The Visitation & Monteverdi "Magnificat"

In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a city of Judah,  and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit  and she exclaimed with a loud cry, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!  And why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?  For behold, when the voice of your greeting came to my ears, the babe in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord."  And Mary said, "My soul magnifies the Lord . . .  (Luke 1:39-46)

Ghirlandaio: "The Visitation"

     Today's Feast of the Visitation is touches so many different reasons why we honor the Blessed Mother, it's hard to know where to begin. For one thing, there is the way in which Luke's narrative connects Mary, who is the Arc of the New Covenant, with the Arc of the Covenant from the Old Testament (for an excellent explanation, see Steve Ray's article here). We also see the first example of how we can come to know Jesus through Mary: notice how it is the sound of Mary's voice that causes the unborn John the Baptist to leap for joy. We see, too, an explicit affirmation from Elizabeth that it is because of Mary's trust in God, her "yes", that she is blessed.

    This is far from an exhaustive list; we could spend a very long and fruitful time meditating on the meanings contained in this one brief passage.  I do want to mention one more thing, however: the beautiful and powerful prayer that Mary proclaims when she meets Elizabeth, whose opening words can be found at the end of the passage above (I include the entire prayer below).  This is, of course, the prayer we know as the Magnificat. Today's Office of Readings contains a passage from the early 8th century English monk St. Bede (more commonly called "The Venerable Bede"), who says:

    

Therefore it is an excellent and fruitful custom of holy Church that we should sing Mary’s hymn at the time of evening prayer. By meditating upon the incarnation, our devotion is kindled, and by remembering the example of God’s Mother, we are encouraged to lead a life of virtue.

Twelve centuries later the Magnificat is still part of Evening prayer, and it is still “excellent and fruitful” for us to join in her prayer.

    The clip below is a lovely musical version of the Magnificat composed by Claudio Monteverdi.

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 remembered his promise of mercy,

the promise he made to our fathers,

to Abraham and his children forever.  

(Lk 1:46-55)

Daytime Prayer Sanctifies Our Labors (LOH 9)

The Worth Revisiting post below (first published two years ago on the blog Principium et Finis) is the ninth in a series on the Liturgy of the Hours as a devotion for lay people (click for parts one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and eight) 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.  

    It is fitting, in a way, that this post on Daytime prayer comes last in the series, because Daytime Prayer (actually the three separate hours of Midmorning Prayer, Terce, Midday Prayer, Sext, and Midafternoon Prayer, None) is the most overlooked part of the Divine Office.  Without it, however, we do not enjoy the fullest experience of the daily Liturgy.

     Daytime prayer has traditionally contained three separate prayer hours, whose names come from the old Roman mode of designating time by counting the hours after dawn: Terce at the third hour (tertius is “third” in Latin), approximately 9:00 A.M., Sext at Noon, the sixth hour (in Latin sextus), and None from the Latin nonus, ninth, at that hour of the day (around 3:00 p.m.).   These hours are less prominent than the others in the overall scheme of the Liturgy, and so are considerably shorter.  Each contains  only three relatively short psalm readings (with their antiphons), a brief scripture reading (no more than one or two verses) and a closing prayer.

Daily Life is busy; New York's Little Italy c. 1900

   Their brevity is appropriate to the period of the day, when most of us are the busiest with our worldly occupations, and many people would find it impossible to fit in longer prayers.  They are also designed to be flexible: only one of these three prayer hours changes psalms according to the four week cycle each day and, except for some feast days, we can choose at which of the three hours we want to pray these psalms.  The benefit of this arrangement is that we won't miss any of the psalms if we pray even one of these three hours on a given day.  If we also pray one or both of the other two hours we use fixed psalms (called the Complementary Psalmody) that are the same every day.  Even the busiest layperson can normally find time to pray at least one of these brief hours during the day, and many of those under obligation to pray the Liturgy of the Hours are not required to pray all three. We should take the ease and flexibility of Daytime Prayer as an indication, not of its insignificance, but of how important it is, since the Church is making it so convenient to observe at least part of the Divine Office in the midst of our working day.
   And that is a great part of the value of these prayer hours.  It is possible to pray all the other hours before work in the morning and after we are finished in the evening, leaving the greater part of our day, the part that most occupies us mentally and physically, untouched by our sacred project of “sanctifying time”.  The very fact of interrupting the normal flow of things, even briefly, to turn our thoughts to God, and to pray with the sacred scriptures, draws together our fuller prayers in the morning and the evening to cover the whole day.

