Commentaries on the psalms: St Basil the Great

Another of the Fathers who wrote some helpful commentaries on the psalms is St Basil the Great.

St Basil made important contributions to the development of monasticism, and his rules are mentioned by St Benedict as suggested reading for his monks.

Here is some background on his life from Pope Benedict XVI in July 2007:

"Let us remember today one of the great Fathers of the Church, St Basil, described by Byzantine liturgical texts as "a luminary of the Church".

He was an important Bishop in the fourth century to whom the entire Church of the East, and likewise the Church of the West, looks with admiration because of the holiness of his life, the excellence of his teaching and the harmonious synthesis of his speculative and practical gifts.

He was born in about 330 A.D. into a family of saints, "a true domestic Church", immersed in an atmosphere of deep faith. He studied with the best teachers in Athens and Constantinople.

Unsatisfied with his worldly success and realizing that he had frivolously wasted much time on vanities, he himself confessed: "One day, like a man roused from deep sleep, I turned my eyes to the marvellous light of the truth of the Gospel..., and I wept many tears over my miserable life" (cf. Letter 223: PG 32, 824a).

Attracted by Christ, Basil began to look and listen to him alone (cf. Moralia, 80, 1: PG 31, 860bc). He devoted himself with determination to the monastic life through prayer, meditation on the Sacred Scriptures and the writings of the Fathers of the Church, and the practice of charity (cf. Letters 2, 22), also following the example of his sister, St Macrina, who was already living the ascetic life of a nun. He was then ordained a priest and finally, in the year 370, Bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia in present-day Turkey.

Through his preaching and writings, he carried out immensely busy pastoral, theological and literary activities.

With a wise balance, he was able to combine service to souls with dedication to prayer and meditation in solitude. Availing himself of his personal experience, he encouraged the foundation of numerous "fraternities", in other words, communities of Christians consecrated to God, which he visited frequently (cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 43, 29, in laudem Basilii: PG 36, 536b).

He urged them with his words and his writings, many of which have come down to us (cf. Regulae brevius tractatae, Proemio: PG 31, 1080ab), to live and to advance in perfection.

Various legislators of ancient monasticism drew on his works, including St Benedict, who considered Basil his teacher (cf. Rule 73, 5).

Indeed, Basil created a very special monasticism: it was not closed to the community of the local Church but instead was open to it. His monks belonged to the particular Church; they were her life-giving nucleus and, going before the other faithful in the following of Christ and not only in faith, showed a strong attachment to him - love for him - especially through charitable acts. These monks, who ran schools and hospitals, were at the service of the poor and thus demonstrated the integrity of Christian life.

In speaking of monasticism, the Servant of God John Paul II wrote: "For this reason many people think that the essential structure of the life of the Church, monasticism, was established, for all time, mainly by St Basil; or that, at least, it was not defined in its more specific nature without his decisive contribution" (Apostolic Letter Patres Ecclesiae, n. 2, January 1980; L'Osservatore Romano English edition, 25 February, p. 6).

As the Bishop and Pastor of his vast Diocese Basil was constantly concerned with the difficult material conditions in which his faithful lived; he firmly denounced the evils; he did all he could on behalf of the poorest and most marginalized people; he also intervened with rulers to alleviate the sufferings of the population, especially in times of disaster; he watched over the Church's freedom, opposing even the powerful in order to defend the right to profess the true faith (cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 43, 48-51 in laudem Basilii: PG 36, 557c-561c).

Basil bore an effective witness to God, who is love and charity, by building for the needy various institutions (cf. Basil, Letter 94: PG 32, 488bc), virtually a "city" of mercy, called "Basiliade" after him (cf. Sozomeno, Historia Eccl. 6, 34: PG 67, 1397a). This was the origin of the modern hospital structures where the sick are admitted for treatment.

Aware that "the liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed", and "also the fount from which all her power flows" (Sacrosanctum Concilium, n. 10), and in spite of his constant concern to do charitable acts which is the hallmark of faith, Basil was also a wise "liturgical reformer" (cf. Gregory Nazianzus, Oratio 43, 34 in laudem Basilii: PG 36, 541c).

