Help from a Catholic liturgy buff (MJ?): "O God, make speed to save us: O Lord, make haste to help u
I'm auditing a class called "Prayer: Five Traditions and Practices" (at Regent College summer school).
In this morning's class we covered the desert tradition, particularly focusing on John Cassian and his Conferences, where he mentions in Conf. 10 (with Abba Isaac) the prayer (based on Ps 70:1) "O God, make speed to save us; O Lord, make haste to help us."
We learned that this prayer made its way, via the monastic office, into the Liturgy of the Hours and the Daily Office and the Book of Common Prayer. I wanted to look it up in all these sources.
I have BCP and have confirmed it is in there with that same wording.
I have Liturgy of the Hours on order in pre-pub so I'll have to wait on that one. (BTW, how come so few people have ordered this? C'mon people, get on it!)
But I'm confused about the Daily Office of the Catholic Church. Logos apparently doesn't carry it, or at least nothing by that name. Is that so? In NNCD, I read that the Roman Breviary was the "form of the Daily Office for the Roman Catholic Church, published in 1570 and in use until replaced by the Liturgy of the Hours in 1970." So I looked for Roman Breviary on logos.com and didn't find that either. Does it have yet another name? Is it this? If Logos indeed doesn't publish it or have it in pre-pub yet, isn't this something we should be asking for? I will if nobody else has, but I'm not sure yet what I'm asking for, so that why I'm asking for clarity from a Catholic or someone familiar with the Catholic liturgical tradition.
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Rosie Perera said:
I have Liturgy of the Hours on order in pre-pub so I'll have to wait on that one. (BTW, how come so few people have ordered this? C'mon people, get on it!)
But I'm confused about the Daily Office of the Catholic Church. Logos apparently doesn't carry it, or at least nothing by that name. Is that so?
Daily Office is AKA Liturgy of the Hours. The North American one Volume is simply known as Christian Prayer. So few people may have ordered the Breviary (yet another now more informal name for the Liturgy of the Hours) since it has been known since at least 2000 a revision is coming but there is no hint of went it will be released or even if it is being worked on (but one can assume it is).
-Dan
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Thanks, Dan. So then "daily office" is the more general term, and Liturgy of the Hours is the daily office that was published in 1970? Then I guess what I'm looking for is what was the daily office that preceded the publication of Liturgy of the Hours? NNCD says it was called the Roman Breviary. Is that your understanding? My teacher said the prayer in question made its way into both the daily office (or maybe he said "divine office"; not sure if there's a difference) AND the Liturgy of the Hours, implying that Liturgy of the Hours came later. So I want to find the thing that came before it.
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Rosie Perera said:
Thanks, Dan. So then "daily office" is the more general term, and Liturgy of the Hours is the daily office that was published in 1970?
Yes and no... it could also refers to the three volume edition done for England/ Australia which is a superior translation in many peoples mind.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liturgy_of_the_Hours
Explains things better than I am perhaps.
-Dan
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I think you can say that "daily office" is a synonym for "divine office" in the way it is used. The DIvine Office is the name for prayers associated with the canonical hours prior to the promulgation of the Liturgy of the Hours, which is used today. Logos has both, which you have provided links for already.
Besides updates in language, the main difference between the two is the format using a 4-week cycle in the psalter in the current Liturgy of the Hours. There is more to it than that but that gives a sense of how it's different.
In the current Liturgy of the Hours, each "office", except the Invitatory, begins with "God come to my assistance, Lord make haste to help me" (along with the sign of the cross). There is an exception when Morning Prayer (Lauds) or Office of Readings (Matins) is preceded immediately by the Invitatory. The beginning of the Invitatory is "Lord, open my lips and my mouth will proclaim your praise."
In addition to the link Dan provided you may also find these helpful:
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In my experience Divine Office and breviary refer to the book - for clergy, it is a set of 4. Liturgy of the Hours refers to the well, liturgy as it is a liturgy of the Church, this specific set of prayers to which clergy make a vow to pray daily. To give another example, there are many "Offices" that people can choose to pray, for example there is an Office of prayers to Mary that follows a similar format; and there are others too:
http://www.liturgies.net/Liturgies/Catholic/LittleOffice.htm
The form of the Liturgy of the Hours prior to the current version is the 1962 version shown here, which I do not think is in Logos. I have this in paper copy:
http://www.baroniuspress.com/book.php?wid=56&bid=59#tab=tab-1
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Ah, yes. Thanks Don. I had forgotten - you are correct, that one is not offered so far in Logos. Do you know if the version in Latin from Angelus Press matches the Latin portion of the complete set from Baronius?
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Yes, it appears to be the translation of the Latin 1962 version. It's the right format and source...
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So is the Divine Office the same 1962 text for fewer hours? (Similar to the difference between the 4-Volume Liturgy of the Hours and the 1-volume Christian Prayer today?)
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I am not an expert on the 1962 version, but this leads me to believe the format is not complete except for Sunday:
Includes everything for the Hours of Sunday Lauds, Prime, Sext, Vespers, and Compline; Prime, Sext, and Compline for each other day of the week.
Except maybe one of the priests on here will know if Lauds was repeated all week like the Collect of the Mass is not unique to each ordinary weekday Mass now; in the current breviry, there is a unique Lauds for each day.
Note, Christian Prayer is a Morning and Evening Prayer, but it is different - cannot be used with people praying from the breviary. It is simpler to make it easy for those whom the breviary might overwhelm.
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Don Awalt said:
Note, Christian Prayer is a Morning and Evening Prayer, but it is different ...
Oh. The only difference I thought I saw was in the length of the reading .. actually longer in Christian Prayer than the 4-volume LOH. The Antiphons and Psalms were the same as I recall. Just for Morning, Evening, and Night Prayer. I don't have them both with me but I'll double check when I get home.
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I think, technically, "divine office", "daily office" and "liturgy of the hours" can all be used generically for the canonical hours in any tradition, and "breviary" can also be used generically to refer to any book containing the texts for the hours. However, the titles of the official books of the Roman Office (that is, the divine office of the Roman Rite) are Breviarum Romanum (pre-Vatican II) and Liturgia Horarum (post-Vatican II). So, "divine office" and "daily office" aren't really specific, but "liturgy of the hours" is a more recent (or recently revived?) term that usually refers to the modern liturgy and its books. "Breviary" is generic, and is still commonly used to refer to the modern books, but Roman Breviary refers to the pre-Vatican II books.
The Divine Office from Angelus Press is, as the description quoted by Don states, an abridgment, with English translation, of the 1962 Breviarum Romanum. Note that Pius X made some pretty dramatic changes to the arrangement of the psalms in the office, so there are some significant differences between the Breviarum Romanum of 1962 and how the office stood for most of the period following Trent.
(Also, for what it's worth, the use of Deus, in adiutorium ... at the beginning of the hours is something that has remained constant through the reforms.)
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Thanks, Louis and everyone, for filling in the gaps in my knowledge of this area.
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Hi Rosie, I'm finally really back home after a couple of days handling family things. I see we have several people who were able to give you good answers. If anything else comes up ...
Orthodox Bishop Alfeyev: "To be a theologian means to have experience of a personal encounter with God through prayer and worship."; Orthodox proverb: "We know where the Church is, we do not know where it is not."
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