     We also find an emphasis in the psalms and prayers of Daytime Prayer that helps us to put whatever we do throughout the day into an “eternal” perspective.  We see many images of work, harvest, and, at None, the home life to which we are about to return.  Many of the psalms also emphasize God’s grace, mercy, and involvement in our lives.  For instance, the Complementary Psalmody for Midday Prayer includes Psalm 125, which begins:

            Those who put their trust in the Lord

            Are like Mount Zion, that cannot be shaken,

            That stands forever. . .   

The concluding prayer often directs our attention to the divine perspective on that particular part of our working day.  At the end of Terce on Monday of Week I, for instance, we are directed toward our labors to come:

            God our Father,

            work is your gift to us,

            a call to reach new heights

            by using our talents for the good of all.

            Guide us as we work and teach us to live

            in the spirit that has made us your sons and daughters,

            in the love that has made us brothers and sisters.

Then at Sext, when we are in the midst of our labors:

            Father,

            Yours is the harvest

            and Yours is the vineyard:

            You assign the task

            and pay a wage that is just.

            help us to meet this day’s responsibilities,

            and let nothing separate us from your love.

Finally, None’s  conclusion connects our mid-afternoon prayer to the prayer we see see Peter and the Apostles offering (see Acts 3:1) at the same time of day:

            Lord,

            You call us to worship You

            At the hour when the apostles went to pray in the temple . . .

As the last prayer on Monday connects the hour of the day with that hour in Salvation History, so the prayers for Friday of Week I give us an almost hourly recapitulation of the events of Good Friday.  The pray for Midmorning begins:

            Lord Jesus Christ,

            at this hour you led out

            to die on the cross

            for the salvation of the world . . .  

Then at Midday Prayer:

            Lord Jesus Christ,

            At noon, when darkness covered all the earth,

            You mounted the wood of the cross . . .

And finally, the prayer at Midafternoon begins:

            Lord Jesus Christ,

            You brought the repentant thief

            From the suffering of the cross

            To the joy of your kingdom . . .

     No discussion of Daytime prayer would be complete for me if I didn’t mention two of my favorite psalms, 127 and 128, which we find in Midafternoon Complementary Psalmody.  Both point to the home to which we are about to return.  On a deeper level they help us look at the work day that is nearing completion in the context of God’s abundance and mercy, and remind us that He rewards those who rely upon Him.  Psalm 127  begins with an image of a house under construction to represent our need for God’s help: “If the Lord does not build the house/In vain do its builders labor”; the last half of the psalm depicts God’s abundant blessings, as represented by our children:

            Truly sons are a gift from the Lord,

            A blessing, the fruit of the womb.

            Indeed the sons of youth

            Are like arrows in the hand of a warrior.

The Wife a Fruitful Vine: "A Hearty Welcome", Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Psalm 128, the final Psalm of Daytime Prayer, beautifully encapsulates the whole day of work by pointing to its end, in which we see the whole chain of love and abundance.  Here, our “yes” to God’s love for us finds fruitfulness in our work under His care, reflected in the fruitfulness of our wife, who is compared to a flourishing vine. That abundance is in turn passed on to our children and to our children’s children.  I can think of no better closing for this essay than to reproduce Psalm 128 in full:

O blessed are those who fear the Lord

and walk in his ways!

By the labor of your hands you shall eat.

You will be happy and prosper;

the wife like a fruitful vine

in the heart of your house;

Your children like shoots of the olive,

around the your table.

Indeed thus shall be blessed

the man who fears the Lord.

May the Lord bless you from Zion

all the days of your life!

May you see your children's children

in a happy Jerusalem!

On Israel, peace!     

Compline Points To Eternity (LOH 8)

The Worth Revisiting post below (first published two years ago on the blog Principium et Finis) is the eighth in a series on the Liturgy of the Hours as a devotion for lay people (click for parts one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven.) 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.

