Chapter 16
psalms of the night office only. Nevertheless every Sunday, except during the Forty Days, the canticle (from the prophets),
Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, and Nones shall be chanted with an ' alleluja" only, but at Vespers again with an antiphon. The responsories, on the other hand, are never sung with an "alle luja" except from Easter until Pentecost.
SIXTEENTH CHAPTER
How the Work of God shall be performed during the day-time As the prophet says, "Seven times a day have I given praise to thee" (Ps. cxviii, 164). We shall observe this sacred number of seven if we perform the duties of our bondservice at Lauds,
Prime, Tierce, Sext, and Nones, Vespers and Compline, because it was of these hours that it was said: "Seven times a day have
I given praise to thee." Then of the night-watches the same pro phet says: "I rose at midnight to give thee praise" (Ps. cxviii,
62). Consequently, at these times let us perform the (duty of) praising our Creator on account of the "judgments of his justice" (Ps. cxviii, 164), that is, at Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, and Nones, also at Vespers and Compline; likewise, in the night let us rise to give him praise.
Excursus I.
The eight Prayer Periods.—"The Apostle indeed admonishes us to pray with out ceasing (Thess. v, 17), and with the Saints their very sleep should be a prayer. Nevertheless, we must set aside stated hours for the duty of praying.
Then, should any occupation keep us away from it, the hour itself will remind us of that duty. As such prayer times everyone knows of the third, sixth, and ninth hours, the morning, and the evening hours. Nor should you ever take nourishment without beginning to do so with a prayer. Likewise, you should not leave the table without discharging your duty of thanks to the Creator.
In the night, too, one should rise from his couch two or three times and therewith recall what he has learned by heart from the Scriptures (in the day time). On leaving his abode he should arm himself with prayer. Also, he pie and was adopted by the infant Church (cf. Apoc. xix, Iff). It was the trium phant paean of the Resurrection. St. Benedict was not as yet acquainted with the Septuagesima, namely, the seventieth day before Easter.
should say a prayer upon his return before he seats himself again. After that only is the life entitled to its nourishment and the body to its rest. Before every action, at the beginning of every undertaking, let the hand make the sign of the cross" (Letter xxii, 37, from the year 384).
St. Jerome here speaks for the primitive Church as well as for monachism in general. He also gives voice to two equally self-evident Christian ideas, viz., that one must really pray always and at the same time adhere to the practice of setting aside specific periods for (common) prayer. He tallies in all six prayer periods: Morning, Evening, and Night prayers, as well as prayer at the third, sixth, and ninth hours. The Holy Rule gives us eight periods of prayer: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Tierce, Sext, Nones, Vespers, and Compline
(cf. chap, viii, Excursus). Since the Rule of St. Benedict, in the matter of "canonical prayer periods," the number eight has become a common tradi tion in the Church. St. Benedict himself most likely took the number from ecclesiastico-monastic tradition. Some isolated questions on this point are still obscure. We know very little, for example, about whether or not our holy Father was acting creatively in organizing these periods of prayer or whether he merely adopted the usage of some ecclesiastical or monastic center
(such as Rome, Milan, Naples, or Lerins). The provisions which he laid down for the build-up of the eight canonical hours and the distribution of the 150 psalms over the seven days of the week are still valid today. At any rate, the texts for the individual canonical hours have become exceedingly polymorphic throughout the progressive development of the liturgical year. It may, then, be useful to add a sentence or two here concerning each of these socalled hours of prayer.
The Night Office, or Matins.— It was a very old, if not a most primitive Christian custom, that goes back to the time of the Apostles, namely, of breaking up and thereby sanctifying the night, at least by private prayer (cf.
Acts xvi, 25). Irreproachable witnesses to this age-old Christian practice are Clement of Alexandria (f 215), Tertullian of Carthage (f 220), and Hippolytus of Rome (f 238). Hippolytus speaks of two periods of nocturnal prayer, one at midnight and one at cock-crow (c. 3:00 A.M.). Prayer at night was one of the very oldest of the practices among the primitive Christians.
