By Julian Kwasniewski

Many among the traditional Catholic laity love to pray some portion of the Divine Office or have heard that it is a good spiritual practice to do so. Hearing that it is the “official prayer of the Church,” and “greatly meritorious,” you might feel like you are really missing out—perhaps even being a bad Catholic—if you don’t get on the bandwagon and start getting your ribbons in order.

But if using a hand missal presents difficulties, or does at first, navigating a Divine Office book can also be intimidating. One might spend a whole office trying to find commemorations, remember collect conclusions, or stumbling over unfamiliar Latin psalm verses. Anxiety arising from such a situation runs counter to the purpose of prayer in the first place: focus on God, rather than on the elements of the prayer itself.

In order to remove any possible trepidation in a layman thinking about praying the Office, I hope here to give some suggestions for slowly becoming familiar with this beautiful prayer of the Church. Sharing thoughts and tips on praying the Office as a layman, I want to remind readers that you need not do everything right all at once. I want to provide you with encouragement to put the prayer before the prayer book, regardless of how familiar you are with it. This can be difficult, but it is crucial to a holy and peaceful approach to the office.

I will assume for the purposes of this article a basic familiarity with the day hours of the Roman or Benedictine Office, as found in a 1962 Missal, The Monastic Diurnal, Angelus Press’s Divine Office or Compline book, or one of the editions of The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin available from various publishers. I will also assume that you have read any introductions these books might contain and thus have a basic familiarity with the parts of the Office such as hymns, antiphons, or psalms. If you have not yet found one of these books, you can easily find them online. And if you have access to a nearby traditional parish or religious order that sings the Office, the best way to begin learning is to simply attend, listen, and eventually ask a fellow attendee for help becoming oriented with the books in use.

The Place of Rubrics

Obviously the rubrics exist for a reason: to give a structure to the Divine Office. Fundamentally, what makes praying the office different from private prayer and plain old prayerful scripture reading (also known as lectio divina) is that it has a structure and order to its parts. Once learned, the rubrics give you the ease of not having to decide what to do next: it’s already laid out for you by the tradition contained in whatever form of the office you are praying.

Consequently, it might be scandalous to suggest that you needn’t always follow the rubrics, but this is true. I want to save you, the reader, from any qualms you may have about praying the Office differently than a priest or religious might. As a layperson, you have no obligation to pray the Office at all. Where a priest or religious has a canonical obligation to the office arising from his vows and state in life, the layman has no such obligation and consequently should feel free to get to know the rules of the office bit by bit. You can choose to pray it as strictly or loosely as you like. This is especially important when you are first learning how to pray the office—you don’t have to get it right the first time.

There are a few general categories of Office rubrics which I will briefly comment on.

Officiant rubrics. These deal with celebrating the office liturgically with multiple people, such as in a monastery where there will be different roles for the officiating priest, cantors, and other monks. Usually you will see an indication like “if celebrated in choir, then do this”: that means if celebrated liturgically with a priest. If you are praying privately, you can ignore all of these indications because you will fulfill “all the roles,” such as making the responses to verses or saying “Amen” to prayers. If you are praying with a friend or spouse, you can choose who is “officiating,” so that one of you is leading and someone responding. Either way, a layman will always replace Dominus vobiscum (reserved for ordained ministers) with Domine exaudi orationem meam: this is noted in all office books.

Seasonal rubrics. These tell you which part of the office changes according to liturgical seasons such as Advent, Lent, or Eastertide. Generally, proper antiphons and hymns for these seasons can be found in the first half of the office book; it is up to you if you want to pray these “propers” or if you want (especially as you learn the office) to just stick with the ferial office. “Ferial office” refers to the prayers said on days where there is no feast-day or liturgical season as such to celebrate or commemorate.

Feast day rubrics. These are usually found in the back half of the office book. As with seasonal rubrics, you can choose whether or not to use them. Additionally, as I will note below, you could choose to pray the propers for a particular saint on a day not their feast day. If you have a special patron, you might consider praying their proper office once a week.

English or Latin?

