Question for the group. What version of the Divine Office do you use? I know that some use the Monastic Diurnal, but I imagine others do not. So, this begs the question, what does everyone use?
Frankly, I cannot help but wish that someone would load the Monastic Diurnal day by day the way that
DivineOffice.org does. This would allow someone to just log in and see the prayers for each hour of the day. I know that would be an incredible undertaking, but I would probably pay a subscription fee to help fund the project. Heck, they could probably make a pay app for iPhone, Android, and Windows Phone and make a decent bit of money on it as well.
Peace,
I don’t use the Monastic Diurnal for a number of reasons (I have a Latin-French version), one is that it does not follow the modern calendar, the other is that it is not the Office that the abbey I am attached to uses. However the mother abbey of our abbey does use the current Monastic liturgy of the hours (basically the same psalm schema as set out by St. Benedict, as used in the Diurnal but with the psalms of Prime redistributed over the other minor hours, and with the post-Vatican II calendar, liturgical year, collects, etc.)
But back to me. I flip-flop between the schema my abbey uses, and the 4-week LOTH. It really boils down to how busy I am. My own personal principle is that I want to pray ALL the psalms. My abbey’s schema (schema B) does that in one week, the LOTH does it in 4 weeks. Otherwise the collects, etc., match between the schemas. When I use the LOTH, I use the monastic calendar (I follow the abbey’s ordo), and I use the two-year monastic lectionary instead of the 1-year cycle in the LOTH. I chant Vigils/Office of Readings in French monotone, Lauds and Vespers in Latin Gregorian chant, which I also use for Compline on Sundays (otherwise in French), and the minor hours when I work from home (2 days/week).
At the moment due to being extremely busy at work and with a horrible commute on top of that, I am using the 4-week LOTH. It gives me a little more time in the morning, and during the day I don’t have the time to do all of the minor hours. In my monastic schema, I would need to otherwise I’d miss out on too many psalms. With the LOTH I only need to do 1, and I can do the others optionally if I have time. It works and it affords a good balance.
Keep in mind that the monastic diurnal and other monastic schemas are meant for use in a monastery where it’s part of their daily work. I also feel that Vigils (for which I use the Office of Readings) is the most important office of the day as it is very much tied to the notion of the monks keeping a “watch” (vigil) for us during the night or very early morning. The General Instructions of the Monastic Office do allow monks with busy external apostolates or who are outside the monastery to use the 4-week LOTH, and as oblates we are externals, not internals.
That said having used the LOTH quite a bit, I don’t find it as offensive or “non-traditional” as many traditionalists make it out to be. In fact in many ways it is far more traditional than the 1-week schema that my abbey uses (for example in the last week of the cycle, the Vespers psalms are entirely from the monastic cycle, in fact in weeks III and IV of the LOTH you can use the monastic schema of St. Benedict instead and you won’t miss out on any psalms. There are other gems like that.
This is my abbey’s schema (designed by Notker Fueglister in the 1960s). The abbey does Lauds and Vespers in Gregorian chant (Latin), the rest in French plainchant with the Gregorian Latin hymns, the responsory at Compline, and the Marian antiphon at Compline.
). The monastery uses a LotH+ (1 extra Psalm at Lauds and at Vespers) and a much longer Reading.