Saying the Hours, like participating in
the Mass, is a constant
listening to God as well as speaking to him.

Praying with the Church

by Mary Paula Hayes

n The hopes expressed by the Fathers of Vatican Council II that the lay faithful would unite with priests and religious in the Church's own daily prayer, the Liturgy of the Hours, have not been adequately realized.

Despite numerous official statements in the years since the Council, the initial enthusiasm for praying with the Church, with the Church's own prayer, the actual recitation seems even to have diminished. Once again private devotions, newly minted, are edging out the official prayer.

Apostolic religious congregations, once eager to replace their community's "Little Office" with the richer content of the Divine Office are losing their enthusiasm. As community life continues to be abandoned, community prayer is also being abandoned. The family that does not stay together does not pray together.

The cloistered orders were greatly heartened when they were given permission to recite or chant the Divine Office in the vernacular. They were confident in its power to deepen their spiritual life when the texts were immediately comprehensible without the filter of the Latin language, of which their knowledge was often sketchy. And the Divine Office, which had been the core of their own community life, they were eager to share with their circle of friends.

Why then has the enthusiasm for the Liturgy of the Hours, as it is now called, so diminished in the relatively short time the revised books have been available?

The most obvious reason is, I think, the revised version itself.

The contemplative communities were being encouraged to share their monastic liturgy with the Christian faithful. (I speak from the viewpoint of a Carmelite). Our liturgy has always been marked by simplicity. St. Teresa had eliminated Gregorian chant and the midnight office and we anticipated no special difficulty in making our liturgy available to the laity.

But the officially approved ICEL version was not so much a vernacular rendition of the monastic liturgy as it was a perpetual novena service like those so popular in the 1930s and 1940s. In addition to the many major changes in the official Latin version, the ICEL added its own ideas and the nuns found themselves confronted with a new kind of liturgy-a whole catalogue of unfamiliar hymns that had little or nothing to do with the Hour or Feast being celebrated: folk songs, pop songs, Methodist, Baptist, Quaker hymns, spirituals-nothing in their training or experience had prepared them for this.

The balance so carefully maintained between praise, thanksgiving, adoration, petition had been tipped heavily towards petition. With the curtailment of the Psalms and their antiphons, the seldom-used ferial preces now resuscitated as intercessions, petition began to overshadow the other aspects. Where spontaneous petitions were introduced, the whole Hour became predominantly petition.

The elimination of the customary prayer before the Office tended to reduce the formal nature of the Liturgy of the Hours and the absence of the traditional one line commemoration of the deceased left an unfinished feeling for those who had celebrated the LH for years.

But before throwing all the blame on ICEL for our lack of enthusiasm it would be salutary to reflect on what might be lacking in our own attitudes. As in the VETUS ORDO of the Mass, we might do well to bow humbly before the altar and pray mercy on our own failings.

For the ICEL version is approved for public recitation and as such will bring grace in the saying. Possibly the grace will be augmented by the pain of a normal human recoil from its banalities, its constant obfuscation of Scriptural allusions and the irritation of recognizing familiar prayers in absurd complexification. We can bring back the old ascesis of "offering it up" and pray for better times.

But there are several difficulties of our own making. There is a certain misunderstanding of liturgy itself. We live in a commercial culture. Without realizing it, we find ourselves thinking in the framework of the marketplace. We pray for things, for special intentions. Certainly that is a part of liturgical prayer.

But Liturgy is primarily worship. Liturgy is first of all the acknowledgment that God is our Creator and we are his creatures. That attitude is a non-negotiable constituent of real prayer. To acknowledge it is to live in truth. To ignore it or make it in any way secondary is to live a lie and to deceive ourselves.

The second consideration has to be an awareness that however fervent and articulate we are, we can never equal the prayer of the Church which is Christ praying in us, with us and for us. Bluntly, the official liturgy is the way God wants us to pray. Private prayer can, should, supplement it, invigorate it, never replace or take precedence over it.

The third consideration: the Liturgy is one of God's ways of teaching us. The rather pathetic expectation of some young religious was that having the Liturgy in the vernacular would result in instant and full understanding of the text. What a delusion! The object of our prayer is God who is mystery; always beyond our deepest understanding, yet constantly revealing himself and just as constantly leading us on to further, deeper understanding. So that saying the Hours, like participating in the Mass, is a constant listening as well as speaking. Our part is to prepare for him by our attention, welcome him when he comes with faith that his goodness and his love will enlighten us and strengthen us according to our need.

Spiritual maturation is ordinarily a silent process, unobserved. At times we may become aware of our deepening understanding. God speaks in many ways. No two persons have the same inner history. Because we are human there will be times, perhaps prolonged periods, when the recitation of the Hours will be dull, giving no comfort or inspiration to our minds or hearts. We will be inclined to work out our discouragement by raging at the inelegant language or the unsingable hymns.

