When you open Divine Worship: Daily Office, you are greeted by an etching taken from the Wilton Diptych, depicting Our Lady and the Infant flanked by the Angelic Hosts. I find this striking, as it emphasises the continuity that this book has with the Anglican tradition. Then you open to the table of contents. I will give an outline of Divine Worship: Daily Office based on the table of contents. First, a general description of the book itself. It is black with a large gold Canterbury cross on the cover. It is 2033 pages long and has six ribbons (Red, Green, Yellow, Maroon, Purple, and Pink). The book is printed on Bible paper and has a red gold gilding. It holds up quite well, but the cover may fall off. Now that the exterior of Divine Worship: Daily Office has been detailed, let us examine the interior.
I will first provide an outline of the table of contents and then explain each one in detail.
- Decrees
- General Introduction
- Table of Liturgical Days
- The Calendar
- Table of Lessons
- Collects
- Supplementary Texts
- Quicunque Vult (The Creed of St. Athanasius)
- The Litany
- Occasional Prayers and Thanksgivings
- Ordinary of the Divine Office
- The Psalter
- The Lessons
- Appendices
The first section contains decrees from Msgr. Keith Newton and Msgr. Carl Reid. These men were the Ordinaries when the book was published. These decrees declare that the book is suitable for use by the priests and religious of the Ordinariates. Another interesting detail is the inclusion of Pope Francis’s coat of arms. Both Divine Worship: Daily Office and Divine Worship: The Missal were promulgated under Pope Francis—a very admirable part of his legacy.
The General Introduction to Divine Worship: Daily Office provides a brief overview of the liturgical hours. It also contains the rubrics for saying the office. For a layperson, these rubrics are not that important, but priests are obliged to follow them. Then comes the Table of Liturgical Days. Divine Worship: Daily Office uses the 1969 system of feasts, with solemities, feasts, memorials, and optional memorials. The Table of Liturgical Days is a system for priests and religious to determine the rubrics and precedence for feast days. You could also use the Ordo available online, or use the online version of the office to figure out what propers you are using for that day. The Table of Liturgical Days is a neat, if often unused, section.
The Calendar used in Divine Worship: Daily Office (and by extension the Ordinariates) is a masterpiece. Both the Tridentine and Pauline feasts are included. As mentioned before, this calendar contains ancient traditions that were discarded in the 1960s and 1970s (Ember Days and Rogation Days). This calendar also features the feasts of great saints, such as St. John Henry Newman, St. Junípero Serra, and St. Maximilian Kolbe, who were all canonised after the Second Vatican Council. The calendar also commemorates the feast day of St. Gregory Narek, a Doctor of the Church. He was canonised by the Armenian Apostolic Church, and in 2021, Pope Francis recognized his canonisation and added his feast to the Church’s Calendar. Divine Worship: Daily Office also follows the traditional naming of the seasons, with Sundays after Epiphany, Septuagesima, and Sundays after Trinity.
Following the Calendar is the Table of Lessons. This section is largely obsolete, as it lists the verse and chapter for all the lessons of the year; however, those lessons are already included in the Lessons chapter. Most copies of the Book of Common Prayer required the use of a Bible for the lessons. So in those books, a table like the one found in Divine Worship: Daily Office made sense. I guess this is for the people who want to use the King James or Douay-Rheims for their scripture instead of the Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition 2nd Edition, which is the translation used in the included lessons. The Table of Lessons does contain some proper Psalms for certain solemnities and feasts, yet for beginners, these will go unused. However, later on, they provide a deep sense of richness to the liturgical year.
The Collects, Supplementary Texts, and The Creed of St. Athanasius (Quicunque Vult) are where the “Anglican” character of Divine Worship: Daily Office becomes increasingly apparent. The collects for Sundays are directly from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. The Collects for saints’ feast days are taken from a variety of sources. This includes the Anglican Missal and the Book of Common Prayer. The Supplemental Texts follow a similar philosophy, with traditional English texts used throughout. The inclusion of the Creed of St. Athanasius is a welcome one. Before adopting Divine Worship: Daily Office, I had never read the Creed of St. Athanasius. For most Roman Catholics, we know the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed. Yet the Athanasian Creed is precise and surgical when explaining the Catholic faith. It is said on the “red letter days” from the Book of Common Prayer, as well as every Sunday at the office of Prime. The Litany from the Book of Common Prayer is also included, to be recited on Rogation Days. The Occasional Prayers and Thanksgivings again is a collection of prayers taken from Anglican sources, to be used in the saying of the Daily Office. I love the prayer for the Pope found in this section.
The Ordinary of the Divine Office is the section that forms the core of Divine Worship: Daily Office. Divine Worship: Daily Office consists of seven hours: Mattins (Morning Prayer), Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Evensong (Evening Prayer), and Compline. In further posts, I will detail how to pray these hours. I will go into more detail about the Ordinary then. The Ordinary is the part of Divine Worship: Daily Office that never changes. You will always be flipping back to this section when you pray. Following the Ordinary is the Psalter. Divine Worship: Daily Office utilizes the Coverdale Psalter, the same one employed by the 1662 Book of Common Prayer. It is, in my opinion, the most beautiful translation of the Psalms into English, even beating out the King James Psalms. The Psalter of Divine Worship: Daily Office is a 30-day cycle that covers all of the Psalms. Unlike the modern-day Liturgy of the Hours, which omits Psalms 58, 83, and 109 because they are considered “difficult,” Divine Worship: Daily Office features the complete Psalter of David.
The lessons of Divine Worship: Daily Office are a modified version of the lessons used by the Church of England in the 1960s. These lessons are the peak Liturgical Movement and have a two-year cycle for Sundays and a one-year cycle for weekdays. The translation employed is the Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition, 2nd Edition. This is the same translation used in the Ignatius Press Study Bible, the Great Adventure Bible, and the Bible In a Year Podcast with Fr. Mike Schmitz. The history of the Revised Standard Version: Catholic Edition, 2nd Edition is too long to get into here, but it is the best modern Catholic translation of the Bible. You can use any translation with Divine Worship: Daily Office.
The last section of Divine Worship: Daily Office is the Appendices. This section contains a variety of goodies, such as devotions for before and after Mass, the Seven Penitential Psalms, the Itinerary (prayers before traveling), blessings for various objects, an examination of conscience for Priests, the rite of Benediction, and brief formulæ for the sacraments in case of emergencies. This section is mainly geared towards priests, but lay people such as myself find it useful too.
I hope this post is a good “get to know you” primer on what is inside Divine Worship: Daily Office. I will post further on how to pray Mattins and Evensong soon, as well as how to add complexity. Learning a new Brevairy is a process, so do not be afraid to take your time. May all the Saints of England pray for us, Amen.
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