In the last post in this sub-series on the design of the Benedictine Office, I pointed to the development of a connection between key events in the life of Christ and days of the week in the early Church, which was then appropriated into the liturgy in various ways, such as the Roman traditions around fasting practices.
Today I want to draw out a little some particular links between these weekly schemas and the Benedictine Office at Thursday Vespers.
Weekly schemas around the life of Christ
While the various life of Christ in seven days schemas offered by the Fathers differed, Rome was not certainly not alone in viewing seven as a 'sacred number' (see RB 16) and seeing it as an organising principle for viewing the life of Christ, sometimes linking this to the seven seals of the book of Revelation.
Hilary of Poitiers gave such a list in his commentary on the psalms, for example, while the commentary of St Benedict's contemporary Aspringius may have been influenced by the Mozarabic practice of dividing the consecrated host into seven pieces, each of which piece of which was associated with an event in the life of Christ.
St Benedict then, would have a rich Patristic and liturgical tradition on which to draw if he did use the life of Christ as a thematic principle for his organisation of the psalter.
Exodus 15
I noted earlier in this series that on Thursdays, the Lauds canticle is from Exodus 15, and is the song of victory after safely crossing the Red Sea.
The Carolingian Benedictine commentator Rabanus Maurus provided a brief summary of its relevance to the Office on Thursday, saying:
For on Thursday justly is sung the song of the Israelites, which they sung after the Pasch celebrating being freed from Egypt and conveyed through the Red Sea dry foot. For on the same day our Saviour figuratively celebrating the Pasch with his disciples, he offered the paschal mystery continuing in the sacrament of his body and blood and in this immolation of the lamb, who takes away the sins of the world.
There are, I think, some obvious connections between the canticle - and Maurus's summation of it - and the psalms of Thursday Vespers.
First, at the very literal level, the idea that the wicked will not just let the good person alone, but will pursue them and try and drag them back to 'Egypt', or idle and dangerous pursuits, runs through Psalms 139 and 140.
Secondly, I've noted that Psalm 138 was frequently viewed as the quintessential prayer of the agony in the Garden, and is fundamentally about not just the omnipotence and omniscience of God, but also the two natures of Christ.
Thirdly, I noted that the interpretation of the pure evening prayer of Psalm 140 as speaking of Christ's institution of the Eucharist and Passion, of which the paschal sacrifice offered by the Jews before they fled Egypt is a type.
Circumcision of the heart
Perhaps the key thread connecting all three of the psalms of Benedictine Vespers on Thursday, though, is, I think, the idea of the old circumcision of the flesh being replaced, because those who practiced it did not translate it into a spiritual practice (Psalms 138 and 139), by the new covenant of grace, with some of its key petitions being those asking for various graces in Psalm 140.
In this light, it is intriguing, I think, to read the comments of another of St Benedict's contemporaries, Cassiodorus, on the interpretation of Psalm 138, employing a number symbolism of a kind that St Benedict seems also to have been deeply attached to:
Observe here shining before us the eighth psalm which presents the two natures [of Christ]; these eight beat off the arrogant infidelity of those in error.
They should at any rate be healed by the precedent of circumcision.
Just as the Jews surrendered their foreskins on the eighth day, so those in error should be schooled by this eighth psalm and abandon their idle obduracy.
As has been mentioned earlier, Psalms 2, 8, 20, 71, 81, 107, 109, and here 138 discuss this matter....
And you can find the next part in this series here.
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