Indeed, he has bequeathed to us a great Eucharistic Prayer [or anaphora] which takes its name from him and has given a fundamental order to prayer and psalmody: at his prompting, the people learned to know and love the Psalms and even went to pray them during the night (cf. Basil, In Psalmum 1, 1-2: PG 29, 212a-213c). And we thus see how liturgy, worship, prayer with the Church and charity go hand in hand and condition one another.

With zeal and courage Basil opposed the heretics who denied that Jesus Christ was God as Father (cf. Basil, Letter 9, 3: PG 32, 272a; Letter 52, 1-3: PG 32, 392b-396a; Adv. Eunomium 1, 20: PG 29, 556c). Likewise, against those who would not accept the divinity of the Holy Spirit, he maintained that the Spirit is also God and "must be equated and glorified with the Father and with the Son (cf. De Spiritu Sancto: SC 17ff., 348). For this reason Basil was one of the great Fathers who formulated the doctrine on the Trinity: the one God, precisely because he is love, is a God in three Persons who form the most profound unity that exists: divine unity.

In his love for Christ and for his Gospel, the great Cappadocian also strove to mend divisions within the Church (cf. Letters, 70, 243), doing his utmost to bring all to convert to Christ and to his word (cf. De Iudicio 4: PG 31, 660b-661a), a unifying force which all believers were bound to obey (cf. ibid. 1-3: PG 31, 653a-656c).

To conclude, Basil spent himself without reserve in faithful service to the Church and in the multiform exercise of the episcopal ministry. In accordance with the programme that he himself drafted, he became an "apostle and minister of Christ, steward of God's mysteries, herald of the Kingdom, a model and rule of piety, an eye of the Body of the Church, a Pastor of Christ's sheep, a loving doctor, father and nurse, a cooperator of God, a farmer of God, a builder of God's temple" (cf. Moralia 80, 11-20: PG 31, 864b-868b).

This is the programme which the holy Bishop consigns to preachers of the Word - in the past as in the present -, a programme which he himself was generously committed to putting into practice. In 379 A.D. Basil, who was not yet 50, returned to God "in the hope of eternal life, through Jesus Christ Our Lord" (De Baptismo, 1, 2, 9).

He was a man who truly lived with his gaze fixed on Christ. He was a man of love for his neighbour. Full of the hope and joy of faith, Basil shows us how to be true Christians."

Comparing the Offices/4 - The structure of the hours from Prime to None

Continuing my series comparing the major variants of the Roman and Benedictine Offices, I want to look now at the day hours of Prime to None.  These day hours are key to the differences in the varying spiritualities implicit in the forms of the Divine Office.   

The first major issue I want to look at is the number of 'hours' to be said each day, which goes to the underlying philosophy of the Divine Office in general.  The second dimension over which the hours vary is their length.  But the third, and perhaps the most important, difference between the various versions of the Office is the nature of the psalms assigned to these hours.

How many hours - on praying ceaselessly

The first major difference is of course in the number of hours.

Traditionally of course, there are four 'little hours': Prime (at first light); Terce (mid-morning); Sext (midday); and None (mid-afternoon).  Terce, Sext and None have the most ancient origin - there are references to praying at these times in the New Testament itself , as well as in early Christian documents such as Didache. 

Prime was a rather later addition, with origins probably in the late fourth century.  One storyline is that it was added to prevent monks from going back to bed after Lauds.  That may be true.  But there are deeper, more important reasons, as we shall see, going to the very nature of the Divine Office. 

Laus perennis (continuous praise)

There have long been competing positions on the idea of the Office as a means of fulfilling the Scriptural injunction to 'pray ceaselessly'.

One idea is to take the idea of praying ceaselessly literally, as some of the Desert Fathers did, praying the Office even as they wove baskets or did other tasks.  At the height of the middle ages, in some medieval monasteries the monks worked in shifts over the day and night in order to ensure that liturgy was always being said.  Perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is another variant on this idea.

