Wednesday, September 24, 2014

St.Mattew's 2nd Reading

We didn't celebrate the feast of St. Matthew the Apostle this year because September 21st fell on a Sunday this year. Sundays supersede most feasts. I'm sure St. Matthew does not mind. But as I was paging around in my breviary today,my eyes fell on Matthew's second reading, from St. Bede the Venerable:

"[Jesus] saw the tax collector and, because he saw him through the eyes of mercy and chose him..."

And I remembered that Pope Francis' personal motto, both  when he was a bishop and now as pope, is miserando atque eligendo, which everyone has trouble translation from Latin, but means something  like "having mercy and choosing,"   This is the passage the Pope's motto comes from.  It was on the feast of St. Matthew many years ago that young Mario Bergoglio received his vocation to the priesthood.

Anyway, it was cool to come across this passage in the Office of readings and remember the  special  connection that it has to our pope.


Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Padre Pio All Day Tuesday

Many of us who spend oodles of time working at computers welcome the switch to a print breviary for prayer time. It feels so good to detach oneself from screens and feel paper, rather than letter keys beneath one's fingers for a few minutes. Some people insist  that they can pray with more focus when they use a book rather than a tablet or phone for prayer.

Be that as it may, there are always those days when one says "Thanks be to God and to  Catholic web developers" and today is one of these. Unless you have the African breviary from Pauline editions in Kenya, you'd be missing out on the propers for St. Pio of Pietrelcina. Good old ibreviary.com has everything you need, including the saint's incredible description (in the Office of Readings) of receiving the stigmata for the first time in 1918.

DivineOffice.org doesn't seem to have this reading but it does have the rest. Same thing with Universalis.


photo credit: CatholicNewsAgency.com

Friday, September 19, 2014

Spreading the Good News of the Liturgy of the Hours

Reader Ed Rio has a question:

"What advice/tips would you give someone to help spread awareness of the Liturgy of the Hours? This is one of the great hidden treasures of the Church that I'd like to get more people to know about. 
Sometimes I'll post a photo on Facebook of a deer with the "longing for running streams" quote and say where it's from. Or maybe there will be a reading/hymn from Morning/Evening Prayer that really stands out and I'll share that. I've run out of ideas. "

I shared a few of my thought with Ed, but thought this might be a good question for all of you. You all love praying the psalms and canticles with their antiphons etc., in harmony with the feasts and seasons of the Church year. How do you get other people interested, or heck, even aware that this is actually a thing that lay people can do? This could be thru social media (as Ed has tried) or one on one with friends, co-workers,  fellow parishioners, or even family members.  

Let's come up with a good list. I'll start. If good ones turn up in the comment boxes below, I'll try to past them in here. 

1. Leave a breviary lying on your desk at work so that it will invite  questions. 






Wednesday, September 17, 2014

St. Augustine Makes Bishops Squirm

picture credit: blacksoil.wordpress.com

If I were a bishop or even a priest,  I might want to use the Office of Readings for every saint's memorial that occurs between September 16th and 28th. It would mean avoiding nine out of twelve days of reading "99 Ways a Bishop is Likely to End up in Hell.", otherwise known as St. Augustine's sermon on Pastors.

As a layperson reading this, I have come to a few conclusions:

1. I'm really glad I'm not a bishop.
2. I can't imagine anyone wanting such a responsibility.
3. Since Augustine's warnings apply, to a lesser degree, to priests as well, it reminds us what an awesome (as in awe-full, or awful) responsibility they have as well, and how we laity have a very serious responsibility to pray for them as well as our bishops. A lot.
4.  I'll bet this yearly dose of Augustine on Pastors, thought not pleasant, does good bishops and priests a lot of good. A yearly reminder to pray hard, work hard, be humble, and daily throw themselves on Christ's mercy.
5. Don't even want to think about not so good bishops and priests who read this and ignore it, or pat themselves on the back imagining that they are in no danger of the faults Augustine describes.
6. Even back in the early centuries, the clergy and hierarchy must have been an extremely mixed bag if this is what St.Augustine felt he had to tell them.
7.St. Augustine gave really long sermons.

this post originally appeared in 2012





Tuesday, September 16, 2014

Checking in. Q&A. Varied and Sundry Remarks.

Lately--like for the last six months--blogging has been like confession. I'm always promising myself to blog twice a week and go to confession once a month. In reality this turns into blogging every two weeks and confessing every six to eight weeks. If Dante was correct, I know which circle in purgatory I'll end up in. The one where people are made to run. A lot. This is to imitate Mary, who "made haste" to do what her vocation demanded of her, unlike us slothful procrastinators.


