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.

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 3^rd.

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.