I only attend the TLM. It coincides with the liturgical calendar in use at my parish.
I prefer the Benedictine layout, but this is a bit much. Although I’d love to hear what you’d have to say about the LoTH with its monthly psalter (minus the dropped verses/psalms that were too offensive) and those sometimes nauseating psalm-prayers (which are optional, I know). I loved the patristic writings in the Office of Readings, but my 4-volume set has been packed away for a while now.
The Psalm prayers are not in every breviary and are optional. They’re not in the French 4-week LOTH, but are in the French monastic breviary that I most frequently used. They’re not in the French/Latin standard Benedictine psalter either, nor in Liturgia Horarum except as part of a supplement. So I can’t really comment on them as I don’t use them. Never have, never will.
The monthly psalter for the LOTH doesn’t really bother me that much. The breviary was designed for busy secular clergy. It fits that mission well. It isn’t the only 4-week cycle out there either, some monastic communities have their own.
The imprecatory psalms and verses were removed, as you noted. I am not that crazy about that fact; but one thing should be pointed out, this was at the insistence of Paul VI, and
not Annibale Bugnini as many probably think. The Monastic breviary I use keeps those psalms as well as the imprecatory verses, placing them in brackets or as footnotes. The community I’m associated with still uses them. I have Les Heures Grégoriennes, a Latin/French diurnal antiphonary for the LOTH (noted for Gregorian chant) that places the imprecatory verses in brackets, though the deleted psalms aren’t there.
If you really dig into it though, you might be surprised at how many deep traditions
have been kept in the LOTH; particularly if you read the General Instructions carefully and avail yourself of the many options.
Here’s a few:
The traditional Lauds and Vespers psalms are found… at Lauds and Vespers. The Vespers series leads off with ps. 109 every Sunday.
The basic structure is the same except for the placement of the hymn which has been standardized.
Ps. 50 is repeated every Friday (in the monastic tradition it was every day).
Ps. 66 can be used as an invitatory; if you pray the invitatory before Lauds, that is a reminder of the monastic tradition that always led off Lauds with this psalm.
You can use Ps. 4, 90 and 133 for Compline every night, and you won’t miss psalms, because the psalms for Compline except 4, 90 and 133 are repeated elsewhere in the psalter.
You can pray a “vigil” for Sundays, feasts and solemnities using the appendix.
You can pray the Office of Readings as Vigils; moreover the GILH recommends that religious communities pray them over a 2-week cycle. When I use the LOTH, I divide the OOR into two “nocturnes” (I pray it usually at 6 am), with the OOR psalms from week 1 combined with the psalms from week 2, and week 3 and week 4 together. Add the OT canticles for Sundays, feasts and solemnities, and you have a proper 3-nocturne Vigil office.
There is a notion of “lectio continua” for the psalms; St. Benedict basically ordered a series of psalms for Vigils, another for Lauds and one for Vespers, to be recited in numerical order (with some exceptions). Much of this has been retained in the LOTH.
The other mid-day canonical hours can be added to the mid-day office, so you can pray Terce, Sext and None. Moreover the psalms are taken from the Gradual Psalms, which is traditional for those offices (another appendix in the LOTH).
What I don’t like: the NT canticles instead of a third psalm at Vespers. They don’t chant well, as it doesn’t have the same poetic cadences as the psalms.
The division of psalms, which created a whole bunch of new antiphons which meant a 40-year delay to get a Roman Antiphonary noted for chant. This same mistake though, was also made in Pius X’s 1910 psalter. It really messes things up for where the Office is chanted in community.
What I’m indifferent to: the addition of intercessions at Lauds and Vespers. However keeping with tradition to some extent, the last intercession at Vespers is always for the deceased; previously we recited, after the closing of the Office, “Fidelium animae per misericordiam Dei requiescant in pace”.
In short, while I would prefer a 1 or 2-week cycle rather than 4-week cycle, I can see where the 4-week does come in handy; I use it when I travel or when I’m especially busy. And I can also see that while this Office has been so much maligned, if you dig enough it really isn’t that bad either. Moreover, many of the changes, except for the number of psalms, were “pioneered” in the 1910 Pius X breviary (who unlike Paul VI, did not allow communities or clergy to retain the previous Office), so really shouldn’t come as a shock to students of the 1970 Liturgia Horarum. The most radical ones IMHO was the sectioning of psalms, the shortening of Vigils, and the breaking up of the three Laudate psalms at Lauds (Ps. 148, 149, 150).