At the other extreme, some (including some prominent modern Benedictines, hence the rhetoric in the 1979 Thesaurus for the Order, and the decision to abolish Prime by many modern Benedictine Congregations, even those retaining a one week psalter) argue that it is possible to make our work and relaxation a continual prayer, so that work becomes liturgy.  In this theory, it doesn't really matter how often one gets together at all for formal prayer - hence the decision to abolish Prime in the Roman Office mandated in Sacrosanctum Concilium in Vatican II, and the subsequent decision in the 1971 Office (without any Vatican II mandate whatsoever) to say only one of Terce, Sext or None each day.

The Western Tradition

St Benedict and the mainstream Western tradition, I would argue, strikes a healthy balance between these two extremes. 

First, St Benedict, following the direction set by St Martin of Tours, does not anywhere in his Rule pretend that work and liturgy are the same thing, and that we can therefore abandon one for the other.  Rather, he insists on a sharp differentiation between the two, instructing that the chapel not be used for any other purposes.  Secondly, St Benedict talks about the Divine Office as the monk's service, their 'sacred service', the 'Work of God'.   Liturgy, in this view, is performed not just for our own improvement, not just as a spur to contemplation, but as a duty we owe to God.  As such, it is not something that can be shirked: put nothing before the work of God, he instructs his monks.

Secondly, the traditional ordering of the hours recognises that it is only too easy for us to become caught up in our own work, and forget about God entirely.  Spacing the hours at regular times through the day serves as a practical psychological tool to keep God top of mind and keep an appropriate balance in our lives (there are good reasons why even in secular life we have historically at least mimicked this pattern with breakfast, morning tea, lunch and afternoon tea breaks!) .

Most importantly though, is the rationale for seven day hours in particular.  St Benedict justifies the number of hours in his schema with a quote from Psalm 118: 'seven times a day will I praise you', and 'At midnight I rose to give you praise'.  Seven, as St Benedict points out in his Rule, is a sacred number, symbolising fullness or completeness.   St Augustine, for example, gave long expositions on its significance in terms of the number of petitions in the Lord's Prayer, in the Beatitudes (with a little creative interpretation) and so forth.  The bottom line was that by praying seven times a day, monks could indeed claim to be fulfilling the injunction to 'pray ceaselessly' without the need for interestingly creative rationalisations such as 'quality over quantity' or 'work is liturgy' for abandoning the Office.

The length and content of the little hours

The Benedictine, pre-1911 Roman Office and Pius X Office all featured these four key hours of the day.  Nonetheless, the character of these hours is quite different in each of these forms of the Office.

In the oldest form of the Roman Office, these four hours were the essentially same every day, and centred on the saying of the longest of the psalms, Psalm 118, an extended meditation on the importance of keeping the law.  Prime also included Psalm 117 on Sunday and Psalm 53 the rest of the week. 

Prime in the Benedictine Office

St Benedict made significant changes to all of these hours in his schema.  St Benedict first cut the length of these hours more or less by half.  On Sunday, he shifted Psalm 117 to Lauds, and cut the number of verses of Psalm 118 in half. Sunday Prime in the pre-1911 Office consisted of 68 verses in total: in the Benedictine Office it is only 32 verses of psalm. 

The remaining verses of Psalm 118 are said, in the traditional Benedictine Office, on Sunday and Monday Terce to None, with each hour consisting of 24 verses instead of the Roman 48.

St Benedict also gave Prime during the week much more substantive content, fitting with its character as preparation for the day's work.  Instead of a repeated psalm each day, he allocated psalms 1-2 and 6-19 to the hour, all of which contain important catechetical content. 

The post-Tridentine version of Prime made a move in this direction by adding one of Psalms 21-25 to each day's roster, but at a cost of further lengthening the hour.  On average, the pre-1911 Prime averaged 58 verses of psalms a day; by contrast the Benedictine Office averages only 40.

