So far in this series I've looked briefly at some of the key purposes of the Office - purgation and penance; adoration and intercession.
In the next section of the series, I plan to focus in on the seven day cycles - around creation, salvation history, the life of Christ and that of our own spiritual development (among others) that I think are embedded within the Office through the psalm cursus.
The sanctification of time
Before we do that, though, by way of bridge, I want to look at one more dimension of the Office, namely the relationship between the Office and time.
The Divine Office is, by its nature, deeply connected with the idea of the sanctification of time.
Some of the connections in the Benedictine version of the Office are reasonably obvious. The spacing of the hours through the day, for example, gave it an equivalent to one of the old watches (of three hours), as well as a Trinitarian meaning attested to by St Cyprian. [1] Similarly, the use of twelve psalms (one for each hour) mirrors the number of hours of the day and night, that is Prime to None, and Matins. [2]
Some perhaps are a little less obvious - the use of seven psalms in the twilight hours (Lauds, Vespers+Compline) to symbolise completeness, for example.
But there is one aspect of the sanctification of time that I have not seen explored in the literature, and which I think is perhaps best understood by consideration of the three alternative Office models I've been looking at from the first half of the sixth century, and that is the way that different forms of the Office focus those singing or hearing it on different points in salvation history.
Different forms of the Office, I want to suggest, can reflect very different conceptions of sacred time, which in turn reflect different conceptions of the exactly the 'Work' of the Office is intended to accomplish.
Sacred time and the liturgy
The Office, of course, as liturgy, connects us to the liturgy of heaven: we pray, at the very least, 'in the presence of the angels' (Psalm 137); more, we are joined through it to the angelic choir. [3]
But that is not the same thing as connecting us to the eternity of God, whose eternity stands outside of time and space.
Instead, as creatures, whether in heaven or on earth, our prayers have a before and after, and thus a temporal dimension.
In heaven - at least before the coming of the new heaven and earth - the progress of that time may be different to that we experience on earth. Without bodies, after all, and the needs associated with them, we may indeed gain the ability to literally pray without ceasing!
But for us here on earth, our progress through time is reflected in the Office in the temporal and sanctoral calendars of the year; in the 'hours' of the Office each day; and in the cycle the hours repeat over.
Agaune's perpetual liturgy and making heaven visible
Consider for example the case of Agaune's perpetual liturgy.
St Alexander the Sleepless, we saw
earlier in this series, in the first half of the fifth century, developed a form of the liturgy which almost certainly either directly inspired, or was outright copied by Agaune in the early sixth century, inspired by the model of God's ordering of creation into the twelve hours of day and night.
But St Alexander also seems to have had in mind imitation of the perpetual liturgy of the angels, an idea which fit well with Agaune's history as a shrine of soldier-saints, the martyrs of the Theban legion, whose legend depicted soldiers who refused (an immoral order) to fight, soldiers who laid down their arms and allowed themselves to be slaughtered rather than turn on, as the Emperor ordered, their fellow Christians. By this action, so the early fifth century version of their legend asserted, they were transformed into members of the heavenly choir: “Thus", says Eucherius of Lyon, "that whole angelic legion was murdered, which now, we believe, joins with legions of angels in heaven in always praising together the Lord God Sabaoth.” [4]
And it was this choir to which the earthly members of the monastery were portrayed as literally being members of, transported effectively to heaven now, to that time after the descent of the new Jerusalem described in Revelations, or at least so the early literature surrounding the monastery asserted. St Gregory of Tours, for example, told the story of an Agaune monk who died very young before he could make profession, to the great distress of his mother, who then spent her days weeping in the Church. Happily, St Maurice appeared to her and assured her that her son was still part of the chorus made up not just of the still living monks, but the dead among their number as well as the Theban legion itself. To prove this, he invited her to return the next morning at Lauds, and every subsequent day that she so desired for the rest of her life, so that she could hear his voice joining that of the other (still living) monks. [5]
The sermon given by Bishop Avitus of Vienne for the dedication of the new basilica on September 22, 515 similarly made considerable play on the idea of the monks as livers of the angelic life, since, he claimed, they had no possibility of committing any sins, for all their time was consumed now with the work of heaven:
..but when it has come to the present psalmody…you have surpassed even your own works. For…that glorious custom has been instituted, in which the Christian always pours forth sound, Christ is always present, the onlooker is always heard, the hearer always seen. You who are about to dwell here…labour in this world invites to the hope of perpetual rest, and all the time for sinning is cut off from those occupied in happy action...May death renew rather than end this action [6]
His sermon also invoked the imagery, as I have previously noted, that seems to me to be an allusion to the description of the New Jerusalem that will descend
after the last judgment in Apocalypse 21, a jewel encrusted city in which there
is no night:
Whose entry is
not shut at night, because it has no night, whose doors are always wide open to
the just, but inaccessible to the impious…Christ is its foundation, faith its
frame, a wall its crown, a pearl its gates, gold its street, a lamb its light,
its chorus the church [7]
Agaune's Office, with a psalm cursus that almost certainly repeated each day, rather than carrying over several as most other Offices did, was surely meant to signal this new age, this eighth day fully realised.