These orisons at midnight, naturally, were performed in the home. In the course of time, however, they were transferred to the church, and about the year 400 we find the custom to have been in full flower. But the monks had fostered the practice of nocturnal prayer from the beginning. With the monks of Pachomius it was still a private practice; but with those of St. Basil it be came one of the community exercises.
The concrete and detailed build-up of the nocturnal praises of God in psalms, lessons, and collects varied with the different monastic rules. In con trast to the episcopal and cathedral churches, wherein the lessons and col lects formed the solemn and main part of a canonical hour, the monks gave
the psalms and psalmody by far the more prominent place in the service, a place which they still occupy today. The first monks considered it a very great achievement, one worth while striving for, to recite the whole psalter in one day, whereas St. Benedict, more moderate, thought it prudent to distribute it over a period of seven days (chap, xviii). Nevertheless, despite all the pro minence given to the psalms, the proportion of time and space allotted to the lessons by the old monks was still considerable. And we note that later in the Rule of St. Benedict there is the admonition (cf. chap, xi) that great care must be taken lest the lessons or the responsories may have to be curtailed be cause the brethren do not rise in due time.
The practice of praying, both privately and publicly together at night, as we have intimated, is more ancient than monasticism; but the monks took to the practice with a special love. Up to the present hour, the night office is still the queen of all the eight prayer periods. As has been said, it began with the custom of private prayer in the primitive Church, not with the primitive
Church vigils that preceded the celebration of the Eucharist. This can readily be deduced from the circumstance that the first night-watches (that is, those of Easter Eve) were set ever farther and farther back to the preceding Saturday, while in the course of time the public night-watches were mostly postponed to the early hours of Sunday morning, so that they formed a single service with the Laudes, the original name of which (Matutini — Morning office) was eventually applied to the unified service.
The Morning Office, or Lauds.—The morning office (called Matutini in the Rule and which we know today as Lauds), is a canonical hour of prayer that is really of monastic origin. According to Abbot Cassian, it was first introduced into the cloisters at Bethlehem around the year 360, by way of announcing to the monks that their night's rest had come to an end (Institutes iii, 2ff). As a practice in the custom of private prayer, it is surely much older. As an hour of prayer in common, it quickly captured the fancy of the early monks.
Taking Abbot Cassian as a witness again, it consisted originally of psalms 148 to 150 (Laudate . . . etc., whence the modern term Laudes and our En glish "Lauds"), and psalms 50 and 62. Similar in its make-up and external solemnity (chants and ceremonies) to the Evensong, or Vespers, it has be come, with the latter service, the day's favorite period of prayer.
The Office of Prime.—The office of Prime, the period of prayer set for the first hour of the day (that is, at approximately six o'clock in the morning), is historically the most recent of the canonical hours. It originated in the West, at Lerins, in the closing decades of the fifth century. It is mentioned for the first time in the "Rule for Nuns" by St. Caesarius of Arles (chap. lxix). In the Holy Rule as well as in the Rule of the Master, its existence is taken very much as a matter of course, while, for example, in the south-Italian cloister of Cassiodorus, it was still unknown as late as the years between 540 and 570.
It must have taken a relatively long time to gain general acceptance.
In the course of the seventh century, a period of prayer that was called the Secunda, that is, the "second hour," had been introduced into the monasteries of St. Columban, but it did not succeed in passing into general usage. The off ice of Prime, judging from its general tenor, was really a period of prayer de signed to introduce the manual labor of the day.
Tierce, Sext, and Nones.—The offices of Tierce, Sext, and Nones (that is, the prayer periods at the end of the third, sixth, and ninth hours of the day, or at approximately 9:00 A.M., 12:00 noon, and 3:00 P.M.) were already practices of private devotion in the primitive Church. They undoubtedly go back to Apostolic times and were probably of Jewish inspiration (cf. Dan. vi, 10). St.
Basil is witness to the fact that, as common prayer periods, these offices are of monastic origin. They were, however, still private prayer times with the monks of St. Pachomius.
Vespers.—Vespers, or Evensong, from the Latin Vespera, evening or Lamp lighting time, is older than monasticism, and can undoubtedly be traced back to the evening sacrifices customarily a part of the Hebrew temple service (cf.
Ps. cxl, 2). This period, also, in view of the external solemnity that accompa nied it, was, like the office of Lauds, a very festive prayer hour of the day.