Terce to Sext

St Benedict's biggest change to the Roman Office though, was to dump Psalm 118 out of the weekday Office, and instead have his monks say the first nine of the Gradual, or Psalms of Ascent, at Terce to None.  These psalms are very short, so that Benedictine Terce to None average only around 22 verses each (compared to the old Roman 48).  They are easily memorized and so could be said in the fields or workplace if necessary, as St Benedict specifically allows. 

Like Psalm 118, their repetition serves to constantly reinforce fairly straight forward messages, about the necessary virtues to be cultivated in the course of our daily life.  But they also set down a key challenge: it is not enough to merely keep the commandments, St Benedict seems to be telling us; we must also work to ascend the spiritual ladder towards heaven.

The Pius X reforms

The driving concern of the reforms to the Roman Breviary made under Pope St Pius X was length: making the breviary more 'doable' to priests overloaded with pastoral pressures.  As a result, it made a conscious effort to shorten the day hours substantially.  The end result is that the 1960 hours of Prime to None average around 30 verses of psalm each on weekdays (but with some variation over the week, and a much longer Office on Sundays).

The approachability of these hours however suffered drastically, in my view, from the decision to reallocate the psalms of Matins to the day hours.  The old Roman (and Benedictine) Office featured the repetition of familiar verses with relatively straightforward messages during the day; the new day hours required those who say the Office to grapple with psalms full of difficult concepts and ideas.  Instead of being a gentle prod to keep the priest or religious on track during the day, they confront the person praying the Office with the cursing psalms and other difficult to grapple concepts. 

In short, the Pius X reforms completely destroyed the character of the Little Hours.

And the reforms ultimately provoked a reaction, in the form of simply cutting all those difficult passages out of the psalter altogether, and all but abolishing the little hours, in the 1971 Liturgy of the Hours....

A psalm for Sunday...Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost

Conti (c18th), The parable of the Good Samaritan

Today's (Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost) Introit in the Extraordinary Form is verses from Psalm 69, but the sentiments and phrases are actually ones used in several other psalms as well.  Psalm 69 actually more or less duplicates the second half of Psalm 39, and its sentiments appear in several other places as well:

Deus, in adjutórium meum inténde: Dómine, ad adjuvándum me festína: confundántur et revereántur inimíci mei, qui quærunt ánimam meam. Avertántur retrórsum et erubéscant: qui cógitant mihi mala.

or:

Incline unto my aid, O God: O Lord, make haste to help me: let my enemies be confounded and ashamed, who seek my soul.  Let them be turned backward and blush for shame, who desire evils to me.

Let my enemies be confounded and ashamed!

The first verse of the Introit here is the familiar call for God's aid, a call that expresses our dependence on God in all circumstances.  It is used at the start of each hour of the Office and in the Mass as a constant reminder that we can do nothing without God, and that nothing happens without God willing it or allowing it.

But the next sets of words are equally important to the Christian, for they are restatements of the prophecies of the Incarnation and of God's promises to us included especially in the Benedictus and Magnificat: of God's help to us in times of temptation, and his commitment that we will never be tempted beyond our ability to resist; of the final victory over the devil; and of the ultimate triumph of the poor in spirit over the proud and powerful.

On the one hand they are a restatement of Our Lord's victory over death and ultimate triumph over the devil; on the other hand they are an invitation to us: to be confounded but the realization of our sinful state, and thus to be ashamed; and to be converted.  Only once we have come to this realization can we truly be said to be putting our trust in God's help.

In the Benedictine Office, these sentiments feature heavily in the psalms set for Monday (with Psalm 39), with similar phrases turning up not only at several psalms of Matins, but also closing off Prime (in Psalm 6) and Vespers (in Psalm 128).

But the sentiments are also a good fit to the themes of Wednesday Matins, where this version of the psalm appears, since that day deals with man's betrayal of God, and the election of the gentiles, for in the Gospel for this twelfth Sunday, with the story of the Good Samaritan.   The Jews who would have walked past the man who had been robbed and beaten without helping him; but we are invited to be ashamed, repent, and help.

