| Comments by dcn. joe on Saturday, January 10, 2009 at 18:52 |
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Greetings! One question: How was the order of psalms in the Office arrived at?
PAX
When the Office of Prime was suppressed at the Second Vatican Council, it became necessary to redistribute its psalms among the other Hours of the Liturgy. The Council also decided that the night office of Matins (Vigils) should be made up of fewer psalms and longer readings, and that the psalms should be spread out over a longer period of time than one week. A Consilium was established by the Council to oversee the work of renewing the Liturgy. The Roman Rite adopted a four week cycle of the Psalter, and our Order adopted a two week cycle, but allowed individual communities to retain the one week cycle, or go to a four week cycle. Fr. Chrysogonus Waddell of Gethsemani Abbey prepared a two week redistribution of the psalms that was approved by the Order's Liturgy Commission. The numerical succession of psalms in the Rule of St. Benedict was altered to respect the particular character of the day (Sundays, Fridays, Saturdays) or Hour (Vigils, Lauds, Day Hours, Vespers, Compline). The first psalm of Lauds is a penitential psalm or another psalm which deals with the mystery of good and evil. The final psalm at Lauds is an alleluia psalm. The middle psalm is one of those chosen by St. Benedict because of its allusion to light. The Gradual Psalms assigned to the Little Hours include all of them, rather than just Psalms 119-127. Compline Psalms remain the same. Having three rather than four psalms at Lauds and Vespers allowed for the possibility of including the New Testament Canticles in a revision of the Liturgy of the Hours. A more detailed description of the reasons for the present choice of psalms at all the Hours of the Liturgy will have to wait for the complete publication of Fr. Waddell's works. |
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