Office of Thomas More for the Fortnight

"Nothing can come but what God wills. And I am very sure that whatever that may be, however bad it may seem, it shall indeed be the best." 
-from a letter written in prison to his daughter, Office of Readings

St. Thomas More is the patron of the Fortnight for Freedom, therefore it is fitting to use his office today (everything in the proper of saints and Common of Martyrs) rather than the weekday. Fitting both for us in the United States as well as our brethren in Canada, whose bishops have also begun to stir in defense or badly eroded religious liberty

If you neglected More today and did the regular office, at least go back to the Office of Readings and see his letter to his daughter, Margaret, quoted above. (scroll way, way down on the ibreviary widget on the right to find it.)  Thinking of St. Thomas today, and asking his intercession in regard to our troubles, will help us put things in perspective: at this point in the United States, we are still only at the level of experiencing what a popular meme would call "first world Catholic problems."  Yes, we should work hard and fight, with all the tools that a free people have, against what the government is doing. At the same time, realize that we don't have it so bad compared to what happens to many Christians around the world this very day. This is not China. This is not Egypt. This is not Mexico in 1920.  We might get there yet, but at this point we can still be happy warriors. (and should remain happy warriors no matter what happens, of course, but at this point it is still quite easy to do so.)
The example of St. Thomas also forces us to consider the possibility that things might get worse. Much worse.   Maybe, in the Divine Economy, it is our turn to face loss of property, imprisonment, or death within the next generation or two.  Who knows? More tells us that should this come to pass, it "shall indeed be best." Meditate on that for the day.

Or if meditation is too hard in this summer heat, watch A Man for All Seasons with your kids.

One more quote from St. Thomas that I love is from a prayer he wrote in prison. A great metaphor in this line about human respect:
Give me the grace, good Lord, to set the world at naught;
to set my mind fast upon Thee 
and not to hang upon the blast of men's mouths.


St. Thomas More, pray for us.

Breviary History #3- the League of the Divine Office

guest post by James I. McCauley

 The First A Short Breviary, 1941

At the time of his death in 1938, one of the projects Dom Virgil Michel was working on was a condensed version of the roman breviary in the Vernacular. Dom Godfrey Diekmann O.S.B. (1908-2002) pushed the work along and the work received the support of the then Abbot of St. John’s Alcuin Deutsch, O.S.B. (Abbot of St. John’s 1921-1950). A key factor was that the Breviary would only be in the vernacular, and not in Latin. The Breviary was a simplified Roman Breviary, not the Monastic Breviary, though Monastic Compline was provided. The Vulgate Psalms were used in this first edition. Receiving its imprimatur in November of 1940, the first printing of the first edition came out in 1941 and quickly sold out. Further printings were done in 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945 and 1951. The volume was titled A Short Breviary For The Religious and For The Laity. Amazing, every copy of the first edition (in its various printings, confusing called “editions”) that have come into my possession were once owned by lay folks, men and women! Anyone who was associated with the League of the Divine Office in this era more likely than not used this Breviary. It was phenomenally successful, and I have found used copies from all over the Midwest and the northeast. Only one of the thirty plus copies I have seen over the years has been associated with a religious. All seem to be laymen, and, at most, possibly tertiaries. Please note that this was all before Vatican II, when the layperson was supposedly sitting dumbly in his pew, clutching his rosary, and not understanding a thing as to what was going on. In plain English, active participation in the liturgy by the laity was taking place well before the liturgical changes inaugurated by Vatican II.

Just how successful was this book? My grandfather, a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Navy, received a copy in 1944 and brought his copy out into the Pacific with him in 1944-1945. He used it faithfully. Many years later, in 1981 after his death, I inherited it, and I began to use it in September 1986. I used this regularly, on and off, had it rebound, until I finally replaced it with the Monastic Diurnal in the fall of 2009.

We have two images of the Short Breviary, one showing the Beuronese style front plate as it was in the 1941 through 1945. The 1951 shows the first piece of Brother Placid Stuckenschneider OSB (1926-2007) art associated with the Short Breviary.

The Breviary set in motion the great work of St. John’s Abbey and the Liturgical Press in regards to the Breviary, a work that should not be forgotten.