
I just got the complete set for Christmas (actually, I got the money, and bought them for myself)… I know that it’s not going to be something that I will be able to do well for awhile (it took me almost 3 months to finally be able to follow OF of Mass completely, and I had been reading and studying everything Catholic for a few years before that). My question is for others who do pray the Divine Office and have for awhile. How long did it take you to be able to pray it and not be completely confused? I am asking this because I tend to get discouraged at things I don’t pick up quickly, and it would be a shame for me to quit “too early”, because even the past few days of me muddling through, I have enjoyed it immensely (though I still am trying to break the habit of having to do everything “perfectly”).

God Bless!
Ericka
 
Ericka:

The Liturgy of the Hours is meant to be prayed in community, the verses of the Psalms going back and forth between the two halves of the choir, one reader and a cantor leading the Psalm recitation. Originally, the LotH was also meant to be sung. For someone who is prayinging the LotH alone, this is good and bad news.

The good news is that since you are doing all the parts yourself it is easy. As long as you keep your ribbons in the right places all systems will be go. The bad news is that until you have witnessed the Benedictine Monks chanting the office, you will never really appreciate mystical beauty of the office.

Btw, did you know that there is a booklet out there that explains how to pray the office? I saw it once in a catalogue for Mother of Our Savior (MOSCompany.com). They also sell St. Anthony Golf Balls embossed with an image of St. Anthony who is widely known as the saint who helps people find lost objects. They are quite possibly the last golf balls you’ll ever need to buy!:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:
 
Here is what I used to help me learn. I only pray morning and evening prayer and use Christian Prayer, but I didn’t take me horribly long to get the basics down, although even now, almost a year later, there are still occasional times when I’m not exactly sure what to do.
 
Marsha_Adams said:
Ericka:

The Liturgy of the Hours is meant to be prayed in community, the verses of the Psalms going back and forth between the two halves of the choir, one reader and a cantor leading the Psalm recitation. Originally, the LotH was also meant to be sung. For someone who is prayinging the LotH alone, this is good and bad news.

The good news is that since you are doing all the parts yourself it is easy. As long as you keep your ribbons in the right places all systems will be go. The bad news is that until you have witnessed the Benedictine Monks chanting the office, you will never really appreciate mystical beauty of the office.

Btw, did you know that there is a booklet out there that explains how to pray the office? I saw it once in a catalogue for Mother of Our Savior (MOSCompany.com). They also sell St. Anthony Golf Balls embossed with an image of St. Anthony who is widely known as the saint who helps people find lost objects. They are quite possibly the last golf balls you’ll ever need to buy!:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:
Click to expand...
I have been wanting to travel to the Trappist Abbey that’s about 60+ miles away to pray with them, but since I don’t have a car right now… pretty close to impossible, but hopefully within the next month or two I’ll have a car and will be able to make regular trips. Also there is a parish about 30 miles away that prays the Morning and Evening Prayer. I only personally know one person who prays LotH, but there are some other people that I don’t know so well that I’ve heard mention the Brevariay or Divine Office and praying them.

Karen, thank you so much for sharing that link! I didn’t get a chance to take a very long look at it, but the quick look I did take seems to be very helpful. 🙂 It’s bookmarked for future reference.

:rotfl: :rotfl: 😃 I know a few golfers that probably needed the St. Anthony golf balls… It seems the one they were using had a homing device towards water hazards.
 
KarenElissa said:
Here is what I used to help me learn. I only pray morning and evening prayer and use Christian Prayer, but I didn’t take me horribly long to get the basics down, although even now, almost a year later, there are still occasional times when I’m not exactly sure what to do.
Click to expand...
Sorry to jump in, but this is a great link, thanks for posting! I have also been thinking about trying to pray the divine office and wasn’t sure where to begin!! 👍
 
The Divine Office for Dodos: A Step-By-Step Guide to Praying the Liturgy of the Hours by Madelyn Nugent $8.95

I just ordered this book today.
 
Why not ask your pastor for help? Isn’t that what he’s there for?
 
