The Only Devotional You Really Need

There's a big stack of review copies of recently published Catholic books here in the house. Close to a third of these are devotionals. Some are for a season, such as Lent or Advent. Others are for any time of the year. I'm sure you've seen them.

Typically, you get a page or two for each  that includes a reading, some commentary and reflection questions on the reading (lectio divina is quite the trend these days),  and a prayer. The readings can be from the Church Fathers, from one particular saint (there are  scores  of these), from one spiritual classic (broken down into easy to digest paragraphs and perhaps updated to modern English), from the writings of the  Pope, from a famous non-canonized author,  or from the Bible.

There are lots of devotionals directed at Catholic women or specifically, Catholic mothers. There are lots that are gender neutral.. I've yet to see any for Catholic men or fathers. Realities of the market, I guess.

I always find these to be very attractive little books.  I happily review them. I leave the very best ones on my nightstand, or at my desk, with the intention of using them daily.

But I never do. At least, not after the first week or so. Viewed with optimism, I should see such books as a real bargain: A Year With Padre Pio will last me for three, at least. But usually pessimism prevails. Seeing that book gathering dust-- the bookmark on a date from six weeks back-- I'm thinking, Lazy twit. You can't even read one paragraph a day from this good spiritual book.  
So today, I packed up some of these wonderful, unused devotionals into a box, to be given to a book-loving, homeschooling mother of 8 who lives down the road. Sure, she will have time to read them!
Maybe I'm just spreading the contagion of inadequacy around.

Box packed and shut, I sat down to do the Office of Readings. Great reading from St. Francis de Sales about how one's personal devotion has to fit with one's state in life. Then it dawned on me.

 I was reading from the writings of a saint! And had just read a psalm and a page of Deuteronomy.
And went back over psalm 68 to find the verse that says make a highway for him who rides on the clouds, and thought  for a few  seconds  about Our Lord's ascension into heaven.
A shorter version of this  process is repeated several more  times per day around here.

Maybe I wasn't drawn to all those nice devotional books, not because of laziness, but because I'm already satiated after a day of drinking fully from the best devotional fountain  there is.  A devotional that comes to us straight from the mouth of God, and handed to us by Christ, Who then invites us to pray it with Him.

Compared to that, Daily Holiness Hints for Catholic Gals or a year with St. Anybody just pales.

Divine Office Glossary for Beginners

Since many new readers are visiting Coffee&Canticles via the Catholic Exchange homepage, I thought I'd run this post from last year.

Time to acquire your  cool liturgical vocabulary. Impress your friends!

Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours: official prayer of the Catholic Church, constituting, along with the Mass, the Church's liturgy. A repeating cycle of psalms, biblical readings, and other prayers, coordinated to the liturgical season and/or the feasts of the Church. The word "office" comes from a Latin word meaning "service" or "ceremony".

Breviary: the book in which one finds the Divine Office. Usually titled "Christian Prayer." The full breviary contains four volumes. One volume breviaries contain the full morning, evening, and night prayer for the year, but not the full Office of Readings. Some one volume breviars also contain the full office of Day time prayer.

Antiphon - the verse said before and after each psalm and canticle. The antiphon usually gives a point on which to focus while praying the psalm. The antiphon is often a key to understanding the Old Testament psalm in the light of its fulfillment in Jesus.

Canticle - a psalm-like passage from a part of the Bible other than the book of Psalms.

Invitatory - The psalm that is recited before the first liturgical hour that you say each day. Usually Psalm 95

Benedictus - Latin for the Canticle of Zachariah
Magnificat - Latin for the Canticle of Mary
Nunc Dimittis - Latin for the Canticle of Simeon

Morning Prayer/Lauds - one of the two main hours or "hinges" of the liturgical day, morning prayer may be said any time from when you wake up until mid -morning.

Evening Prayer/Vespers - the other main hour or "hinge" of the liturgical day, evening prayer may be said between 4 and 7PM.

Night Prayer/Compline - to be said later than evening prayer, usually close to bedtime. This last hour of the day speaks of sleep, resting in God with trust, death and eternal rest in heaven.

Daytime Prayer - a liturgical hour with 3 subdivisions: Mid-morning (terce); midday (sext); midafternoon (none). The general custom is to choose one of these, according to what suits one's schedule. Monastics (or anyone who is a real Divine Office fanatic)  may still use all three.

Office of Readings-  This is the longest of the hours, due to its two lengthy readings. It may be prayed at any time of day, although generally it is done preceding morning prayer, or after evening prayer on the previous day. In monasteries where it is still customary to get up in the middle of the night to pray, the Office of Readings is the hour that is prayed.   The Office of Readings consists of psalms followed by two longer readings; one from the Bible and one from the writings of the fathers/doctors/saints of the Church. Read in private, it takes fifteen to twenty minutes. Well worth the effort if you have the time.  You will not find the OOR in the one-volume Christian Prayer book.

