The Roman Breviary

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I would like to start praying the Divine Office and it has been recommended to me that I use the 1962 Breviary over the more modern versions because they felt the modern versions lacking in the spiritual depth present in the earlier editions. I was wondering if anyone had any advise for me.

Also, I went to the Baronius Press website but their version is Out of Stock. Does anyone know where I can get a copy of the new edition of the Roman Breviary 1961 in English and Latin?

I appreciate any guidance
 
I use the website divinumofficium.com

It has the whole breviary online in Latin and in English. It is the traditional breviary… not the newer LIturgy of the hours. I pray it from my phone.
 
If you have an iPhone or iPad you can use Breviarium Meum By Franciscans of the Immaculate. It is a great app. It has all offices as well as some other blessings and prayers. It is according to the 1962 breviary. Since I don’t speak Latin I asked a priest friend of mine from the ICKSP if it was indeed accurate and he said that the app was “amazing”. Good enough endorsement for me.

The iPhone version is Latin only while the iPad version is Latin-English.

iPhone: itunes.apple.com/app/breviarium-meum/id438927135?mt=8

iPad: itunes.apple.com/app/breviarium-meum-hd/id482544110?mt=8

I don’t want to start debate, but I am a faithful Latin mass attendee and I prefer the Liturgy of the Hours. Both have drawbacks in my mind. I feel like the modern LOTH has more to offer as far as the responses and readings while the antiphons in the “traditional” breviary are ancient and simply amazing. Remember the “traditional” brivery only dates back a century in its current form as St. Pius X had it almost completely revised. If I were you I’d try both and see which one fits you the best, that is what I did.
 
Windmill said:
I second the BrevMeum app. Good use of 99 cents.
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That’s true! I forgot to mention the best part. The app is only 99 cents!!! All offices, Latin prayers, blessings, all in a beautiful presentation for a buck!
 
In my opinion, unless you can fluently read and understand Latin, you should use the English Liturgy of the Hours. Remember, “As God gradually reveals himself and reveals man to himself, prayer appears as a reciprocal call, a covenant drama.” (CCC 2567) If you can’t understand the prayer, you miss out on a good portion of God’s call to prayer. I don’t mean to say that saying the Office in Latin isn’t worthy, but it isn’t as fruitful as listening and contemplating the psalms and prayers.

I have the 4 volume Liturgy of the Hours set and I have also used apps. There’s something comforting about using the books, flipping ribbons, etc. And though the English translations of the psalms (and especially the canticles) are somewhat lacking in elegant prose and verse, the Office of Readings is my joy for the day. There is so much spiritual power in these old sermons. I have learned a lot and grown deeper in my faith by praying the Office of Readings. Don’t skip them!
 
Servus_Tuus said:
In my opinion, unless you can fluently read and understand Latin, you should use the English Liturgy of the Hours. Remember, “As God gradually reveals himself and reveals man to himself, prayer appears as a reciprocal call, a covenant drama.” (CCC 2567) If you can’t understand the prayer, you miss out on a good portion of God’s call to prayer. I don’t mean to say that saying the Office in Latin isn’t worthy, but it isn’t as fruitful as listening and contemplating the psalms and prayers.
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Is it okay if I use my English-Latin 1960 Breviary from Baronius Press?

Will it be ‘fruitful’ for me? Or is my praying still deficient/not as fruitful to that which you outlined?

 
Esrb99 said:
Is it okay if I use my English-Latin 1960 Breviary from Baronius Press?

Will it be ‘fruitful’ for me? Or is my praying still deficient/not as fruitful to that which you outlined?
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Of course it will be fruitful. But look at page xxii:
Baronius Press:
It should be stressed that the English translation is primarily provided as a guide to help those with little or no Latin understand the text of the Office. While we hope that by providing a bilingual version of the Breviary we will make it more accessible to those who wish to use this form of the Hours, it is the Latin text which is the approved form of the Church’s prayer.
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If you are not a cleric and therefore bound to pray the Office liturgically, then you can do as you wish. My point is that to get the most out of the prayer – any prayer, you have to understand the language.
 
Servus_Tuus said:
Of course it will be fruitful. But look at page xxii:

If you are not a cleric and therefore bound to pray the Office liturgically, then you can do as you wish. My point is that to get the most out of the prayer – any prayer, you have to understand the language.
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I think it’s important to make our prayer of the Divine Office “liturgical”. There is great benefit towards unity, to join our prayer to the universal public prayer of the Church. That means a post-1970 breviary in Latin or the vernacular, or a pre-Vatican II breviary in Latin. For the latter, there are currently only two that I know of, the 1960 Roman or Monastic Offices.