**
ericka1701 said:
My question is for others who do pray the Divine Office and have for awhile. How long did it take you to be able to pray it and not be completely confused?
Click to expand...
Is there something specific you find confusing? I admit, there can be an occasional question of what celebration trumps what, but once you’ve settled such calendar questions, the Offices seem straightforward.

What prompts you to take up a discipline if you do not understand it?

tee
 
tee_eff_em said:
**

Is there something specific you find confusing? I admit, there can be an occasional question of what celebration trumps what, but once you’ve settled such calendar questions, the Offices seem straightforward.

What prompts you to take up a discipline if you do not understand it?

tee

You may as well ask why a NO Kumbayahoo would suddenly want to go to a Latin Mass, buy a Missal, and learn to read chant notation after thirty-odd comfortable years of vernacular, guitars, and Living With Christ. :whistle:

It’s there, it’s Catholic, and it’s ours.

Maybe we’re seeking to more fully immerse ourselves in our Faith.

Cradle Catholic that I am, I have so much to learn which has been around for centuries but I have only heard about (or heard again about) recently. Like the First Fridays. The Little Office. Plenary and partial indulgences. Adoration. Double feasts. May Medals. The aforementioned Liturgy of the Hours. High Mass, Low Mass, Sung Mass, Dialogue Mass. Fasting on Friday, except on a Solemn Feast. Rogation Days. Ember Days.

What else don’t I know about?

I have gone to a Latin NO now a few times – working my way up, as it were, to the TLM. I feel like I did before my First Communion: everything is new, I’m trying desperately to learn.

I know have a slight taste of what it must be like for catechumens in RCIA. You who are about to be reborn, I salute you.
Click to expand...
 
“You may as well ask why a NO Kumbayahoo would suddenly want to go to a Latin Mass, buy a Missal, and learn to read chant notation after thirty-odd comfortable years of vernacular, guitars, and Living With Christ.”:mad: :mad:

Ghoti, the above-referenced remark is the most uncharitable, mean spirited remark I have yet to hear on this Forum.

AND IT IS DECIDEDLY NOT ‘CATHOLIC.’😦
 
Ghoti said:
You may as well ask why a NO Kumbayahoo would suddenly want to go to a Latin Mass, buy a Missal, and learn to read chant notation after thirty-odd comfortable years of vernacular, guitars, and Living With Christ. :whistle:
Click to expand...
I could have written this myself :D… except I’ve only been going to any sort of Mass for about 4 years. But once I went to my first Latin Mass… I got the 1962 Missal, I just purchased a GREAT traditional Roman Hymnal, and am in the process of trying to learn medevial notation myself. If I only decided to take up diciplines that I understood, I would still be Presbyterian, I wouldn’t know how to read modern music notation, I wouldn’t be able to sing or play the handful of instrument that I can, I would have absolutely no knowledge of Psychology, I wouldn’t know how to make a knotted chord rosary… etc, etc… ad nauseum. It’s in pushing myself to understand things I don’t know anything about that has lead to my greatest personal and spiritual growth.

God Bless!
Ericka
 
mullenpm said:
“You may as well ask why a NO Kumbayahoo would suddenly want to go to a Latin Mass, buy a Missal, and learn to read chant notation after thirty-odd comfortable years of vernacular, guitars, and Living With Christ.”:mad: :mad:

Ghoti, the above-referenced remark is the most uncharitable, mean spirited remark I have yet to hear on this Forum.

AND IT IS DECIDEDLY NOT ‘CATHOLIC.’😦
Click to expand...
Mullen:

I don’t find Ghoti’s question inappropriate because many many people who have been content with the most abuse ridden Masses are suddenly (almost out of thin air) and spontaneously seeking out the Latin Mass. One may well ask why? And the answer is usually that they are seeking a deeper sense of the mysteries of Christ and His sacraments.

Why suddenly decide to learn to pray the Liturgy of the Hours? Because the earliest prayer form in the Church was the praying of the Psalms. Jesus prayed the Psalms and more and more people (particularly Catholics) are being drawn to pray the Psalms as well.