      In today's discussion of the Liturgy of the Hours I'll focus on Night Prayer, or Compline.  This office  plays a special role in the overall plan of the Liturgy of the Hours.  It complements the Invitatory Psalm with which we start the daily liturgy. While the Invitatory orients us to God from the first moments of the day, reminding us of his Lordship and the challenges we are likely to face if  we fail to rely on Him, Compline draws our daily activities to a conclusion, and puts us in a proper frame of mind to surrender ourselves to the Lord’s care in sleep.  At the same time as it prepares us for our nightly sleep, however, Night Prayer also prepares us for our eternal rest in the life to come.

Nunc Dimittis: Simeon sees the infant Jesus in the Temple

    Night Prayer is structured much like a shorter version of Lauds or Vespers: there is a Psalmody, a brief scripture reading followed by a responsory, a Gospel Canticle and closing prayer.  But there are also significant differences.  After the usual opening (“Lord, come to my assistance . . .”) we conduct an examination of conscience, followed by the Confiteor, the Kyrie or some other appropriate penitential prayer.  There is only one psalm, or two very short ones, no intercessions, and the closing prayer is followed by a Marian antiphon.  Also, in addition to being shorter, there is much less variety in Night Prayer.  Aside from minor variations for particularly important solemnities and "alleiuas" during the Easter season, the prayers all follow the same cycle every week (as opposed to a four week cycle, and much greater variation for liturgical seasons, in the other hours). 

     Compline is a wonderfully effective transitional prayer.  At the beginning we tie up any loose ends from the day in the examination of conscience and put them behind us in the penitential prayer.  If there is a hymn, it isn’t sung until after those things are done; only then are we ready to entrust ourselves to the mercy of God.  That reliance on God’s Grace is a major element in the Psalmody for Night Prayer. Sunday’s psalm, for instance (Psalm 91) begins:

            He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

            And abides in the shade of the Almighty –

            Says to the Lord: “My refuge,

            My Stronghold, my God in whom I trust!”

           

The themes of night (“Lift your hands to the holy place/and bless the Lord through the night”, Psalm 134, Saturday) and sleep (“I will lie down in peace and sleep comes at once”, Psalm 4, Friday) also play a large role – as does the theme of death (“Will you work your wonders for the dead/Will the shades stand and praise you?”, Psalm 88, Thursday).

     The theme of preparing ourselves for eternal rest becomes even more explicit in the responsory that follows the short scripture verse:

            Into your hands lord, I commend my spirit.

                        - Into your hands lord, I commend my spirit.

            You have redeemed us, Lord God of Truth

                        -I commend my spirit.

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

                        - Into your hands lord, I commend my spirit.

This verse is based on Psalm 31, but is perhaps more familiar to us from Luke 23:46, when Jesus recites the first line as he is dying on the cross.  Because of its close association with the crucifixion it is replaced during the Octave of Easter with “This is the day the Lord has made/Let us rejoice and be glad”; other than that, we say this same responsory every night of the year, albeit with “alleluia, alleluia” included during the Easter season outside the Octave.

     After the responsory we find the Gospel Canticle, the Canticle of Simeon (also known as the Nunc Dimittis, from Luke 2:29-32) which begins “Lord, now you let your servant go in peace . . .”   This is the prayer of thanksgiving sung by the old prophet Simeon, to whom it had been revealed “by the Holy Spirit that he should not see death before he had seen the Lord’s Christ” (Luke 2:26).  This prayer forms a sort of triptych with the Canticles from Lauds and Vespers: in the morning, with the Benedictus, the focus is on John the Baptist, the Forerunner of the Messiah; at Evening Prayer in the Magnificat we see the first meeting (in utero!) of the Forerunner and the Messiah himself; at Compline the Messiah makes his first appearance in the Temple to claim his birthright, and Simeon, the aged representative of the Old Covenant, declares himself satisfied, praises God, and retires to his final repose.

     The closing prayer is appropriate to the hour; Thursday’s office,  for instance, closes with:

            Lord God,

            Send peaceful sleep

            To refresh our tired bodies.

            May your help always renew us

And keep us strong in your service.

The conclusion that follows makes explicit reference to the connection between our nightly rest and the more permanent repose to come:

            May the all-powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death.