  • Then again part of my problem is not mere procrastination. I'm running out of new things to say! If any of you would like to comment on a particular day's office, or a particular psalm, reading, or antiphon, I'd love to look it over and publish it here as a guest post, assuming your command of basic English grammar is okay and your piece is not riddled with heresy. :)    


  • The emerging fall weather (emerging in my part of the world since mid-August, for some strange reason) has had me out on my (recently purchased) bike, cruising along the lovely, flat bike trails along the Allegheny river and a local creek or two.   A recent ride reminded me of one of the benefits of regularly praying the Hours: those psalms are always with you, and pop up into one's consciousness in response to all sorts of things. So I'm riding along, thinking what fun it is to be riding a bike again for the first time in decades. Just then, a bald eagle comes gliding up the river, passing within maybe twenty yards of me. After my shock and awe fades a bit, that verse from Psalm 103 about God "renewing your youth like an eagle's" pops up. How perfect for my rediscovery of the childhood joy of bike riding. (Here's an old post about how eagles get their youth renewed, and by the way this psalm will be in the OOR psalter tomorrow)  A bit later, a doe with two fawns crosses my path. Although this regularly freaks me out when I'm driving around here, it's a lovely sight on a bike trail. The threesome was heading down to the river for a drink, presumably. I then reflected that in these parts, a deer need not "yearn" for running streams, since they can find them everywhere they turn. Finally, the raucous noise of several recently fledged crows, still demanding to be fed by their worn out parents, brought to mind the young ravens that call upon God for their food in Psalm 147. Now, I do have to add there was no verse when a porcupine waddled by, nor when I spotted turtles on a river rock, but I guess "all you beasts, wild and tame, bless the Lord" from the Daniel Canticle would have worked.
  • Last time I blogged here, it was to give a glowing review to the Hymnal for the Hours.  Since then I've been happily wasting lots of time trying out not one, but several different new hymns for each hour.  The hymnal gave many different selections for Sunday's Exaltation of the Holy Cross and yesterday's Our Lady of Sorrows, including several versions of the Stabat Mater, which one doesn't get to sing liturgically outside of lent, so that was exciting. (yeah,I know, the things a liturgy geek gets excited about.)   Gregorian  hymns are written in various modes (musical scales)  other than ones that most modern western music uses (and by modern I mean since the year 1600!) So some of these hymn melodies sound better than others to my modern ears. But when I find one that I like, I like it a whole lot. Anyway, I am continually grateful to Father Weber for the great gift he has given us in arranging, editing, and sometimes translating these hymns. So today when I found out that his his book, Prayer of the Hours, is available as a free download.   I just jumped for joy, and then jumped willingly through the hoops to set up an account at Lulu.com in order to get it. This book is 300 pages of Father's teaching notes on courses he gives about the Liturgy of the Hours. I haven't started it yet, but can't wait. It's sure to be something wonderful.
  • Okay. My son will be home from school shortly, so I have to go.   If you have any questions or comments  about the Liturgy of the Hours the comments section below is the place to put them. 

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Hymnal for the Hours--a Review

When you read what the General Instruction for the Liturgy of the Hours has to say about hymns, you are left scratching your heard, wondering what all this has to do with the hymns we are actually given to sing (or, for the unmusical, read) each day.

Today, for example, the choices given to us for Morning Prayer today  are "This Day God Gives Me" (tune: Morning Has Broken) or "God Father, Praise and Glory" .  There's nothing wrong with either of these hymns. I like the lyrics to "This Day God Gives Me", although the melody is  slightly grating because it is overused at my parish and has a bad 70s vibe dues to the popular cover of this hymn by Cat Stevens at that time. (yes, I know how much this dates me. I was in junior high at the time.)  But that's just me. For all I know, these lyrics combined with that melody is veritable spiritual manna for some. Moving on to "God Father, Praise and Glory" I decide to select this one. It has a traditional melody, is a bit  easier to sing if I have someone else doing Morning Prayer with me, and I also notice that the lyrics are more oriented towards God than the is "This Day God Gives Me". It's more about the greatness and goodness of God, the need to praise and adore Him, whereas the first selection is more about  Me and how God is going to help Me today.

So I sing or say the hymn I've chosen. But I never really feel that I'm actually praying the day's liturgy until the hymn is done and I've started the psalms. And the General Instruction gives me some hints as to why I feel this way.

 #173 says that the hymns of the LOTH are the "principal poetic part [of the Office] composed by the Church"    The selections in our breviaries have been composed by various Christian composers, some of them of fairly recent copyright, some of them by non-catholics. They were not, by and large, composed specifically for the Divine Office. So  that "composed by the Church" part is a little...fuzzy as it applies to what's in our breviaries.

#174 says the hymn is "traditionally concluded by a doxology" (a verse invoking the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, simliar to the Glory Be)  Although this morning's two hymn choices do have this feature, there are many days in the four week psalter where the hymn choices do not end with a doxology.

#  175 and 176 says there are "two series" of hymns for each hour, and for when the Office of Readings is said either during the day or as a vigil during the night. I don't see any hymns denoted in my breviary as belonging to one series or another.

#178 refers to "the Latin hymns" being adapted to the nature of  vernacular languages. This means that the ancient hymns written specifically for the Liturgy of the Hours, once having been translated into the vernacular, can have their ancient, traditional melodies adjusted or changed in order to accomodate the differences in syllable stress or grammatical structure or the vernacular language. We never get to see these hymns in our breviaries, whether in Latin or in translation. #178 does give permission to "introduce new compositions, provided that they suit the spirit of the hour" but does that mean we should only get new compositions and never see the old ones? Our bishops have made use of a legitimate "option" when they compiled our breviary in 1971, but their use of a single option has deprived the faithful of any other option.  And, although I don't want to give more examples here, some of the choices we are given seem to be less suitable to the spirit of the hour than one might wish.