St Alphonse Liguori on the psalms/2

Yesterday I provided some background on the saint himself.  Today a quick look at his commentaries.

A practical aid

St Alphonse Ligouri's psalm commentaries are very much directed at providing practical assistance to those saying the Divine Office.  They are not, too my mind at least, particularly original, but rather provide notes to aid translation, drawing where relevant on the views of other mostly near contemporary commentators (few of which remain influential or even readily available today).  That said, the summations are often pithy and to the point.

The work is ordered around (pre-1911) Roman Office.  Unfortunately of course, the Roman Office has been completely reordered twice since he wrote!

All the same, the commentary is still useful, and is readily available for download online (see the sidebar on psalm commentaries).  For each psalm (and canticle), St Alphonse provides a short paragraph summarising what it is about, and then short notes on selected verses.

A sample summary

You can get a feel for the style of summaries St Alphonsus provides from ths note on Psalm 75, said at Thursday Matins in the pre-1911 Roman Breviary, Thursday None in the 1962 Roman Breviary, and Friday Lauds in the traditional Benedictine Office:

"This psalm is a canticle of praise and thanksgiving which the Jews address to God for having aided them to be victorious over their enemies. Some Fathers believe that it was composed after the victory gained over the Assyrians and the defeat of the army of Sennacherib (4 Kings, xix. 35), the title of it being according to the Vulgate: Canticum ad Assyrios. But Grotius and Xavier Mattei think that David composed it after his victory over the Ammonites (2 Kings, x.), and that afterward Ezechias recited it after the defeat of the Assyrians. It may be used by Christians to thank God for having delivered them

from their enemies."

These summaries are extremely useful as quick overviews to refresh the memory.

Verse by verse notes

The verse notes, I would suggest, are often less useful to the modern reader.  St Alphonse provides notes on all but two verses of this particularly important psalm. 

Many of the notes simply provide information on Masoretic Text and/or St Jerome's  from the Hebrew translation, which may or may not be helpful depending on your view of those versions of the psalms.  Much of this has arguably been overtaken by editions drawing on the dead sea scrolls and other sources, and modern scholarship on the texts.  Nonetheless, where verses are obscure, St Alphonse generally summarises the competing views that he is aware of (generally focusing on his near contemporaries amongst commentators), and states his preferred reading.

Other notes, though, are paraphrases of the verse into less poetic language, a useful contribution indeed: understanding meaning of the individual Latin or English words of the psalms is one thing; understanding what the sentence is actually trying to say is often quite another! 

And occasionally, St Alphonsus distills out a gem of wisdom for our consideration. 

All in all, this is a work that, though dated in some respects, is still worth a look at for the serious student of the psalms.

Commentaries on the psalms: St Alphonse Liguori

Continuing my series on the major commentaries by the Fathers, Theologians and Saints on the psalms, this week a brief look at St Alphonse Liguori (1696-1787).

St Alphonse is best known as the founder of the Redemptorists, for his mariology and his moral theology.  But his psalm commentary, written specifically in the context of the Divine Office, is a useful contribution to the genre, summarising as he often does, the work of commentators close to his own time.

Life of the saint

But first, some background on his life, from a General Audience of Pope Benedict XVI given on 30 March 2011:

"Today I would like to present to you the figure of a holy Doctor of the Church to whom we are deeply indebted because he was an outstanding moral theologian and a teacher of spiritual life for all, especially simple people. He is the author of the words and music of one of the most popular Christmas carols in Italy and not only Italy: Tu scendi dalle stelle [You come down from the stars].

Belonging to a rich noble family of Naples, Alfonso Maria de’ Liguori [known in English as Alphonsus Liguori] was born in 1696. Endowed with outstanding intellectual qualities, when he was only 16 years old he obtained a degree in civil and canon law. He was the most brilliant lawyer in the tribunal of Naples: for eight years he won all the cases he defended. However, in his soul thirsting for God and desirous of perfection, the Lord led Alphonsus to understand that he was calling him to a different vocation. In fact, in 1723, indignant at the corruption and injustice that was ruining the legal milieu, he abandoned his profession — and with it riches and success — and decided to become a priest despite the opposition of his father.