Ordinary - rather inadequate instructions on how to pray the office, buried about one-third of the way through the breviary. Feel free to ask me questions in the combox  if  the ordinary leaves you with unanswered questions.

Proper of Seasons-the first third of the breviary. It gives all the readings and prayers substituted for what's in the 4 week Psalter during the seasons of  Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter.

Proper of Saints - gives the dates, and prayers for saint's feasts and memorials, plus directions on which of the Commons to use if you want to do the day's  hours  in honor of  the saint, rather than just going with the psalter.

Commons - these are all purpose or generic offices for celebring a feast of Our Lady or of a saint, with headings such as Apostles, Martyrs, virgins, holy men, pastors, doctors of the church, etc.

From Niche to Mainstream

These are the words that start your day with the Divine Office.

Welcome, Catholic Exchange readers to Coffee and Canticles!

When the folks at CE invited me to appear on it's homepage, I felt pleased, honored, and a little surprised. After all, mine is not  a brilliant apologetics blog. Nor a  fun- yet- inspirational Catholic Mothers' blog. Nor a blog of astute and witty commentary on world events from a Catholic perspective.

Aside from occasional forays into other areas, this blog focuses on a narrow topic:  the most under- appreciated prayer in the Catholic Church.

The prayer that three popes have exhorted us to use. Pope Benedict in particular has been begging the faithful to take this prayer out of its clerical and monastic niche and turn  it into mainstream Catholic spiritual practice. Or, in the Church's words, "the prayer of the whole people of God."

I refer to the Liturgy of the Hours, aka the Divine Office, aka the breviary.

Looking to the left of the Catholic Exchange homepage, I see a  link to the day's liturgical hours, courtesy of universalis.com.  That tells me CE and many of its  readers are part of the  rapidly expanding group of Catholics who have taken seriously the Pope's request (made again as recently as two weeks ago), asking  "everyone to pray the Psalms, to become accustomed to using the Liturgy of the Hours, Lauds, Vespers, and Compline."

That "becoming accustomed" is what we do here at Coffee and Canticles. Learning to pray the Office is not like reading a novena off a holy card. It's more like learning to drive a car. There's vocabulary and rules and skills to acquire. That can be a bit frustrating at first. But once you get it down, you'll be like the newly licensed teenager: a whole new world will be open to you. A world where Sacred Scripture becomes your prayer. A world where you are praying in Christ and He is praying in you.  A world where you join with your brothers and sisters around the world in a magnificent sacrifice of praise, you own little pathetic squeak of a voice miraculously harmonizing with an eternal song.

You'll have no idea how cool this is until you try it. Next to the mass, there's no better way to pray.

So take a  look around at the tabs and archives. Note that questions and comments are invited and welcomed. I hope you'll want to come back again and again to learn and to share your own thoughts about sanctifying the day with the Liturgy of the Hours.

Tall Ship as Metaphor for Breviary

Last week Bill and I went to Erie, PA to see the sites. (Yes, Erie has some very nice ones, thank you. And the lake is not polluted anymore, so don't crack any of those jokes from the 60s about walking across it to Canada.) 

The highlight of our trip was the Maritime Museum, which included a tour of the Brig Niagara.  This ship was a key player in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812.  We learned all sort of fascinating historical and nautical things. But nothing impressed, indeed, staggered me more as I examined the deck than the sheer number and variety of ropes, each with a different purpose, and each vitally important to keeping the vessel afloat and functional. It was impossible to keep ropes out of one's line of sight anywhere on the deck....

short ropes...

long ropes...

fat ropes...

coiled ropes...

Sounds like I'm writing  a Dr. Seuss book, I know. But bear with me.

I wondered how long it would take for an apprentice seaman to learn what each of these was for, when our guide reminded us that the phrase, "learning the ropes" had originated with the sailing culture. And I could see, that whatever else a new sailor had to learn, once he'd learned the ropes, he'd have a great deal of his job learned as well.

When you think  of all that goes into learning to use and  appreciate the Divine Office, "Learning the ropes" is a great analogy. Making sense of what at first is a dizzying array of psalter, ordinary, propers, commons, feasts, and seasons is not easy. Not to mention getting to truly enter into the spirit of praying the hours with the mind of the Church.

I've been trying to help readers  do just  that with this blog. Now I'm thinking of going through all these posts and putting them into a short  book . The Divine Office--Learning the Ropes might be a good working title.  Thing is, I don't have time to both do that and to write blog posts a couple of times a week. I need to have a couple of chapters and a proposal ready to pitch at the Catholic Writer's Guild conference in August, so it looks like Coffee and Canticles will go inactive until sometime in the middle of August. Surely you wonderful followers and visitors won't mind so very much. Right now it's too beautiful outside to waste much time on the internet anyway. Just say a prayer that if it's God's will and not just my ego, this project will go well.

See you in August. Keep up with your Divine Office.

What is the Office of Readings?