Another important question for the layman is whether or not to pray the office in Latin. As someone praying the office in private, you have no obligation to pray it in Latin. All the newly published office books provide English translations, which means you can pray the traditional office in English if you wish.

You can even mix and match, praying some in Latin and some in English, depending on what you are comfortable with. For example, if you have very little or no experience with pronouncing Latin, but you want to become more familiar with it, you could decide to pray just one part in Latin every day until you are comfortable with it, and then add another section. If you choose to pray Prime, which has three psalms, you could pray just the first psalm in Latin for a few months until you are familiar with it, and then switch to or add the second in Latin. Or you could pray the psalms in English but the hymn and concluding prayers in Latin. Again, starting slowly is important if you are new to all of it. If the difference between saying the Office or not is praying it in English, you shouldn’t let Latin get in the way of your private prayer.

Devotional Offices

As a truly private devotion, I think one should give oneself freedom to pray offices of favorite saints or feast days whenever one wants as a “devotional office.”

Conversely, if the ferial office speaks to you (as it does to me), you should feel free to pray it even on feast days. If you have just become accustomed to praying the regular ferial office, and incorporating the proper of Advent or Lent seems overwhelming, just wait until next year: you’ve got time!

Authors often speak of how rich the propers for feast days are in the Traditional Office. This is true, and a very good reason to take it up. However, keep in mind that while exposure to beautiful feast day propers is important, it is not an absolute. Prayer is for the “lifting of heart and mind to God,” as St. Therese says, not a liturgy study session. If extensively following the propers is distracting or overwhelming, but you want to educate yourself with them, don’t try to combine prayer with liturgical study. Give yourself enough time to do both properly, reading the propers on their own for your lectio divina.

A Child’s Office

Growing up, I fondly remember praying an abbreviated form of Compline as part of family night prayers. While many encourage praying the office together as a family, I have not seen anyone comment on the fact that a full-length office, even a short one like Compline, may be a bit long for small children.

The psalms, whether in English or Latin, present a lot of the same sort of thing for a young attention span. I suggest selecting a few memorable and important elements from the office and teaching them to your children. For example, rather than praying Compline with all the psalms, just chant the reading (Fratres, sobrii estote…) and then skip to the hymn (Te lucis) and responsory (In manus tuas…) and conclude with the collect (Visita quaesumus) and Salve Regina. Or even choose between the hymn and responsory, alternating on different days of the week.

This way of abbreviating the office results in parts that the children can join in, such as the hymn, and parent-led sections, like the chapter or collect. With multiple children, perhaps the privilege of reading the lesson can be also passed around, giving them a “job” in family prayers for them to anticipate.

In such family situations, the elements of Compline could also be treated as “book ends” to other forms of prayer. One could open night prayers with the Latin reading or hymn, then invite everyone to say something they are grateful for, ask for the intercession of patron saints, or offer spontaneous prayers, before closing with the Marian antiphon. Thus structure and spontaneity, formal and informal prayer are joined, and children learn that such things are compatible and need not be tedious.

I strongly suggest, based on my own and other’s experience, that older children not be pressured into participating in fuller offices. However much a parent might think praying the Divine Office to be a good thing (and it is), forcing a child to participate will often backfire, even if they seem initially willing. If spouses have a desire to pray “family Vespers” or something of that nature, let the parents do that on their own, but with an open invitation to the children.

Going out to Church for Sunday Vespers is something of a different case, since it is not so much a private devotion, and only a weekly occurrence. Similarly, encouraging some form of short daily prayer is very good. But the more specific prayers required, the more likely the child is to dislike those prayers. In my opinion, requiring participation has too great a chance of souring the Divine Office for the children, making it difficult for them to pick up on their own motivation later in life. It is better for them to be familiar but not forced.

Conclusion

In conclusion, I hope that realizing that the private recitation of the Divine Office can be a flexible and enjoyable form of prayer will help laymen and women to approach this beautiful treasure with a peaceful heart.

Bringing flexibility and creativity to your private praying of the Divine Office will make it a renewed experience. Ride easy in the saddle of the traditional office; don’t let the rubrics rub too hard. Embark with a holy liberty on these beautiful prayers of the Church, and may you find them nourishing for your spiritual life.