Did you know (I only just found out) that there are Benedictine monasteries not only of Catholics but of Anglicans and Hindus and mixed religions as well? The primary work of Benedictines is the praying of the Psalms. The earliest brevaries (sp?) in existence are all Benedictine brevaries. It is this vocation to praying the Psalms in the form of the Liturgy of the Hours also known as the Divine Office that is causing an explosion in the number of Benedictine Oblates all over the world.

Marsha
 
ericka1701 said:
My question is for others who do pray the Divine Office and have for awhile. How long did it take you to be able to pray it and not be completely confused?
Click to expand...
In my experience it did take a while to get the hang of it and it was very frustrating for me. However, once you do “get it” you’ll find it was worth the frustration and effort.

As someone else indicated, see if you can find someone – a good priest or religious – to help guide you at first. We have a family friend who was in the convent for a couple of years discerning a vocation. She was a great help to me in learning how to say the Hours.

And, as someone else mentioned above, observing one of the Hours done by a community can be an awesome experience. I was on a retreat at the Prince of Peace Benedictine Abbey in Oceanside, CA and got to observe the monks say Evening Prayer. It was very uplifting and edifying.
 
mullenpm said:
“You may as well ask why a NO Kumbayahoo would suddenly want to go to a Latin Mass, buy a Missal, and learn to read chant notation after thirty-odd comfortable years of vernacular, guitars, and Living With Christ.”:mad: :mad:

Ghoti, the above-referenced remark is the most uncharitable, mean spirited remark I have yet to hear on this Forum.

AND IT IS DECIDEDLY NOT ‘CATHOLIC.’😦
Click to expand...
I was referring to myself.

I have no quarrel with the OF of the Mass; as a matter of fact, it is the only form I am familiar with, for the thirty-odd years in question: before I ever heard the terms OF/EF, NO/TLM, Mass of Paul VI/John XXIII, the Pauline Mass was to me “the Mass”; I didn’t know the other form(s) existed. And, assuming there are no liturgical abuses, such as changing the words of Consecration or using any old bread, I also have no problem with the hymns I grew up with – played on guitar. And the Mass was always very simply laid out, very straightforward, in my Living with Christ missalettes. The OF is a valid and genuine Mass, and Christ our Lord appears at the Consecration: who could ask for more?

To reword my question:

So why am I going to a Latin Mass, where I can’t understand what is being said by a priest speaking in low tones at a high rate of speed with his back to me in a language I don’t know? Trading in the gentle tones of a six-string playing “Silent Night” for a polyphony of I don’t know how many voices singing hymns in a notation of squares and squiggles that I cannot follow? Foregoing my simple A-B-C Living With Christ for a missal with ribbons where I must flip back and forth (and get lost) and where the rubrics are also in Latin?

Because the EF is also as much “my Mass” as the OF is. It is foreign to me, but I don’t believe it should be. I am trying to learn, by doing. I have not “left” the vernacular OF – I may never – but I want to experience all that the Church has to offer in the way of prayer, liturgy, etc – all the things I don’t know about because of my rather limited and singular catechesis.

My post was directed at the question of why someone would adopt a discipline they didn’t understand (the Liturgy of the Hours, also outside my skill set). I opined that, if 'twere I, I would want to expose myself to as much of my religion and my Church as I can, to not deny myself those parts of my faith kept from me by my ignorance.

That does not at all reflect on my assurance and confidence that the Pauline Mass is a valid Mass (and the Ordinary Form – emphasis on “Ordinary”).

My answer that you quote above was, I admit, flippant; I only meant to draw a parallel to someone (me) who was moving out of their comfort zone into the (rather frightening) unknown to more fully experience my faith and my Church.

The term “Kumbayahoo” was something I just coined, tongue-in-cheek, to describe my own starry-eyed love of guitars at Mass – something which I gather riles many to no end, to the point of being considered perhaps a liturgical abuse; it also was to indicate my “innocence” (for want of a better word) for a lot of issues in the Church re the Liturgy, issues I was blissfully aware of before I came here.

In retrospect, the word was ill-advised, and I humbly apologize for giving any offence where none was meant. All I can do is invoke Hanlon’s Razor: “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.”
 