But thoughts like these are a diversion from the primary purpose of the Liturgy-worship. Whether we enjoy it or find it dull is of little importance. The purpose is to give honor and praise to God. We celebrate it because God wants us to; because we owe it to him as our Creator and Redeemer. Through our faithful celebration we are helping to preserve a part of the Church's rich patrimony.

Through the Church he tells us this is the way he wants to be honored; in the words ordained by his Church. It is Christ praying in us, with us and for us. Freed from all seeking after some felt fervor, we will be better able to concentrate on the object of our devotion, God himself.

Sooner or later, at the time of God's own choosing we will experience his response.

Often it will be unexpected, bringing peace and a solving of difficulties we were hardly aware of.

Charles Peguy once spoke of his experience. He was in anguish this particular day, as he generally was, and he was asking:

"Why are you asleep, O God?"

When he came to morning Mass that question was the entrance song to the Mass. He felt strongly that God was hearing his prayer.

Or it takes the form of a single line of a psalm or responsory that will leap out of the printed page and dazzle the mind with a sudden clear light on what we may not even have been thinking about.

St. Teresa Margaret, the young Carmelite nun, while filling the office of hebdomadary, was reading the little Chapter at Terce one day and found herself enraptured by the familiar text:

"God is love, and he who abides in love, abides in God and God in him."

So simple and so familiar, it shone on her mind suddenly and unexpectedly and became the guiding light of her very short life.

Elizabeth of the Trinity, a favorite of Pope John Paul II, found a similar guiding light in a phrase pointed out to her by her Prioress: in laudem gloriae suae from St. Paul's Letter to the Ephesians. Thereafter she always spoke of herself as "Laudem gloriae," ignoring any niceties of Latin grammar. She was intent on holiness, not Latin.

But it is the faithful day by day recitation that prepares the way for his coming, either silently or in a flash of light and love. This daily act of worship, difficult or delightful according to our spiritual weather, may be made easier by various stratagems.

A wise plan is to find a place that fosters a sense of the sacred, quiet and undisturbed, where it will not be impossible to recall God's holiness and our creatureliness. A religious will have her chapel, a priest his parish church. Lay groups can gather at one of these. For the private recitation the choice is more limited. Few parish churches are open for occasional visits. But care should be taken to maintain a certain formality, even in one's own home, certainly when groups gather in private homes. Casual lounging does not contribute to the reverence proper to divine worship.

While the Liturgy of the Hours should follow the rubrics and texts of the approved versions, there is no reason that one cannot preface one's act of worship with a brief prayer. Until the changes initiated in the wake of the Council, Divine Office always was preceded by a brief prayer. Its abandonment has not resulted in a greater intensity of devotion. In fact the omission flies in the face of a constant Catholic and Christian tradition.

It is a universal custom to open every private or public function with a prayer however brief. We say one before meals, before classes in Catholic schools, at the opening of every workshop, convention, assembly. Even the U.S. Congress opens with a prayer. When Carmelites, or any religious congregation gather for community meditation, the period always begins with a prayer.

We would do well to preface our private recitation with the prayer formerly said before the first Hour of the day. In the style of the Roman Rite it is short, succinct and practical.

"Open my lips, O Lord, to bless Thy holy name; cleanse my heart from all vain, improper and distracting thoughts; enlighten my mind, arouse my devotion, that I may be able to recite this Office worthily, attentively and devoutly and deserve to be heard in the presence of Thy divine Majesty.

"Lord, in union with that divine intention with which Thou Thyself while on earth offered praise to God, I offer Thee this Hour."

Thanks to the options given in the ICEL version one is free to choose from among the hymns the one least objectionable. Also one may privately add at the conclusion of each Hour the short remembrance of the faithful departed which heretofore always concluded every Hour:

"May the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace. Amen."

The omission of this concluding petition also throws out an almost universal custom among Catholics of a brief prayerful remembrance when the name of a deceased person comes up in ordinary conversation:

"God rest his soul!"

"God have mercy on him!" were the variants common to those in the Irish culture.

Liturgical prayer does not abolish private prayer and we are always free, even encouraged, to pray privately. Given the tragedy of the precipitous decline of reverence in public liturgy, to bring back in private prayer these voluntary additions may help to safeguard the seriousness of personal, private recitation of the Liturgy of the Hours.

And, by way of footnote: What ever became of the versicle and response which were always included in any paraliturgical service?

"Pray for us, O holy Mother of God

"That we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ."

As the ICEL prepares to revise its translations, I should like to suggest a few criteria for its translators.

1. They should know Latin. It would seem unnecessary to make such a stipulation but given the text ICEL has foisted on us, such a standard should be stated explicitly.

For example:

In EVENING PRAYER for Monday of Week IV of the Psalter, the Antiphon for the Magnificat (now known as CANTICLE OF MARY) the Latin text reads:

Magnificet te semper anima mea, Deus meus.

A Latinist would recognize the first word as indicating a prayer, expressed grammatically in the optative subjunctive form of the verb Magnificare. The antiphon then is properly translated as:

May my soul always proclaim your greatness, my God.

