Comparing the Offices/3 - The psalmody that structures the hours: Matins and Lauds

I want to turn now, in my series comparing the various forms of the Office and the effects these differing forms have our spirituality, to the ways the hours are structured in terms of their psalmody.  As this is fairly long, I'll split it into a couple of sub-parts, so today, a look at Matins and Lauds.

One of the major differences between the various form of the Office is the number, structure and nature of each of the hours. This part of the series considers them one by one.

Matins aka Vigils

Matins was traditionally said in the darkness of the night. There was a strong symbolism to this which is entirely abolished in the modern “Office of Readings” that can be said at any time of the day.  The symbolism of light and darkness has a long history in the Office (reflecting Scripture), with the darkness symbolising both the long wait for the Messiah before Our Lord's incarnation, and our long wait for his Second Coming during which we must pray and hope, and light (celebrated at Lauds) the Resurrection.

Because Sunday was the day when the Resurrection was especially celebrated in the liturgy, the length of the Sunday Vigil has traditionally (until 1911 been longer than the weekday version of the hour.  One could speculate as to whether the abolition of the concept the concept of the longer Vigil for Sundays by Pope St Pius X paved the way for Saturday night so-called Vigil masses and other innovations that have served to undermine the proper keeping of the Lord's day. 

Originally, Matins, at least in its longer forms, was primarily a monastic hour, and the longer forms of the earlier Offices, such as the Benedictine, reflect that. It is useful to keep in mind that although the Office in general seems to have been something equally said by the laity, ascetics and priests in the early and medieval church, even then Matins or night prayer was regarded as something more appropriate to religious than the laity (see for example the description of Eastern Offices by the fourth century nun Egeria on her pilgrimage).

Even today, this view still holds in many places.   In traditional monasteries, the monks rise at hours such as 3.30am  to say the long form.  Abbot Lawrence of Christ in the Desert for example argues that this hour is absolutely crucial to the monastic vocation: "We can probably say, without much dispute, that Vigils is a defining office of the monk. The monk is a Christian who keeps vigil every day."   For this reason it has often been regarded as the most problematic hour for secular priests and the laity, the reason it has been progressively shortened over the years, and then abolished altogether at least as a Vigil.  This seems a rather extreme solution!  The various traditional 'short' Offices do include it, but with only three psalms said on a rotating basis.

The main differences between the various schemas are as follows:

• In the earliest form of the Roman psalter it consisted of twelve psalms on weeknights, taken in order (save for a few moved to other hours), starting from Psalm 1 (on Sunday) to Psalm 108. The Sunday Office was double the length of other days;
• St Benedict changed the Vigil Office significantly from his Roman model by adding two invitatory psalms to it (Ps 3&94); starting from Psalm 20 on Sunday instead of psalm 1 (allowing each days psalms to include some thematic groupings, though still finishing up at Psalm 108 on Saturday; splitting the longer psalms; and adding three canticles to Sunday rather than additional psalms;
• the post-Trent Roman Office had 18 psalms on a Sunday, twelve on other days, plus Psalm 94 as an invitatory;
• the 1911 Pius X psalter shortened the hour to nine psalms each night, with some of those split into several parts, and dropping the concept of the longer Office on Sunday. Though it still started with Psalm 1 on Sunday, it ended earlier, at Psalm 106 on Saturday, with the psalms previously said at Matins redistributed to Prime, Terce, Sext, None and Compline during the week;
• the LOOH abolished the concept of the Vigil altogether and made it into an ‘Office of Readings’ (which has no historical basis whatsoever; the focus of the hour has always been the psalms not the readings), with three psalms that could be said at any time of the day.

Lauds

Lauds traditionally has been regarded as a sister hour to Matins, said immediately after it. St Benedict’s Office is slightly unusual in this regard in that during the winter at least he assumes a substantial break between the two hours: the crucial thing for him was to ensure that Lauds started at first light, to take advantage of the full symbolism of the association between the coming of the light and the Resurrection.

Lauds actually takes its name from the three ‘Laudate’, or praising psalms (Ps 148-150) which traditionally ended the psalmody for this hour. In the pre-1911 Roman Office, many of its psalms were said every day, namely Psalms 62, 66, 50, 148-150. These repetitions, retained in the traditional Benedictine Office, are important, setting a proper pattern and balance for the day: those praying the Office daily ask the Lord’s blessing (Psalm 66), beg forgiveness for sins (Psalm 50) and gave praise to God (Psalm 148-150).

One could speculate, perhaps, as to whether the abandonment of the Miserere in particular as part of the priest’s daily regime might have contributed in a small way at least, to the path to the late twentieth century revolution, including the abandonment of traditional morality. The daily reminder of King David’s repentance for his sin with Bethsheba surely grounded the priest, both in his own life, and in his preaching.

The other possible effect on the spirituality of those saying the Office of the Pius X (and 1971 reforms) is the loss of the emphasis between man and creation as a whole. In its earlier forms, the psalms of Lauds all had direct and obvious allusions to the coming light/dawn/Resurrection, reminding us that we are part of the daily cycle of life God has instituted. And the psalmody for each day had the psalmist joining us to the praise of all created things in the Laudate psalms. Could the abolition of these connections in the Pius X Office have served to reinforce the alienation of man from creation promoted by the rise of technology and secularist attempts to supplant God? Personally, I tend to think so!

In any case the main differences between the various schemas is:

• the older Roman Office’s variable component was one psalm (5, 42, 64, 89, 142, 91) and a canticle each day;
• St Benedict’s version of the hour cut out one of the fixed psalms (Ps 66, said on Sundays only in his Office) and added an extra variable psalm each day except Saturday when the very long canticle was split in two (35, 56, 63, 75,) all of which both fit the dawn theme and contribute to broader themes associated with each day in the Benedictine Office. He also changed switched Psalm 142 from Friday to Saturday;
• the Pius X revision of the psalter made all of the psalms variable (except in Lent when Psalm 50 is said each day), of necessity abandoning the criteria of references to the light/Resurrection in many cases, and utilizing several of the psalms traditionally said in the evening rather than the morning. The Laudate psalms no longer closed the hour;
• the four week schema of the 1971 psalter assigns two psalms and a canticle each day. Several of the traditional psalms of the hour don’t make the cut.