What prompts you to take up a discipline if you do not understand it?
Click to expand...
Um…how in the world would one ever understand a discipline without taking it up? We undertake a discipline when we become disciples and only after much time and living with it do we even begin to understand it. Christ’s own hand-picked disciples didn’t understand a word He spoke to them most of the time, from the accounts we have in the Bible.

As to helps in praying the Hours…John Brook’s book, School of Prayer, An Introduction to the Divine Office for All Christians, is an excellent help. A little history, instruction, and commentary on the Psalms (the full four-week cycle) make it one of my favorite and most-used books ever. A friend introduced me to the Office while I was still in the early conversion stage, and told me about this helpful little book too.

I’ve prayed the Office in community but generally I don’t have that option. The Office is the prayer of the whole Church and you pray together with the Church whether you are alone in your room at home or in the middle of the desert or in the choir in a convent.

Good for you for even being interested in learning about the Divine Office. Many, many Catholics never even heard of it. The Church has many such treasures of prayer, but few so rich as the Hours.
 
For Ghoti:

You said you have tried everything in the form of masses and prayers and such. Well I don’t know if you have any Eastern Catholic churches up there. You may not know that there are a total of 23 churches within the Catholic Church( 1 Western, 22 Eastern). We have Liturgy of the Hours, but done with others. I am Byzantine, in Alaska.
 
Mea culpa, It was not my intention to derail the thread in any way. I’m all for people participating in the Liturgy – I just don’t get laying out upwards of 100 clams for the set without knowing what you’re getting into. It seems akin to buying a car and only as an afterthought realizing you need to learn how to drive. But maybe that’s just me 🤷 and I don’t expect an answer from anyone.

[Perhaps a good time to repeat this, because I mean it: I don’t intend to come off condescending here – If it seems that way, please understand that I have undoubtedly expressed myself poorly.]

Anyway, if it is any help to the OP, here are pointers to a couple of messages I have posted to other threads:

[post=1051273]Need SERIOUS help with praying Liturgy of the Hours[/post]
[post=2648220]LOH questions[/post]

An extra word of advice to the OP: If you are just starting this prayer now, give it at least two weeks, and you might even do well to put it aside for now, and not start until Mon 12 Jan. Being Christmastide, right now is a somewhat complicated bit on the part of the calendar, involving a lot of the book. 12 Jan will be Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time, and might be a less confusing time to start. :twocents:

tee
 
tee_eff_em said:
Mea culpa, It was not my intention to derail the thread in any way. I’m all for people participating in the Liturgy – I just don’t get laying out upwards of 100 clams for the set without knowing what you’re getting into. It seems akin to buying a car and only as an afterthought realizing you need to learn how to drive. But maybe that’s just me 🤷 and I don’t expect an answer from anyone.

[Perhaps a good time to repeat this, because I mean it: I don’t intend to come off condescending here – If it seems that way, please understand that I have undoubtedly expressed myself poorly.]

Anyway, if it is any help to the OP, here are pointers to a couple of messages I have posted to other threads:

[post=1051273]Need SERIOUS help with praying Liturgy of the Hours[/post]
[post=2648220]LOH questions[/post]

An extra word of advice to the OP: If you are just starting this prayer now, give it at least two weeks, and you might even do well to put it aside for now, and not start until Mon 12 Jan. Being Christmastide, right now is a somewhat complicated bit on the part of the calendar, involving a lot of the book. 12 Jan will be Monday of the First Week of Ordinary Time, and might be a less confusing time to start. :twocents:

tee
Click to expand...
Thank you so much for the links to those threads! I think I might have origionally gotten what you meant about shelling out the simolenions for something that I don’t really understand yet. Either way, I didn’t really take too much offense to it, just wanted to point out that if I didn’t take up trying to understand anything new, well… I wouldn’t be Catholic right now at the very least, and there would be many other things that I wouldn’t be doing, either.

I am really * really * confused about the evening prayer right now, especially… I think I’m going to try to get the smaller hours down first, and hopefully by then, Ordinary Time will have started, and I can work on the Evening Prayer.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top