But the good news is that I can quit complaining! It is now possible to access the ancient, traditional, official hymns for the Liturgy of the Hours, translated from Latin and even, if you like to sing them, set to Gregorian melodies.
Hymnal for the Hours
Thanks be to God for Father Samuel Weber and the Benedict XVI Institute for producing the Hymnal for the Hours.  This hymnal contains hundreds of hymns from the Roman breviary--the traditional hymns that have been largely withheld from us. Each has been translated into English. These are translations that either have been gathered from other sources, or in some cases, translations made by Fr. Weber himself. Each has been set to Gregorian melodies.  There are hymns for Morning and Evening Prayer (a two week cycle, so that you use one hymn for weeks 1&III; another for weeks II & IV), and also for Office of Readings, with both "daytime" and "vigil" cycles.  There are hymns for the holy seasons, for the commons of saints, and also for each solemnity, feast, and many individual saint's memorials. There's even hymns for the daytime hours and for Night Prayer.

You know what? You don't need my boring review. What you need to read is this recent interview with Fr. Weber about the hymnal. It's far more interesting than anything I could say.

The Hymnal for the Hours is not the only way to access these beautiful, official liturgical hymns.(It's just the most complete.) I've already written about the Mundelein psalter, a single volume breviary which includes the same selections for the 4-week psalter and a smaller selection of the seasonal hymns.  And if you are mainly interested in the texts rather than the music of these hymns, the ibreviary app generally includes a translation of the Roman hymn as its alternative (second) choice for Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer.

If you do buy the Hymnal for the Hours and are put off by the Gregorian notation (four line staff, square notes, movable clefs) then just get the iChant app, which gives you a virtual keyboard with a Gregorian staff superimposed on it. These chant melodies are for most part very easy to memorize, so once you've plunked them out a few times on iChant, and then sung them, they should stay with you forever.

And many thanks to alert reader Sid Cundiff who alerted me to the existence of the hymnal.




The Reluctant Bishop

This is a re-run of an old post. A favorite of mine which I wanted to share with newer blog followers who maybe hadn't seen it yet. I'm working on a whole book of stories like this--Catholic stories done in the style of the late Paul Harvey's "The Rest of the Story"

Father Greg was a good monk. So humble. He loved the peace and quiet of his monastery. It was so easy there to dismiss the distractions of the world and devote himself to prayer.
But then, Fr. Greg was chosen to be a bishop. That was then end of the serene contemplative life. He resisted the invitation at first, but finally submitted to the will of those who felt he was the only man for this particular job.
Dealing with his new diocese was really tough for Father Greg. He said he felt “divided and torn to pieces” by all the competing demands on his time and energy. Administrative tasks were the worst: the diocese owned lots of property. All sorts of projects and people needed money, and some were so manipulative in their attempts to get a piece of the pie that the bishop secretly thought of them as “robbers”. It was hard to be patient and charitable with these people. There were both physical and spiritual dangers of all kinds for the Bishop’s flock. Heretical ideas were gaining traction among the people. Criminal gangs were a huge problem in the city, and the bishop spent hours working with government officials to minimize the damage and devastation caused by them.
Bishop Greg (we had  better call him that now) worried about losing sight of his apostolic commission to preach the gospel, so much did all these chores distract him. His position forced him to spend lots of time with men of the world: politicians, the wealthy. He had to drop the introspective, retiring persona of a monk, and , well, “do as the Romans do.” Not wanting to appear judgmental or uncharitable, Bishop Greg talked with them about what they were interested in: sports, entertainment, the business world: “I began to talk freely about things I once would have avoided. What once I found tedious I now enjoy.” He felt bad about that change in himself, remembering the kind of spiritual life he had in the monastery.
Ever a humble man, the bishop admitted all this in a sermon. He said he often felt like a hypocrite, and a failure, not living up to his own preaching and mission. His congregation was bewildered, since as far as they were concerned, their bishop was a saint.
And now…the rest of the story.
Bishop Greg was a saint.
St. Gregory the Great. He became pope–bishop of Rome– under protest in the year 590. The description of his troubles above was taken directly from a sermon of his. It can be found in the office of readings  as part of the liturgy that commemorates his feast day, September 3rd.
The only liberty taken in telling this story (besides the informal “Greg” and neglecting to mention that his diocese was Rome) was to refer to “street gangs” rather than “roving bands of barbarians”. This was the dark ages, when Rome was little more than one big refugee camp due to years of political strife and invasion. While dealing with all these problems, St. Gregory managed to blow off a heresy or two, reform the western liturgy, and revitalize the Church’s slumping missionary efforts.
But what I most admire about Father Greg—I mean, St. Gregory—was his humility in admitting how difficult it is to pursue holiness while living an active vocation. “Torn to pieces” by competing demands, he said. This makes him a sympathetic patron, not only of popes and bishops, but of all of us who long for a spiritual life but are sidetracked by many, many obligations.