     We close Night Prayer with an antiphon addressed to the Blessed Mother.
     Compline, or Night Prayer, is like the other offices, but also has a special part to play in the daily Office. Even if we are lay people praying the Liturgy of the Hours as a private devotion, it is still a liturgical, which is to say a public, prayer and by its very nature it draws us out of ourselves to unite us with Christ and his Mystical Body, the Church.  Night Prayer does that and more: as we go through the office we put our affairs in order, as it were, in the penitential rite at the beginning; after that in the prayers that follow we turn our attention from the concerns of the day to the preparation of our souls for the night to come; we entrust ourselves to the Lord's Mercy ("Into you hands I commend my spirit") and then, through the words of Simeon and the concluding verse, reach beyond our rest in this world and ask for God's Grace in the world to come.  Our final prayer is to ask for the intercession of the First Disciple, who, we know, is already enjoying the Lord's peace in Heaven, and whom we hope to join there beyond the final setting of the sun on this world.

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.

Our Daily Orientation: Lauds (LOH 6)

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, and five). 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. 

In my latest discussion on the Liturgy of the Hours we take a look at Morning Prayer, also known as Lauds.  One may pray the Office of Readings first, which traditionally has been prayed in the middle of the night, but Lauds is specifically designed to start us on our daily journey.

The Structure of the Office

"The Birth of St. John the Baptist" by Giuliano Bugiardini

    First, a few words on the structure of this office.   If it’s the first office of the day we start with the Invitatory; otherwise, as in the other offices, we start with “Lord open my lips/and my mouth will proclaim your praise” followed by a “Glory be . . . “.   This is followed by the psalmody where. Lauds is unlike the Office of Readings, in which there are three psalm readings, because here we find two psalms with an Old Testament canticle of comparable length in between.  All three are followed the “Glory Be”, and are bracketed by antiphons.  The particular reading and antiphons follow a four-week cycle, and there may also be other antiphons for particular times, such as Holy Week or Easter.

     Next comes a brief scripture reading, normally only a couple of verses.  These vary more widely by the season (there are different readings for Advent, Christmas Season, Lent, Easter) and, often by particular Holy Days.  This is followed by a three-part responsory, which also varies according to the liturgical calendar.  For Today, Wednesday of the Sixth Week of Easter, the responsory is:

            

The Lord is risen from the tomb, alleluia, alleluia

                - The Lord is risen from the tomb, alleluia, alleluia

He hung upon the cross for us

                -  alleluia, alleluia

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

                - The Lord is risen from the tomb, alleluia, alleluia

     The Canticle of Zechariah (called the Benedictus from it's first word in Latin) always follows the responsory.  This Gospel Canticle is the song of praise proclaimed by Zechariah after his voice has been returned to him at the naming of his son, John the Baptist. It is also preceded and followed by antiphons determined by the liturgical calendar.

     The office ends with a series of intercessions and a closing prayer which, yet again, accord with the season or Holy Day.

Our Daily Orientation

     I have always appreciated the way in which this office “orients” me at the beginning of the day.  Any morning prayer or offering should be expected to direct our attention to our relationship with our creator, of course, and Lauds certainly does that.  In addition to that, the canticles are passages that we might not ordinarily see: the Canticle of Hannah, for instance, (1 Samuel 2:1-10), a precursor to Mary’s Magnificat; a canticle from the prophet Habakkuk, chapter 3, that includes the evocative line “decay invades my bones”; or the triumphant song chanted by the Hebrews after the crossing of the Red Sea (Exodus 15:1):

            I will sing to the Lord, for he is gloriously triumphant,

            Horse and chariot he has cast into the sea . . . .

This last is reputed to be one of the oldest (at least in its present form) passages in the Bible.

     But the office of Morning Prayer does even more.  It does not just orient us as individuals to God: It orients us to the whole scope of Salvation history.  For instance, every Friday the penitential Psalm 51 opens the office:

            Have mercy on me God, in your kindness.

            In your compassion blot out my offense.

            O wash me more and more from my guilt

            And cleanse me from my sin.

This prayer and others in the Office remind us of the fact that on Friday we focus in a special way on Christ’s suffering for our salvation. When we faithfully pray the Divine Office we always start our day knowing how that day fits in the Big Picture, throughout the week and throughout the liturgical year.
     We also start our day with a specific celebration of the liturgical season, or a particular solemnity or saint’s day, which has a much greater impact than if we should happen to remember it (or not) at some point during the course of the day.  The overall effect is that it brings us out of ourselves and unites us in prayer with the entire Church, which is saying the same prayer throughout the world, and which lives the same faith throughout time.  What better way to greet the new day?