The English texts in the latter two, are to aid comprehension only. They are not meant to be prayed.

I use the 4-volume Liturgy of the Hours. I chant the day hours in Latin for various reasons. One, I sing in a schola and it helps me become fluent with the reading of Latin, and the chanting of the antiphons helps me greatly with practicing chant. I also found over time that the regular rhythm of chanting a psalm on the Gregorian tones acts as a sort of “mantra”. After chanting the psalm, I slowly read through it in the vernacular (French in my case). I find it a very “meditative” way to pray the Office; the “mantra” of the chant takes you out of the temporal world and puts you in a more spiritual frame of mind.

I could never do this with a longer Office such the 1960 breviary. It’s simply too long. Same with the monastic variants although from time to time I can do the Office that the abbey I’m associated with uses (Monastic Schema B, 150 psalms per week) using one of the licit options to divided it into a two-week cycle instead of one week.

For those interested in chanting the current Liturgy of the Hours, besides the Mundelein Psalter in English chant, for Latin there is:

Les Heures Grégoriennes (Latin/French, all the day hours of the current LOTH-Morning, daytime, Evening prayers + Compline and the complimentary psalter for the other day hours)

Antiphonale Romanum II (Latin only, Vespers for Sundays throughout the year in addition to feasts and solemnities)

Both of these are in full Gregorian notation. Well worth the money!

The thing about the Divine Office is that it isn’t “all about me”. As a private devotion anything goes, but we are encouraged even as laity to pray it liturgically. I think doing this is all about attaching one’s self to the Body of Christ; we are not just praying for ourselves, but for and with the entire Body of Christ.
 
Servus_Tuus said:
don’t mean to say that saying the Office in Latin isn’t worthy, but it isn’t as fruitful as listening and contemplating the psalms and prayers.
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We have lectio divina for that. The Divine Office is not primarily concerned with contemplation or meditation. It’s primarily concerned with praising God and imploring His Mercy. It’s a shame that large swathes of the western Church have lost the sense of the choral recitation of the Office. Understandably this is has mostly arisen through necessity.

Every seminarian and priest in the Latin Church should be obliged to take a month’s training course at a Benedictine Abbey. 😛

Ad Jesum per Mariam!
Prie-dieu.
 
marcaevans said:
Its expensive but worth it, Divine Office for iPhone & iPad costs $19.99 or £13.99. It is really in depth prayers for pretty much every period of the day including the invitatory and office of readings.

itunes.apple.com/us/app/divine-office-audio-prayer/id301349397?mt=8
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They also have podcasts which are free. I pray the LOTH mostly because the audio is available. If the Breviary were available by podcast I would probably switch to that. However that’s hard to do on your own.
 
TheExorcist said:
They also have podcasts which are free. I pray the LOTH mostly because the audio is available. If the Breviary were available by podcast I would probably switch to that. However that’s hard to do on your own.
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The LOTH is the Breviary ( and is the Divine Office) 😉
 
Further, I don’t agree with the initial comment that the Liturgy of the Hours is lacking in depth compared to the Roman Breviary of 1961. If any, it’s actually become richer and deeper, especially given its Office of Readings. Less Psalms, longer readings was a good idea, IMO.
 
porthos11 said:
Further, I don’t agree with the initial comment that the Liturgy of the Hours is lacking in depth compared to the Roman Breviary of 1961. If any, it’s actually become richer and deeper, especially given its Office of Readings. Less Psalms, longer readings was a good idea, IMO.
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I agree completely. Moreover by spacing the psalms out over 4 weeks, it makes the entire Office within reach of the laity. If you’re rushed, you can recite the 5 offices in about 50 minutes a day. If you have more time like I do now that the kids are out of the house and I work from home a two days a week, I can chant it, take more time and have plenty of time for silence after readings and meditating each psalm.

Even the clergy had to “speed read” the older Office to have the time to do it all in addition to their parish duties. The result can be a superficial skimming. The 1961 breviary is nearly monastic in length, which is ill-suited to diocesan clergy and much less even to the laity.