Compline.—The closing service of the day, or Compline, which is held at the onset of darkness, is also of monastic origin and was already mentioned as a community exercise by St. Basil.
Excursus II.
Symbolism of the Prayer Periods.—The Holy Rule contents itself with ar ranging and regulating the individual prayer times, establishing their make-up, and specifying the number and identity of their psalms. It does not concern it self with their mystical meaning. The number seven that the psalmist speaks of (Ps. cxviii, 164) was intended, in the first place, merely to direct attention to his earnest, persevering, and unceasing prayer and in no wise to testify to any existing usage of seven prayer periods prevailing at the time. Abbot Cassian thought that the Scriptural text, "Seven times a day have 1 given praise to thee," had been lived up to by the monks at Bethlehem after they had added the office of Lauds to their current six periods of prayer. Yet he does not fail to point out that Lauds had not been added merely to fulfill the word ing of the psalm. Nor does he rule out that possibility (Institutes iii, 4). St.
Benedict, on the other hand, saw to it that the wording of the psalm was liter ally followed by directing that the seven periods of prayer would be performed in the actual course of the day. For that additional eighth hour of the nightwatches he adduced as his precedent the 62nd verse of the same psalm: "At midnight I rose to praise thee." Of course, the final purpose of all the eight times of prayer was the praise of the Creator, the actual Abba, that is, the actual Father of the Koinobion.
It was, relatively speaking, not very long before the monks began to in quire among themselves exactly why prayers should be performed at these
hours and not at others and reverently to search the Scriptures for the reason.
On the one hand, they soon uncovered and recorded mystical relationships be tween these times of prayer and the hours of prayer mentioned in the lives of our Lord and his Apostles, and, on the other hand, rather general con nections between the hours mentioned in Holy Scripture and the customary prayer periods of the time.
According to St. Basil, the Morning Office (Lauds) "is a reminder for us to dedicate the day's first ideas of the mind and the first emotions of the heart to God and to occupy ourselves with no other cares until we have been oriented towards God through our thoughts, as it is written: 'I remembered
God and was delighted' (Ps. lxxvi, 4), nor have given ourselves over to manual labor before we have done as it was said: 'To thee will I pray, O Lord; in the morning thou shalt hear my voice; in the morning I will stand before thee and meditate' (cf. Ps. iv, 4-5). Furthermore, about the third hour (Tierce) one should rise for prayer and assemble the brethren, no matter how each one may be occupied at the time, so that they may be reminded of the vouchsafement of the Holy Spirit, who descended upon the Apostles at the third hour
(Acts ii, 15). All then should unanimously adore him, so that they may also partake of his sanctification and call upon him to lead them in his way and teach them what is profitable, after the example of him who said: 'Create a clean heart in me, O God: and renew a right spirit within my bowels. Cast me not away from thy face; and take not thy holy spirit from me' (Ps. 1, 1213). And in another place: 'Thy good spirit shall lead me along the right course' (cf. Ps cxlii, 10) . . . Also at the sixth hour (Sext), shall we consider prayer a necessity after the example of the Saints, who say: 'Evening and morning and at noon I will speak and proclaim, and he shall hear my voice'
(cf. Ps. liv, 18). The 90th psalm, also, should be recited at this time, so that we may be protected against the attacks of the noon-day devil."—But St. Bene dict chose the 90th psalm for the service of Compline.—"That the ninth hour is also a needful time for prayer has been handed down to us in the Acts of the Apostles (iii, 1), where we read that Peter and John 'went up into the temple at the ninth hour of prayer' ."