He had excellent teachers who introduced him to the study of Sacred Scripture, of the Church history and of mysticism. He acquired a vast theological culture which he put to good use when, after a few years, he embarked on his work as a writer.

He was ordained a priest in 1726 and, for the exercise of his ministry entered the diocesan Congregation of Apostolic Missions. Alphonsus began an activity of evangelization and catechesis among the humblest classes of Neapolitan society, to whom he liked preaching, and whom he instructed in the basic truths of the faith. Many of these people, poor and modest, to whom he addressed himself, were very often prone to vice and involved in crime. He patiently taught them to pray, encouraging them to improve their way of life.

Alphonsus obtained excellent results: in the most wretched districts of the city there were an increasing number of groups that would meet in the evenings in private houses and workshops to pray and meditate on the word of God, under the guidance of several catechists trained by Alphonsus and by other priests, who regularly visited these groups of the faithful. When at the wish of the Archbishop of Naples, these meetings were held in the chapels of the city, they came to be known as “evening chapels”. They were a true and proper source of moral education, of social improvement and of reciprocal help among the poor: thefts, duels, prostitution ended by almost disappearing.

Even though the social and religious context of the time of St Alphonsus was very different from our own, the “evening chapels” appear as a model of missionary action from which we may draw inspiration today too, for a “new evangelization”, particularly of the poorest people, and for building a more just, fraternal and supportive coexistence. Priests were entrusted with a task of spiritual ministry, while well-trained lay people could be effective Christian animators, an authentic Gospel leaven in the midst of society.

After having considered leaving to evangelize the pagan peoples, when Alphonsus was 35 years old, he came into contact with the peasants and shepherds of the hinterland of the Kingdom of Naples. Struck by their ignorance of religion and the state of neglect in which they were living, he decided to leave the capital and to dedicate himself to these people, poor both spiritually and materially. In 1732 he founded the religious Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer, which he put under the protection of Bishop Tommaso Falcoia, and of which he subsequently became the superior.

These religious, guided by Alphonsus, were authentic itinerant missionaries, who also reached the most remote villages, exhorting people to convert and to persevere in the Christian life, especially through prayer. Still today the Redemptorists, scattered in so many of the world’s countries, with new forms of apostolate continue this mission of evangelization. I think of them with gratitude, urging them to be ever faithful to the example of their holy Founder.

Esteemed for his goodness and for his pastoral zeal, in 1762 Alphonsus was appointed Bishop of Sant’Agata dei Goti, a ministry which he left, following the illness which debilitated him, in 1775, through a concession of Pope Pius VI. On learning of his death in 1787, which occurred after great suffering, the Pontiff exclaimed: “he was a saint!”. And he was not mistaken: Alphonsus was canonized in 1839 and in 1871 he was declared a Doctor of the Church. This title suited him for many reason. First of all, because he offered a rich teaching of moral theology, which expressed adequately the Catholic doctrine, to the point that Pope Pius XII proclaimed him “Patron of all confessors and moral theologians”.

In his day, there was a very strict and widespread interpretation of moral life because of the Jansenist mentality which, instead of fostering trust and hope in God’s mercy, fomented fear and presented a grim and severe face of God, very remote from the face revealed to us by Jesus. Especially in his main work entitled Moral Theology, St Alphonsus proposed a balanced and convincing synthesis of the requirements of God’s law, engraved on our hearts, fully revealed by Christ and interpreted authoritatively by the Church, and of the dynamics of the conscience and of human freedom, which precisely in adherence to truth and goodness permit the person’s development and fulfilment.

Alphonsus recommended to pastors of souls and confessors that they be faithful to the Catholic moral doctrine, assuming at the same time a charitable, understanding and gentle attitude so that penitents might feel accompanied, supported and encouraged on their journey of faith and of Christian life.