I do on occasion use the breviary of the abbey I am associated with. It is 150 psalms in a week. I find when I do all 150 psalms in a week, given the fact that I still work and have a long commute when I do work at the office, I was not getting the full benefit as I would try to speed through it too quickly. Moreover I would often have to miss hours, especially the minor hours, due to meetings, etc. As a result I would miss a significant number of psalms, including some of my favourites, every week. With the LOTH it’s always possible to find time for daytime prayer either mid-morning, noon, or afternoon; and when I have the time, I use the complimentary psalter for the other minor hours. Since the gradual psalms are repeated elsewhere, I can go months on end without missing anything.
 
porthos11 said:
Further, I don’t agree with the initial comment that the Liturgy of the Hours is lacking in depth compared to the Roman Breviary of 1961. If any, it’s actually become richer and deeper, especially given its Office of Readings. Less Psalms, longer readings was a good idea, IMO.
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Everyone has their opinion. In my opinion, the older Collects are far richer than the 70’s fluffy Collects we have now in the LOTH (and the Mass) that center on human dignity, social justice, and vague feel-good sentiments that leave the listener/prayer-er feeling content with himself. As I tell people, when I pray the LOTH I feel like Jesus my buddy gave me a pat on the back. When I pray the the 1962 Breviary I feel like I went into spiritual battle with Jesus my Commander-In-Chief…and won.
 
Windmill said:
Everyone has their opinion. In my opinion, the older Collects are far richer than the 70’s fluffy Collects we have now in the LOTH (and the Mass) that center on human dignity, social justice, and vague feel-good sentiments that leave the listener/prayer-er feeling content with himself. As I tell people, when I pray the LOTH I feel like Jesus my buddy gave me a pat on the back. When I pray the the 1962 Breviary I feel like I went into spiritual battle with Jesus my Commander-In-Chief…and won.
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That’s not true. The Collects of the modern Liturgy of the Hours and Roman Missal are just as rich and powerful as those of the 1962 books. The problem is that the current English translation of the Collects of the Liturgy of the Hours is still the weak 1973 edition, but these have since been corrected in the Roman Missal. In fact, while they may have shifted around between the editions, many of the Collects are still common to both Uses of the Roman Rite and many of the modern Collects are actually derived from ancient sources such as the Gelasian Sacramentary.

Further, approval has now been given for the retranslation of the Liturgy of the Hours so I expect that in a few years, this problem would be gone too and the translations of both the Liturgy of the Hours and Roman Missal will be in sync.

So no, poor translation notwithstanding, the Collects are not at fault in the modern Roman Rite either. You only need study the current translation in the Roman Missal to see it.

Today’s Collect: there is no sign of social justice or feeling content with oneself:

Pardon
the offenses of your peoples,
we pray, O Lord,
and in your goodness
set us free from the bonds of the sins
we have committed in our weakness.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
 
Even academics who have no axe to grind realize that there were substantial revisions and changes to the Collects to suit the new theology. This study here references many of the changes: faculty.caldwell.edu/lpristas/novaetveteraweb.pdf. Note well, the professor who catalogs these alterations to existing Collects uses the Latin originals, not the ICEL translations we had re-translated. IOW, she’s comparing apples to apples. Re translating the Collects doesn’t change the fact that the Latin Editio Typica is what many find “less rich” in its content. I’m not saying its anti-Catholic or even that they have a tendency to lead souls astray. All I’m saying is that the decisions as to what Collects to retain, which ones to edit, which ones to excise,and which ones to artificially import from other Missals tends to follow certain patterns (as the study referenced above confirms). This change led to a style of prayer that I, personally, find less “rich”, even in Latin.

Other authors catalog how negative theology (“Hell”, Purgatory, expiation, eternal loss, eternal conflict between the Christian and the world, heresy, error) was edited out. Furthermore, positive elements were deemphasized (One True Church, merits of the Saints, Miracles).

I have prayed many forms of the Office, and the loss of the Collects used for many, many centuries is the most lamentable casualty of the Consilium, in my opinion. Yes, the Psalms are the Psalms (even though the 3 imprecatory Psalms and 59 “negative” verses were stricken from the LOTH psalter), but what makes the LOTH different from the Psalter are the prayers and hymns that surround it (Te Lucis Ante Terminum verse 2, anyone?). When the Collects were changed to suit new ideas, they dropped an aspect of Catholic prayer that, I feel, should have been carried on.

These are what, in my opinion, make the LOTH tepid and boring compared to the Office of years past. Yes, the obligation was heavy - too much for a layman, IMHO. However, the result that we got was lackluster and doesn’t create much sense of continuity with the prayers that inspired generations of Catholics before us. We could have spread out the Psalms over a greater period without chucking revered prayers.

If people really think there’s no difference in the style of Collects old and new, I invite them to take up a simple challenge: take their new missal (even with the revised translations) and a traditional missal and compare the Lenten Collects Sunday for Sunday. Your eyes will be opened.
 
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