Part VI: The Prayer Schedule!

 Part VI: The Prayer Schedule!

Last week, you saw the physical space in which I live. This week, you get to “see” the spiritual side of my new life! As I mentioned, Mother had handed me a copy of the Sisters’ daily schedule with the reminder that this was their schedule, not mine. After all, I was there to be their chaplain, not to become a male member of their community, so I was under no obligation to join them in the chapel every time they prayed as a community. But I did need to know what they were doing throughout the day. I won’t give all of the details, but here is their basic community prayer schedule. It is quite eye-opening to see how seriously this “semi-contemplative” order is about praying. The schedule does vary slightly from day to day throughout the week, but I will try to summarize it here as a general horarium. I’ll briefly explain the “Hours” of the Office a little further on.

4:00 am: The first bell rings. It’s time to wake up and get ready to begin the day.

4:30 am: Time to pray the first two “Hours” of the Divine Office, Matins and Lauds. This is followed by a 10 minute break. Nota Bene (NB): Ten minutes means ten minutes. Don’t be late getting back to your pew! Now comes a Holy Hour of silent mental prayer and then the third Hour of the Office, Prime. The Psalms vary in length, and so the time it takes to pray each Hour will also vary from day to day. But when they are completed, somewhere about 7:00 am, the Sisters rush to get some chores done.

7:30 am: The Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, followed by 10 minutes of Thanksgiving, then the fourth Hour of the Office, Terce. The Sisters then process out for their Daily Chapter and work period.

11:30 am: Prayer and spiritual reading/study period.

12:00 noon: The fifth Hour of the Office, Sext.

1:45 pm: The sixth Hour of the Office, None.

The afternoon is spent in prayer, spiritual reading, recreation, study, work, or class.

4:25 pm: Holy Hour with Exposition (or 5:00 pm: 30 minutes of mental prayer) and the seventh Hour of the Office, Vespers.

7:00 pm: Compline, the eighth and final Hour of the Office, followed by Grand Silence.

Praying the Divine Office or its modified newer version, the Liturgy of the Hours, is a hallmark of Religious Life. The various “Hours” do not take 60 minutes each to pray, but are rather called “Hours” because they are prayed at a general time of day or night. They each consist of Psalms, other Scripture readings, and hymns. Matins also includes multiple lessons from various Church Fathers, Saints, or Church documents, and, if there is a Saint’s Feast Day, a reading about the Saint. In days of old, Matins was broken into three sections, or Nocturns, recited during the night. Prime also includes a reading of the following day’s list of Saints who gave their lives for the Faith (including some small details of their glorious deaths) from the Roman Martyrology. 

This is how they are listed in the revised Liturgy of the Hours, since many of you will be more familiar with the newer set of prayers: Matins is called Office of Readings. Lauds is Morning Prayer. Prime has been eliminated. Terce is Midmorning Prayer. Sext is Midday Prayer. None is Midafternoon Prayer. Vespers is Evening Prayer. Compline is Night Prayer. 

In the Traditional Divine Office, all 150 Psalms are prayed each week, while the new Breviary (the name of the book containing these prayers) drops many of what are considered “objectionable” Psalms by modern Snowflakes. They call for judgment and disaster to fall upon the enemies of God and God’s people, and so are called the maledictory Psalms. These are Psalms—as the Douay-Rheims numbers them—5, 6, 11, 12, 35, 40, 52, 54, 56, 58, 69, 79, 83, 137, 139, and 143. Though the revised Breviary has fewer Psalms and other readings, it takes 4 weeks to get through one cycle. This is why it is sometimes half-jokingly referred to as the Liturgy of the Minutes rather than of the Hours! In case you haven’t figured it out yet, the Sisters here pray the older Office.

Anyway, as I looked at the schedule, my plan was to sleep in (a luxury I would have from now on!) until Mass time rather than to get to the chapel for the 4:30 start of the day. Except for one small problem. There is a one-hour time difference between Redfield (Central Time) and Tampa (Eastern Time). When I was here previously for a visit, my body didn’t understand what my brain did, and, since I usually woke up shortly before 5:00 am to start my day in Florida, I woke up shortly before 4:00 am in Kansas! It didn’t matter what my watch said. So the first day I figured, “What the heck? I am going to wake up anyway, so I might as well join the Sisters in prayer.” I expected it to be just a one-day thing. How wrong I was!

I set my alarm back an hour to 3:46 am. In my puny brain, by the way, 3:46 is “slightly before 4” whereas 3:45 is way too early to get up for anything other than fishing! I needn’t have bothered, for I woke up without the alarm anyway, for, as I said, my body doesn’t read the clock; it just knows (usually) what time to wake up. It will do the same thing this weekend, when the time “changes” and we supposedly get an extra hour of sleep. Ha! You might guess that I am not a fan of changing to and from Daylight Saving Time.

In my old routine, I chose to get up shortly before 5:00 am so that I could pray the early Hours of the Breviary before Mass started at 6:30 am. If I didn’t get a big chunk in then, I would be playing catch-up the rest of the day and would probably have to pray multiple Hours just before bedtime. Here, though, instead of reciting the Hours privately,  I was able to listen to and follow along with the beautiful chanting of the Hours as the Sisters’ melodious voices filled the chapel the way that I imagine the Saints and Angels fill Heaven as they sing before the throne of God.

After the first day of joining them for each Hour, I knew that this was exactly what I needed. I had asked the Bishop for a sabbatical so that I could spend more time in prayer, study, and spiritual reading. Here, I had the opportunity for more of the prayer than any priestly sabbatical would have ever included!

To be continued next week...