"At the close of the day (Vespers), however, we should give thanks for the good deeds that have been done by us, confessing (at least to ourselves) all the things that we have neglected to do in the same period, making atonement to God in prayer for all the sins that we have committed in our hearts, voluntarily or involuntarily or unknowingly, in word, or in deed. For it is most profitable to reflect upon what has transpired, so that we may not fall into the same sins again. Wherefore it is written: 'The things you see in your hearts, be sorry for them on your beds' (Ps. iv, 3). Likewise, at the be ginning of the night proper, let us pray our Compline with the same thought in mind, that our night's rest may not be disturbed by self-reproaches and phantastic dream pictures. So also at this hour it may be necessary to chant the
90th psalm. But Paul and Silas (in prison) have taught us that we should also pray in the middle of the night: 'And at midnight Paul and Silas praying, praised God' (Acts xvi, 25). The psalmist also says: 'I rose at midnight to give praise to thee on account of thy just judgments' (Ps cxviii, 62). Furthermore, we must anticipate the dawn (Lauds) and rise for prayer, so that the day
(light) may not find us in our beds, and we may be able to say with David:
'My eyes to thee have prevented (outrun) the morning, so that 1 might meditate on thy words' (cxviii, 148). Those who have resolved to live conscientiously for the honor of God and Christ may not neglect any of these periods (of prayer). In my opinion, however, the variety and alternation of the prayers at stated hours is a useful help for the simple reason that the soul (and mind) often tend to grow careless and give into distractions on account of the monotony. But if the chants and prayers are changed at different hours, the soul's attention and longing (for God) will be renewed and refreshed" (Longer
Rules xxxvii, 3-4).
Abbot Cassian offers a different symbolism from Basil for the offices of Sext, Nones, and Vespers. "At the sixth hour the spotless sacrifice of our
Lord and Savior was offered up to his Father, and, in as much as he mounted the cross for the salvation of the whole world, he atoned for all the sins of all mankind (cf. Matt xxvii, 45ff). Furthermore, it was at the sixth hour that St. Peter, in a state of ecstasy, received the revelation that all the nations were called to salvation (Acts x, lOff) ... At the ninth hour, however, the Savior descended into Limbo, dissipated through the mere splendor of his glory, the impenetrable darkness of hell, broke down its portals of bronze, sprung its cross-bars of iron, and (later on) took the imprisoned Saints with him to para dise (cf. Matt, xxv, 45) ... It was at this hour that the centurion Cornelius was engaged at his customary prayers . . . and at that ninth hour the secret was re vealed to him of this call to the gentiles (cf. Acts x, 1—3). From all of which it becomes luminously clear that not unrighteously were these hours dedicated to divine service by holy and apostolic men, and that they must in con sequence be so observed by us. For if we are not held by some sort of regula tion to this pious service at fixed hours, it will often happen that through sloth, forgetfulness, or the demands of our occupations, we shall pass the whole day without having inserted a prayer (even) now and then. And what shall I say of the evening sacrifice, the uninterrupted oblation of which was laid down in the Old Testament by a Mosaic law (cf. Ps. cxl, 2)? . . . From that Script ural passage one may deduce a devout interpretation and think of the true
Vesper service, either the sacrifice which was offered up in the sight of his disciples by the Lord and Savior at the Supper on the night before and by which was initiated the most august mystery of the Church (the Mass), or that Sacrifice on the following day, as an evening oblation to his Father at the close of day by the lifting up of his hands (on the cross) for the salvation of the whole world . . .
"As to the morning service (Lauds), however, there are passages that we chant daily at this festive hour, which are instructive, for example: 'O God, my God, for thee do I watch at break of day' (cf. Psalms xliii, 1-7 and psalm cxviii, 147f) ... At the hours, also, the householder hired laborers for his vineyard; for it is written of him that he went out early in the morning to hire their services, then at the third hour, after that at the sixth, then at the ninth, and, finally, at the eleventh, whereby is meant, of course, the evening or closing hour of the (working) day" (Institutes iii, 3). Because Cassian was prepossessed in favor of the eremitical ideal and gave it his entire sympathy, he personally advocated the superiority of the hermit's manner of prayer, since it was performed without let-up even at his work. "This kind of prayer," he said, "is the more perfect; for what is done without interruption is better than that which performed only at intervals; and a voluntary gift is more pleasing than those that are offered under the constraint of a rule" (Institutes iii, 2).
In the opinion of Caesarius of Arles—he appeals explicitly to the rule of Lerins—the hymns are the parts of the office that give expression to the my stic meanings of the respective prayer periods. This seems to be in agreement with the thoughts, now well known to us, of Sts. Basil and Cassian. The "little hour" of Sext recalled the story of Abraham, who welcomed and enter tained the three angels at midday (Gen. xviii, Iff). The monks looked upon the three angels as symbols of the mystery of the Blessed Trinity, which the Arians denied. More than ordinarily diverse are the hymns at Vespers (cf. chap. xlvi).
