Vespers Joins New Covenant To Old (LOH 7)

The Worth Revisiting post below (first published two years ago on the blog Principium et Finis) is the sixth in a series on the Liturgy of the Hours as a devotion for lay people (click for parts one, two, three, four, five and six). To enjoy the work of other faithful Catholic bloggers see Worth Revisiting Wednesday, hosted by Elizabeth Reardon at theologyisaverb.com and Allison Gingras at reconciledtoyou.com.

We can all pray the Liturgy of the Hours
 (The Prayer of the Spinner, by Gerrit Dou)

          Most of us, if we are familiar with the Liturgy of the Hours at all, assume it is simply something for priests and religious. The reality is that all of us can enrich our spiritual life through this ancient program of daily prayer, and the Church has explicitly invited us to do so.  In this series I have been looking at the Liturgy of the Hours a devotion for lay people. In the first three parts I discussed how the LOH has become a part of my life, how it can help all of us grow closer to Christ and His Church, and how we can incorporate the Liturgy into our busy lives. In the subsequent posts I look at particular Hours; today I take up the topic of Evening Prayer, traditionally known as Vespers.

   Vespers is perhaps the best-known of the liturgical hours from the Liturgy of the Hours.  It is quite often celebrated as a communal prayer in a church setting apart from the rest of the liturgy; it is also familiar to many non-Catholic or Orthodox Christians, for instance among high church Anglicans where (combined Night Prayer) it is often referred to as "Evensong." The name Vespers comes from the Latin word for evening, vesper, because the traditional canonical hour for the prayer is 6:00 p.m., although in practice it can be prayed any time between 4:30 and 7:30 (or thereabouts).

     Evening Prayer is one of the two “Hinges” of the liturgy, along with its counterpart Morning Prayer (Lauds; see here).  Like Morning Prayer, Vespers begins (after the usual opening verse) with two Psalms and a canticle.  Here the canticle comes after the two Psalm readings (it comes in between the psalms in Lauds), and, whereas the canticle in Morning Prayer is from the Old Testament, in Vespers it’s from the New Testament (excluding the Gospels).  Next we find a short scripture reading, again from the New Testament, as opposed to Morning Prayer’s Old Testament reading.  After that there is a three-part responsory, yet again following the pattern found in Lauds.  As an example, the responsory for today, Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter, is:

            The Holy Spirit is the Paraclete, alleluia, alleluia

-          The Holy Spirit is the Paraclete, alleluia, alleluia

He will teach you all things

-         alleluia, alleluia

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit.

-          The Holy Spirit is the Paraclete, alleluia, alleluia

     After this comes the Gospel canticle.  Whereas in Morning Prayer we say the Canticle of Zechariah (the Benedictus), here we pray the Canticle of Mary, better known as the Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55).  This is the prayer that Mary, pregnant with Our Lord, recites upon meeting her cousin Elizabeth (herself bearing John the Baptist in her womb). Then, after a series of intercessions, the hour concludes with a closing prayer.

 The Visitation by Domenico Ghirlandaio

    There is much we can say about Vespers taken alone.  As is the case with all liturgical prayer, and the Divine Office not the least, it takes us out of ourselves so that our focus in prayer is directed outward to our Creator and his saving work. The  structure within each canonical hour, and our need to accommodate our observances to a schedule, even loosely,  remind us that the world does not revolve around us individually. As St. Paul says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” ( Romans 12:2).  That transformation needs to come from without, and from above.  We are united to our Christian forebears, and their Hebrew antecedents, in reciting the Psalms that they have been offering up to the Father for thousands of years; in saying the same responses and intercessory prayers along with countless others around the world, we unite with the entire Church today in putting ourselves in the hands of God; not only that, in the Magnificat  we join Mary in her song of praise and thanksgiving to God for the way in which he has manifested his power in  her life.

     Beyond that, we see an even greater dimension to Evening Prayer when we look at it in tandem with Morning Prayer.  As we have seen, Old Testament readings in the morning give way to New Testament readings in the evening.  The occasion for the Benedictus, the Gospel Canticle we pray at Lauds, is the birth of the last prophet under the Old Covenant, John the Baptist, but the focus of the canticle is on the Savior for whom he is the Forerunner (“. . . For you will go before the Lord to prepare his way . . .”);  at Vespers the Magnificat marks the first meeting of the Forerunner and the Messiah, when the unborn John “leaps with joy” at the approach of the Savior (Luke 1:44), who is Himself in the Blessed Mother’s womb.  Through these two prayers we live out every day a microcosm of Salvation History: we start our day contemplating God’s covenant with the Hebrews, with a final focus on the last and culminating Prophet, John, who points us toward the New Jersalem; in the evening we see the coming of the Messiah with a New Covenant, and in Mary’s Canticle the reality that the New is the Fulfillment of the Old Covenant.

     This last point, I think, is why the Church calls these two hours the “Hinges”; everything else revolves around them, and they draw the other hours together into a single fabric.  The different canonical hours are not simply a series of prayers said at intervals throughout the day, they are really one prayer that extends through the whole day,  and “sanctifies time” by turning each day into a smaller version of the Liturgical Year, and so conforms us to the cycle of Salvation History, and from there to the pattern of Eternity.

     Next up: Compline, or Night Prayer.

Magnificat

 My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.
From this day all generations will call me blessed:
the Almighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his Name.
He has mercy on those who fear him in every generation.
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit.
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has come to the help of his servant Israel
for he has remembered his promise of mercy,
the promise he made to our fathers,
to Abraham and his children forever.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit,
as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever.

Amen.