But ICEL's translator, ignoring the Latin's inflection, renders it:

Forever will my soul proclaim the greatness of the Lord.

This is not a nuance or a dynamic equivalent as ICEL prefers to call its faulty translations of the official texts of the Mass. It is simply a mistranslation. The whole meaning of the antiphon has been changed. From a warm filial prayer for perseverance it has become a kind of boast with possible Pharisaical overtones, depending on the intonations of the person reading. There is no indication either why the Deus meus has been englished as the Lord.

The same carelessness? willfulness? ignorance? occurs with the verb laudent in Morning Prayer, Saturday, Week II. This is also a petition, expressed in the same grammatical form, optative subjunctive. The oratio is properly translated:

"May our mouths praise Thee, O Lord, may our soul and life praise Thee, and since everything that we are is your gift, may all that we are be Thine."

ICEL transmutes this prayer into a brag:

"Lord, we praise you with our lips, and with our lives and hearts. Our very existence is a gift from you; to you we offer all that we have and are."

Then there is the curious case of the word Unigenitus. Literally it is "Only-begotten" or "Sole-begotten" as a proper title for the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity. During the Advent/Christmas cycle-from the first Sunday of Advent to the Solemnity of the Epiphany-it occurs eighteen times in the prayer for the day.

"Unigenitus" is the masculine form of the adjective and needs no noun to express its meaning. But English has no gender-specific adjectives; hence to make its meaning clear translators have always added the word Son. ICEL translates it:

once as Your only Son

once as Jesus Christ your son

eleven times as your Son

once as Christ our Lord

once as Christ your Son

twice as Christ

once as our Savior

There seem to be only two possible explanations for so many errors of this kind: either the translator did not know Latin-this seems impossible given ICEL's constant boasting-or it reflects a set policy to substitute its own theological biases for the official Latin edition. This kind of error occurs far too frequently to be defended as the use of a "dynamic equivalent" or to be excused as simple ignorance of Latin grammar.

Most importantly, these substitutions cannot be regarded as minor. Repeated as often as they are they significantly modify the whole spirit of the liturgy.

It must be kept in mind that the ICEL translators did their work in the sixties, the high point of vocal, brash, irreverent disrespect for the past. Triumphalism was the charge hurled again and again by critics of the Church.

So texts were flattened out to eliminate any expression that hinted at exuberance etc. But the anti-triumphalist sloganeers ended up, as in the Advent liturgy, by rooting out joy, wonder, exultation.

Since most lay people eager to unite their prayer to the Church's official prayer do not have access to the editio typica, the official edition, they accept at face value the Censor's attestation: Concordat cum originalis. What originalis it agrees with is not stated. Hence those who use the ICEL version are actually being deceived. Deprived of the rich and orthodox content of the official liturgy, they find themselves bored with what they hoped to be a spiritually enriching form of prayer and are choosing not to use it.

As one disappointed laywoman commented: "We asked for bread and were given a Twinkie."

They would be well advised to continue their recitation of the version available adding mentally a general (and repeated) declaration of intention, paraphrased from the old introductory prayer before the Divine Office:

"Lord, in union with the official prayer of the Church I offer this prayer in accordance with the meaning and intention of your official version."

2. That the new translators be sufficiently familiar with Sacred Scriptures and with the lives of the saints to recognize the Scriptural and hagiographical allusions which occur so frequently in official texts.

3. That the whole hymnody be revised. The rich treasury of the Church's hymns has been blatantly ignored. The Latin Liturgy of the Hours retains most of the older hymns and adds many new ones. Researchers could easily locate many translations by competent scholars already available for the old hymns and they should be able to find scholars to prepare English versions of the many new hymns added in the current Latin edition.

There is no need to keep such hymns as "Stabat Mater," "Dies Irae," "A Solis Ortus Cardine" confined to appendices or left untranslated in the daily Hours.

4. That at least some of the translators be members of monastic orders and have, say, ten years' experience reciting the daily liturgy in the setting of the common life. They will understand that the whole monastic liturgy was developed by ordinary laymen who wanted their work to be prayer and their prayer to sanctify their work.

They sang hymns that tied their work and their prayer to life as they lived it. The rising sun they could see as a symbol of Christ, the dawn as the symbol of a new life, the crowing of the cock as a reminder of Peter's denial and repentance and a hope for sinners.

They sang evening hymns to mark the end of a day's hard work, seeing each day as a stage of creation.

They assembled throughout each day observing reverence and fidelity, accepting routine as necessary in prayer as in work. When feast days came they naturally burst out in exuberant song, putting routine and work aside in their joy.

5. That the ICEL be obliged to limit its work to the task committed to it; to render into fitting English the editio typica approved by the Church without ideological transmutation and without unwarranted tampering with the true meaning of the official text.

With good hymns, with accurate and, if possible, elegant translations, a new fervor can possibly be brought about. For Catholics are hungry for union with God. A millennium and a half of monastic prayer has been an efficacious means to that end. n