The nuns of Arles and the accumulation of merit
If Agaune and its Office attempted to anticipate the blessed life to come, the life that will come after the Second Coming, the Rule of Caesarius of Arles, I would suggest, portrays his nuns as living a step back in salvation time from that.
In particular, his Rule focuses above all on waiting for the Second Coming and judgment, the time of the coming of the bridegroom to the wedding feast.
Watchers for the second coming
In the Rule, St Caesarius tells his nuns to pray assiduously for the coming of the Son, and to be watchers for it, quoting St Luke:
Watch ye, therefore, praying at all times, that you may be accounted worthy to escape all these things that are to come, and to stand before the Son of man. [8]
The nuns then, unlike the monks of Agaune, are not yet living the angelic life, bur rather are looking out in this world, for the signs of Christ's return.
In fact the key image he invokes throughout the rule is that of the wise and foolish virgins in the parable of the bridegroom, who are drowsing while waiting, prepared or otherwise, for the coming of bridegroom; with the wise preparing by cultivating the oil of good works. [9] Indeed the image of the drowsing virgin must have been particularly close to their hearts given the long hours they spent in vigils in the church, for St John of Arles employed a model where the number of psalms said in the Night Office lengthened and shortened with the seasons as the length of time of darkness changed.
An Easter people!
But there is also some important symbolism, I think, in the fact that Caesarius barely mentions Lent (beyond a brief reference to fasting rules) or repentance at all in his Rule; instead he provides a symbolic starting point for the Office, not with Matins and Lauds, as St Benedict does, but rather Terce of Easter Day. [10]
St Benedict, in chapter 8 of the Rule, insisted on Lauds each day being timed to start at daybreak, symbolically the time of the rising of Christ.
Caesarius, however, in chapter 66 of the Rule for Nuns, jumps forward two hours, over Lauds and Prime, and starts the whole of his discussion of the Office from the third hour of Easter Day, linking it to the literal completion of three days after the crucifixion, not least through the particular hymn he specified be used at it,
Iam surgit hora tertia, which provides a nice counter to the image of the drowsing virgins fighting off sleep as they keep their vigil:
This hour at which He ends our time Of stupor from that first bad crime, Destroys the world's guilt with His blood; Washed out death's kingdom with its flood…[11]
Terce on ‘the third day’ (after Good Friday), in other words, completes the work of redemption, and inaugurates the ‘third age’ of grace in St Augustine’s schema of before the law/under the law/under grace in which we are now living.
But Easter Day is just the start of the liturgical year in this description of the Office: it is the eschatologically charged season of Epiphany, the showing out of Christ to the gentiles, that is its end. And these two key seasons are linked by a series of all-night vigils each Friday from Easter to Pentecost, and again in the lead up to Epiphany; Vigils which start from ‘third hour of the night’. [12]
The task of the nun, then, is to accumulate grace - that good oil - through her prayer and vigils, which can then be applied not only to herself but to others, stretching out to aid the conversion of the world.
St Benedict's Lenten monk
St Benedict's Rule, I want to suggest, takes us back another step in salvation time, to Lent.
Lent barely rates a mention in the Rule of Caesarius, and then only in relation to fasting, not the liturgy proper. [13]
In the Benedictine Rule, by contrast, Lent is the only liturgical season mentioned by name, and the saint explicitly tells us that the life of a monk should always be Lenten in nature. [14]
St
Benedict reinforces this, I think, by starting his liturgical prescriptions not with the bright light of the
festive celebration of the risen Lord, but rather with a discussion of the hour
for rising in the dark in the long nights of his winter season (November to
Easter). [15]
His focus is on monks still unreformed, yet to open
their eyes to the ‘deifying light’; asking still for 'our lives to be lengthened and a respite allowed...that we may amend our evil ways' (Prologue), for far from living the angelic life themselves, monks need to be wary because that their actions are constantly being scrutinized and reported to God by the angels. [16]
There are no all night Vigils in St Benedict's Office, and his priority is clearly not Matins, whose readings can be cut if necessary, but rather Lauds, which he makes a daily celebration of the Resurrection (symbolized by
the rising of the Son/sun).
The rising
Instead, in St Benedict's theology, the imagery of the Resurrection as the pattern for the monk is not just the starting point, but the dominating theme: in the Prologue, he urges, ‘Exsurgamus ergo’ (let us therefore arise); in chapter 7 he argues that we ascend to
heaven through humility.