St Alphonsus never tired of repeating that priests are a visible sign of the infinite mercy of God who forgives and enlightens the mind and heart of the sinner so that he may convert and change his life. In our epoch, in which there are clear signs of the loss of the moral conscience and — it must be recognized — of a certain lack of esteem for the sacrament of Confession, St Alphonsus’ teaching is still very timely.

Together with theological works, St Alphonsus wrote many other works, destined for the religious formation of the people. His style is simple and pleasing. Read and translated into many languages, the works of St Alphonsus have contributed to molding the popular spirituality of the last two centuries. Some of the texts can be read with profit today too, such as The Eternal Maxims, the Glories of Mary, The Practice of Loving Jesus Christ, which latter work is the synthesis of his thought and his masterpiece.

He stressed the need for prayer, which enables one to open oneself to divine Grace in order to do God’s will every day and to obtain one’s own sanctification. With regard to prayer he writes: “God does not deny anyone the grace of prayer, with which one obtains help to overcome every form of concupiscence and every temptation. And I say, and I will always repeat as long as I live, that the whole of our salvation lies in prayer”. Hence his famous axiom: “He who prays is saved” (Del gran mezzo della preghiera e opuscoli affini. Opere ascetiche II, Rome 1962, p. 171).

In this regard, an exhortation of my Predecessor, the Venerable Servant of God John Paul II comes to mind. “our Christian communities must become genuine ‘schools’ of prayer…. It is therefore essential that education in prayer should become in some way a key-point of all pastoral planning” (Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte, nn. 33, 34).

Among the forms of prayer fervently recommended by St Alphonsus, stands out the visit to the Blessed Sacrament, or as we would call it today, “adoration”, brief or extended, personal or as a community, before the Eucharist. “Certainly”, St Alphonsus writes, “amongst all devotions, after that of receiving the sacraments, that of adoring Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament takes the first place, is the most pleasing to God, and the most useful to ourselves…. Oh, what a beautiful delight to be before an altar with faith… to represent our wants to him, as a friend does to a friend in whom he places all his trust” (Visits to the Most Blessed Sacrament and to the Blessed Virgin Mary for Each Day of the Month. Introduction).

Alphonsian spirituality is in fact eminently Christological, centred on Christ and on his Gospel. Meditation on the mystery of the Incarnation and on the Lord’s Passion were often the subject of St Alphonsus’ preaching. In these events, in fact, Redemption is offered to all human beings “in abundance”. And precisely because it is Christological, Alphonsian piety is also exquisitely Marian. Deeply devoted to Mary he illustrates her role in the history of salvation: an associate in the Redemption and Mediatrix of grace, Mother, Advocate and Queen.

In addition, St Alphonsus states that devotion to Mary will be of great comfort to us at the moment of our death. He was convinced that meditation on our eternal destiny, on our call to participate for ever in the beatitude of God, as well as on the tragic possibility of damnation, contributes to living with serenity and dedication and to facing the reality of death, ever preserving full trust in God’s goodness.

St Alphonsus Maria Liguori is an example of a zealous Pastor who conquered souls by preaching the Gospel and administering the sacraments combined with behaviour impressed with gentle and merciful goodness that was born from his intense relationship with God, who is infinite Goodness. He had a realistically optimistic vision of the resources of good that the Lord gives to every person and gave importance to the affections and sentiments of the heart, as well as to the mind, to be able to love God and neighbour.

To conclude, I would like to recall that our Saint, like St Francis de Sales — of whom I spoke a few weeks ago — insists that holiness is accessible to every Christian: “the religious as a religious; the secular as a secular; the priest as a priest; the married as married; the man of business as a man of business; the soldier as a soldier; and so of every other state of life” (Practica di amare Gesù Cristo. Opere ascetiche [The Practice of the Love of Jesus Christ] Ascetic Works 1, Rome 1933, p. 79).

Let us thank the Lord who, with his Providence inspired saints and doctors in different times and places, who speak the same language to invite us to grow in faith and to live with love and with joy our being Christians in the simple everyday actions, to walk on the path of holiness, on the path towards God and towards true joy. Thank you."

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.