Before continuing my promised how-to-get-started series, I'm going to digress and answer an actual question that my good friend Mary at All Saints Academy asked. (People who ask questions get special treatment here at Coffee&Canticles). She wanted to know what the Office of Readings is.

If you use a one-volume breviary, you may have noticed the separate 4 week psalter for the Office of Readings, along with "Selections" from the readings. Very few people use this section. They aren't sure  what it is, what to do with it, or when to say it. And since most of us divine office fans like the idea of saying the correct prayers for the day along with the whole Church throughout the world, the Office of Readings sampler in the one-volume book  does not have much appeal.

It only becomes  clear if you have the four-volume breviary, which has   the complete Office of  Readings for each day of the year. This is where the http://www.divineoffice.org/ website is really a treasure. You don't want to shell out $150+ for a four volume breviary in order to try out the Office of Readings, only to find that you don't have time for it after all. So if you are interested, go online and try it out. 

The Office of Readings is the longest of the liturgical hours. Like morning and evening prayer, it consists of three psalms (or more often,  one long psalm split into three sections).  Then comes the good part. There are two readings, both of considerable  length. First, something from the Old  or New Testaments.  This is followed with a reading from the Church fathers, doctors, or saints. These readings are either commentary on the Old Testament passage you just read, commentary relative to the liturgical season, or a passage from the writings of a saint whose feast it is. These readings are wonderful! 

In fact, the whole Office of Readings is wonderful. Don't we all tell ourselves we should read more scripture each day, read the writings of the Church fathers and saints, and prayer more?  Well, the office of readings is all that rolled into one. If you do the Office of Readings, you will cover a good chunk of the Bible  each year. In fact, you might call it the Reader's Digest condensed version of the Bible. (Yes I know that RD did have the nerve to put out a condensed Bible years ago, but the OOR is better.) This week it's the best of the Book of Proverbs. Next week will be highlights from Ecclesiastes. After that, Job. Each Bible reading is followed by commentary from the saints and teachers of the Church, either directly on that passage, or about the topic (e.g. marriage, virtues) that the passage is about.

What time of day is the Office of Readings prayed?  Historically, this was the Office of Vigils, the one that contemplative monks and nuns would rise in the middle of the night for.  This is still done in many communities. For the rest of us, the Office of Readings is the most flexible of all the hours. The General Instructions state that, aside from those bound by monastic rules,   " ...the office of readings may be recited at any hour of the day, even during the night hours of the previous day, after evening prayer has been said."

Now--just to be truthful after I've gone on a rhapsody about this wonderful liturgical hour.

I don't always do it.

 It does take longer. The length of the readings, and the fact that you really want to study them, requires that you sit down for an uninterrupted 15 minutes or more. Morning, evening and day time prayer can be done in snippets  while I prepare dinner or wash dishes. (just prop the book on the counter.) That really doesn't work for the Office of Readings. When I do get it in, it's either just before Morning prayer, or on the previous evening, and even then  it only happens for me about 3 times  a week.  I'm usually a bit better during Lent.

 Indeed, part of my purpose in doing this blog is to keep me more faithful to all of the liturgical hours. I can't pretend to be the Divine Office go-to girl if I'm not actually saying it.

And let this suffice for the Office of Readings. On to some how-to's tomorrow!

Top Ten Reasons to Pray the Divine Office, and why I don't say Liturgy of the Hours

I've been asked why I use the term "Divine Office" more often than the Vatican II-encouraged "Liturgy of the Hours".  My preference has nothing to do with preferring traditional over modern terminology.As a matter of personal taste, I actually prefer  Liturgy of the Hours. But Liturgy of the Hours   is a mouthful to say and a handful to type. So Divine Office is just the more efficient way to go.


I'm going to start  the occasional rerun of older posts, especially those that were written when this blog had between 0 and 5 followers. So, to most of you, it will be new material. Today--just a few of my favorite reasons for praying the Divine Office.

1. You get some daily Scripture reading and prayer done at the same time.

2. It takes less than ten minutes  each for the hours of morning, evening, and night prayer if you're reading it by yourself rather than chanting it in a monastery. (An "hour" never went by so quickly!)

3. If you can't get to daily mass it's the best substitute because just  like the Mass the Divine Office is also the liturgy of the Church.

4. By praying the Divine Office you are joining in the universal prayer of the Church being offered by your brothers and sisters in Christ all over the world.

5. You will be praying the  exact same prayers Pope Benedict prays every day.

6. You will be  participating in a tradition that is old as the Church itself. (In the book of Acts, the apostles went to the temple to pray at specific hours of the day.)

7. If you pray the Office on a regular basis, you will find that you have memorized lots of the psalms and other scripture passages painlessly.

8. Once you are accomplished at flipping about in a breviary, your fellow Catholic geeks  will be impressed.

9.You will acquire a cool vocabulary that includes words like breviary, vespers, Te Deum, compline, and antiphon.

10. You will be praying "with the same words used by Jesus, present for millenia in the prayer of Israel and of the Church." (Pope John Paul II)