In the liturgy
he parallels these ideas by starting the Night Office with Psalm 3, which is
usually interpreted, in Patristic texts, as speaking of the Resurrection (Ego
dormivi…), through the use of the
‘psalms of ascent’.
Above all, each week the Office starts again from Sunday, with its three Nocturn Matins in particular a celebration of the Resurrection.
To fear the day of judgment...
St Benedict’s Rule, does, it is true, allude to the common monastic meme of acting as watchers for the Second Coming in their Night Vigils.
His discussion of sleeping arrangements for the monks in RB 22, for example, is actually mainly about ensuring their readiness for the Night Office, and in doing so paraphrases the instructions of Luke 12:
A lamp shall burn constantly in the cell until morning. Let them sleep clothed and girded with cinctures or cords…Being thus always ready…’ [17]
And awareness of the coming judgment is certainly a key theme of the Rule.
But it is a day to be feared (RB 4), rather perhaps than prayed for, lest our process of reform be incomplete.
Indeed, I started this series pointing to the connection between Lent and the forty psalms said in the Benedictine Office each day, and our necessary preparation for entering heaven. It is instructive, I think, to read Caesarius of Arles' explanation of the significance of forty in a sermon on David and Goliath, which interprets it to mean our entire earthly life:
The children of Israel faced their enemies for forty days. These forty days, by reason of the four seasons of the year, and of the four continents of the globe, are a figure of this present life, during which the Christian world does not cease to be arrayed in battle against the devil and his angels, as it were against Goliath and the army of the Philistines. [18]
And it is to emphasize this process of reform, that the Benedictine psalm cursus, I want to suggest, traces the path of creation, salvation and redemption history from its beginning, and towards its ultimate destiny each week, encouraging us to reform ourselves, with the aid of grade, in line with it.
But more on that
in the next post.
Notes
[1] St Cyprian, Treatise 4, On Prayer: "And in discharging the duties of prayer, we find that the three children with Daniel, being strong in faith and victorious in captivity, observed the third, sixth, and ninth hour, as it were, for a sacrament of the Trinity, which in the last times had to be manifested. For both the first hour in its progress to the third shows forth the consummated number of the Trinity, and also the fourth proceeding to the sixth declares another Trinity; and when from the seventh the ninth is completed, the perfect Trinity is numbered every three hours, which spaces of hours the worshippers of God in time past having spiritually decided on, made use of for determined and lawful times for prayer."
[2] St Benedict directs our attention to the number of psalms said at the various hours in his chapter headings to chapter 9 (Quanti psalmi dicendi sunt nocturnis horis) and 17 (Quot psalmi per easdem horas dicendi sunt) and the discussion in these chapters. Chapter 17 in particular effectively provides three groupings of hours: Matins and Lauds; Prime to None; Vespers and Compline. Unfortunately he does not discuss the rationale for the various numbers of psalms, assuming, presumably, that the reader would already be familiar with the discussions of the topic to be foound in the earlier literature such as Cassian, Cyprian and Basil.
[3] RB 19: Ubique credimus divinam esse praesentiam et oculos Domini in omni loco speculari bonos et malos, [2] maxime tamen hoc sine aliqua dubitatione credamus cum ad opus divinum assistimus. [3] Ideo semper memores simus quod ait propheta: Servite Domino in timore, [4] et iterum: Psallite sapienter, [5] et: In conspectu angelorum psallam tibi.
[4] Eucherius of Lyons, The Passion of the Martyrs of Agaune (translation in the appendix of Tim Vivian, Kim Vivian and Jeffrey Russell trans, The Life of the Jura Fathers The Life of the Holy Fathers Romanus, Lupicinus , and Eugendus, Abbots of the Monasteries in the Jura Mountains..., Cistercian Studies Series no 178, Cistercian Publications, Kalamazoo, 1999, Studies Series 178); for the latin text see Passio Acaunensium martyrum, BHL-5737.
[5] Gregory of Tours, Liber in gloria martyrum, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 1.2: Gregorii Turonensis Opera. Teil 2: Miracula et opera minora. Editio nova lucisope expressa (Hanover, 1885), pp. 34–111 (at c. 74-75). Trans Raymond van Dam, LUP, 1988, pp 69-71
[6] Danuta Shanzer and Ian Wood (ed and trans), Avitus of Vienne: Letters and Selected Prose, LUP, 2002.
[7] ibid.
[8] RC 21
[9] See especially RC 1, 63.
[10] RC 66
[11] For techniques to stay awake during the Night vigils, see RC 15; the Latin of the hymn can be found
here and a translation of the hymn
here.
[12] RC 68
[13] RC 71.
[14] RB15, 48.
[15] RB 8
[16] RB 7
[17] (RB 22)
[18] Caesarius of Arles, Sermon,
