The hymn of Morning Prayer is then sung between the responsory of the last reading in the Office of Readings and the psalmody of Morning Prayer. In other houses, the Invitatory is sung and the psalmody of Office of Readings follows immediately without a hymn. In some houses, the hymn of Morning Prayer is sung immediately after the Invitatory, and then at the end of the Office of Readings the psalmody of Morning Prayer begins immediately. Q: In religious houses of my order in the United States there is no agreement on the position of the hymn when the Office of Readings and Morning Prayer are combined as a single office. (See page 9 in the Portal Magazine for Monsignor Newton’s article on the forthcoming publication of the customary.Combining Office of Readings and Morning PrayerĪnswered by Father Edward McNamara, professor of liturgy at the Regina Apostolorum university. It also needs to be available as a free download so it is affordable for parishes. Bishops of England and Wales we want a fully approved, notated version of the Hours in English set to simple Gregorian or Gregorian based tones. To conclude if we are going to comply with the intentions of Sacrosanctum Concilium we need help. Whilst this book is good value at £10, few parishes are going to cough up £300 plus just to purchase a small set. Jeffrey Tucker rightly points out though that Ignatius Press have the copyright on this book and there are no free digital downloads available. If you want to sing Vespers in Latin there is now the beautiful Antiphonale Romanum which just covers Sundays and feastdays but it is tricky singing from this if you are not accustomed to chanting psalmody to the Gregorian psalm tones.Ĭompline is much easier thanks to Fr Weber’s brilliant book which was published last year. If you want to sing the English and Wales approved translation of say the Benedictus at Lauds you will have to point it yourself. For Lauds and I Vespers of the Sacred Heart we used Fr Samuel Weber’s settings taken from the Mandelein Psalter (the latter is available online.) Whilst the Mandelein Psalter with its Gregorian based tones is a tremendous resource and it is simple enough for congregations to pick up, the translation has only been approved by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. I had to point some of the psalms copying his template and it takes a long time to do. ) These texts were then kindly notated by Ian Williams, which is not an easy job to do. How can priests encourage the laity to collectively recite the divine office if there are such limited resources?įor example, in order to sing the lesser hours, None, Terce and Sext, I had to take the texts from Universalis and then match the psalms with the Grail Psalter translations (Universalis cannot publish the Grail Psalter online for copyright reasons. And the laity, too, are encouraged to recite the divine office, either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually.įrom my experience of collating the texts and music for the last couple of days it seems quite obvious, the resources to sing the office just are not there, particularly in England and Wales. Pastors of souls should see to it that the chief hours, especially Vespers, are celebrated in common in Church on Sundays and on the more solemn feasts. …the divine office is the voice of the Church, that is of the whole mystical body publicly praising God…all who pray the divine office, whether in choir or in common, should fulfill the task entrusted to them as perfectly as possible: this refers not only to the internal devotion of their minds but also their external manner of celebration.ġ00. As the first generation to know nothing but the realities of Vatican II, my generation have not grown up hearing the psalms of the office chanted.ĩ9. He said it brought it all back, it was what he had grown up with. Talking to someone last night after Compline he said how moved he was to sing the Nunc Dimittas in Latin. It is evident that singing the office has a profound effect on people. Most of the hours were sung in English, the only exception was Second Vespers for the Most Holy Sacred Heart, and some Latin in Compline. Over the last couple days we have sung Lauds, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline.
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