The hymns in use today, summer and winter, at Matins on Sundays and weekdays, at Pentecost and Epiphany, are reminiscent respectively of the first day of creation, of the Lord's Resurrection, and of the night and the darkness of sin, which must give way to the light that is Christ. The hymns at Lauds, especially, emphasize the thought of light. Famous is the hymn at Lauds on Sunday, composed by St. Ambrose, which German commentators call das Hahnenlied (— the Chanticleer Song). Also by that saint is the glorious hymn of the Monday Lauds, a paean in praise of Christ, the "true
Sun." The hymns at Prime, Tierce, Sext, Nones, and Compline dwell fanci fully on the corresponding position of the sun in the heaven at these hours.
At Vespers, the hymns make references to the setting sun and to the separate and individual days of creation and their works. All these hymns, of course, originated back in the early days of Christianity. An ideal monastic order would naturally consider it a matter of importance to fit these eight periods of prayer as nearly as possible into the corresponding hours of the day and night.
Excursus III.
Piety and Devotion as evoked by the Psalms.—In his Rule, St. Benedict ad duces 53 passages from the psalms, whereas he quotes only 19 times from the rest of the Old Testament and but 46 times from the New. In view of the im-
portance the psalms take in the Holy Rule, the question naturally arises as to how St. Benedict prayed them and how he would have his monks pray them. The answer points to three characteristic qualities of the Rule's devo tion in the chanting of the psalms. The Holy Rule knows nothing, or almost nothing, of their symbolic-metaphorical (allegorical) interpretation. It en visions the monk addressing the psalms as prayers directly to Christ, not as Christ praying them to his heavenly Father.
Let an example illustrate what we mean by a symbolic-metaphorical inter pretation of the psalms. Cassiodorus, contemporary of St. Benedict, compares the humble monks to the nest-building song sparrows (Ps. ciii, 17), in that they live off the bounty of wealthy Christians and sing a song (in gratitude) to the Lord. This interpretation is wholly arbitrary, and is in no wise implied in the wording of the psalm alluded to. Since the time of Origen, Christian in terpretation of the psalms and their devotional assets have been thoroughly impregnated witth this sort of Scriptural exegesis. Augustine's commentary on the psalms provides numerous examples. Only one motif in all this did St.
Benedict make use of, namely, when in the prologue and in the fourth chapter, from an allegorical exegesis of psalm cxxxvi, 9, he speaks of "taking one's evil thoughts and dashing them against (the rock) Christ." We are not dealing here with the actual citation of a psalm. But St. Benedict does make a conces sion there to the allegorical tastes of the time (cf. prologue, comment 3).
Nevertheless, we can say that he was not influenced by the allegorism of St.
Augustine. The great Doctor and Bishop of Hippo was before all else a rhetorician par excellence.
It is a further characteristic of Augustine's attitude of devotion—and he was by no means the only one to do so—that he advocated praying the psalms to the Father through the person of Christ. In the person of the one Christ, the voices of all the psalm-chanters flows together. In the psalms St. Augustine hears the voice of Christ speaking to his Father. The voices of the members chime in with the voice of their Lord. One gets the impression that Benedict knowingly and intentionally disregarded this pious attitude of devotion on the part of Augustine in praying the psalms. He lets his monks address the words of the psalmist directly to Christ. The "I" of the psalms is the monk himself, so long as it is not otherwise apparent from the context.
St. Benedict places the third psalm, wherein occurs this verse: "I have slept, and I have taken my rest, because the Lord hath protected me" (6th v.) at the beginning of the night office. Augustine, Cassiodorus, and many of the other Church Fathers refer this verse to the death of the Lord and to his resurrection at Easter. St. Benedict obviously wished to have it understood of the "rising" of the monk, whom the Lord was calling to the "Work of God."
Moreover, he does not hesitate to apply to the humbly self-effacing monk that passage in the 21st psalm (7th verse), which the Savior prayed before his death: "I am a worm and no man" (cf. chap, vii, 7th degree of humility).