St Augustine on the Psalms/2

van Wassenhove, c1474

St Augustine had a great attachment to the psalms: he discovered them in the period between his conversion and his baptism while on retreat, and his enthusiasm continued right up until the end of his life: as he lay dying, he read the penitential psalms, which he had requested be written out in large writing and put on the wall of his room.

The psalm commentaries

St Augustine's Commentary on the Psalms is one of his major works, taking up to five volumes in modern editions, and were written over a period of thirty years starting from just after his ordination, between 390 and 422. 

They were originally given as sermons, as many of the comments in them make clear.  Pope Benedict XVI talked about it in his General Audience on the saint of 20 February 2008:

"The mass of homilies that he would often deliver "off the cuff", transcribed by tachygraphers during his preaching and immediately circulated, had a special importance in this production destined for a wider public. The very beautiful Enarrationes in Psalmos, read widely in the Middle Ages, stand out among them. The practice of publishing Augustine's thousands of homilies - often without the author's control - precisely explains their dissemination and later dispersion but also their vitality. In fact, because of the author's fame, the Bishop of Hippo's sermons became very sought after texts and, adapted to ever new contexts, also served as models for other Bishops and priests."

Old Latin translation of the Septuagint

St Augustine famously exchanged a rather heated correspondence with St Jerome (well, he was hardly unique in this, St Jerome was a man of strong opinions, unafraid of stating them forcefully indeed!) over whether to translate the Bible into Latin (amongst other topics) from the Septuagint or the Hebrew text of the time - St Jerome of course favoured the Hebrew, St Augustine the Greek.  St Jerome got his way for most of the Old Testament - but not in the case of the psalms.  St Augustine's commentaries of course, are not based on either of the Jerome translations, but from an older Latin translation of the Septuagint. 

The Christological focus of the psalms

The two greatest strengths of St Augustine's Commentary, in my view, are its strong Christological focus and their practicality.

His Commentary on Psalm 1, Blessed is the man who has not walked in the counsel of the ungodly, for example states firmly that:

This is to be understood of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord Man. For He came indeed in the way of sinners, by being born as sinners are; but He "stood" not therein, for that the enticements of the world held Him not. He willed not an earthly kingdom, with pride, which is well taken for "the seat of pestilence;" for that there is hardly any one who is free from the love of rule, and craves not human glory... "the seat of pestilence" may be more appropriately understood of hurtful doctrine; "whose word spreadeth as a canker...

St Augustine does not over stretch the Christological interpretation of the psalms, and always grounds his interpretations in the original historical context of the psalm where this is clear.  But he draws out their meaning in the context of the whole of Scripture in a way that should serve as a model for our approach to the psalms today. 

A practical guide

Above all, though, his expositions are not just empty theology, but provide a deeply practical guide to the spiritual life.  Psalm 56, said at Lauds on Tuesday in the Benedictine Office, for example, is treated as a psalm on the Passion.  And saint's message is that it is intended to teach us how to pray.

On verse 1, for example,"Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me: for my soul trusts in you" he says:

"Christ in the Passion says, Have pity on Me, O God. To God, God says, Have pity on Me! He that with the Father has pity on you, in you cries, Have pity on Me. For that part of Him which is crying, Have pity on Me, is yours: from you this He received, for the sake of you, that you should be delivered, with Flesh He was clothed. The flesh itself cries: Have pity on Me, O God, have pity on me: Man himself, soul and flesh. For whole Man did the Word take upon Him, and whole Man the Word became. Let it not therefore be thought that there Soul was not, because the Evangelist thus says: The Word was made flesh, and dwelled in us. John 1:14 For man is called flesh, as in another place says the Scripture, And all flesh shall see the salvation of God. Shall anywise flesh alone see, and shall Soul not be there?...You hear the Master praying, learn thou to pray. For to this end He prayed, in order that He might teach how to pray: because to this end He suffered, in order that He might teach how to suffer; to this end He rose again, in order that He might teach how to hope for rising again."

St Augustine is essential reading for anyone studying the psalms.