The Benedictine Rite is the particular form of
Mass
Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...
and
Liturgy
Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and participation in the sacred through activities reflecting praise, thanksgiving, remembra ...
celebrated by the
Benedictine Order
The Benedictines, officially the Order of Saint Benedict (, abbreviated as O.S.B. or OSB), are a mainly Christian mysticism, contemplative Christian monasticism, monastic Religious order (Catholic), order of the Catholic Church for men and f ...
, as based on the writings of St. Benedict on the topic.
Mass
The Benedictine Order never had a rite of its own celebrating
Mass
Mass is an Intrinsic and extrinsic properties, intrinsic property of a physical body, body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the physical quantity, quantity of matter in a body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physi ...
. Since the reform of
Pope Pius V
Pope Pius V, OP (; 17 January 1504 – 1 May 1572), born Antonio Ghislieri (and from 1518 called Michele Ghislieri), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 7 January 1566 to his death, in May 1572. He was an ...
(see ''
Quo primum
Quo Primum Tempore (English: ''From the beginning whence'') is the incipit of an Apostolic Constitution in the form of a Papal bull issued by Pope Pius V on 14 July 1570. This Pontifical decree promulgated the Roman Missal and made its use obliga ...
''), it always uses the Roman Rite of Mass; earlier, its monks often used local rites, as did those who served the cathedral of
Durham.
Liturgy of the Hours
The Order has always had its own form of celebrating the
Liturgy of the Hours
The Liturgy of the Hours (), Divine Office (), or ''Opus Dei'' ("Work of God") are a set of Catholic prayers comprising the canonical hours, often also referred to as the breviary, of the Latin Church. The Liturgy of the Hours forms the official ...
, in accordance with what was called the ''Breviarium Monasticum''.
The founder,
St. Benedict devotes thirteen chapters (8-20) of his rule to regulating the
canonical hours
In the practice of Christianity, canonical hours mark the divisions of the day in terms of Fixed prayer times#Christianity, fixed times of prayer at regular intervals. A book of hours, chiefly a breviary, normally contains a version of, or sel ...
for his monks (and nuns). Chapter 18 specifies how they should pray the
psalms
The Book of Psalms ( , ; ; ; ; , in Islam also called Zabur, ), also known as the Psalter, is the first book of the third section of the Tanakh (Hebrew Bible) called ('Writings'), and a book of the Old Testament.
The book is an anthology of B ...
:
:In What Order the Psalms Are to Be Said
Let this verse be said: "Incline unto my aid, O God; O Lord, make haste to help me," and the "Glory be to the Father" then the hymn proper to each Hour.
Then at Prime on Sunday four sections of Psalm 118 are to be said; and at each of the remaining Hours, that is Terce, Sext and None, three sections of the same Psalm 118.
At Prime on Monday let three Psalms be said, namely Psalms 1, 2 and 6. And so each day at Prime until Sunday let three Psalms be said in numerical order, to Psalm 19, but with Psalms 9 and 17 each divided into two parts. Thus it comes about that the Night Office on Sunday always begins with Psalm 20.
At Terce, Sext and None on Monday let the nine remaining sections of Psalm 118 be said, three at each of these Hours.
Psalm 118 having been completed, therefore, on two days, Sunday and Monday, let the nine Psalms from Psalm 119 to Psalm 127 be said at Terce, Sext and None, three at each Hour, beginning with Tuesday. And let these same Psalms be repeated every day until Sunday at the same Hours, while the arrangement of hymns, lessons and versesis kept the same on all days; and thus Prime on Sunday will always begin with Psalm 118.
Vespers are to be sung with four Psalms every day. These shall begin with Psalm 109 and go on to Psalm 147, omitting those which are set apart for other Hours; that is to say that with the exception of Psalms 117 to 127 and Psalms 133 and 142, all the rest of these are to be said at Vespers. And since there are three Psalms too few, let the longer ones of the above number be divided, namely Psalms 138, 143 and 144. But let Psalm 116 because of its brevity be joined to Psalm 115.
The order of the Vesper Psalms being thus settled, let the rest of the Hour - lesson, responsory, hymn, verse and canticle - be carried out as we prescribed above.
At Compline the same Psalms are to be repeated every day, namely Psalms 4, 90 and 133.
The order of psalmody for the day Hours being thus arranged, let all the remaining Psalms be equally distributed among the seven Night Offices by dividing the longer Psalms among them and assigning twelve Psalms to each night.
We strongly recommend, however, that if this distribution of the Psalms is displeasing to anyone, he/she should arrange them otherwise, in whatever way she/he considers better,
but taking care in any case that the Psalter with its full number of 150 Psalms be chanted every week and begun again every Sunday at the Night Office. For those monastics show themselves too lazy in the service to which they are vowed, who chant less than the Psalter with the customary canticles in the course of a week, whereas we read that our holy Fathers strenuously fulfilled that task in a single day. May we, lukewarm that we are, perform it at least in a whole week!
However, after the
Second Vatican Council
The Second Ecumenical Council of the Vatican, commonly known as the or , was the 21st and most recent ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. The council met each autumn from 1962 to 1965 in St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City for session ...
and the promulgation of the new Liturgy of the Hours, each monastery has the right to make his own monastic liturgy under the guidelines of the ''Thesaurus Liturgiae Horarum Monasticae'' (1977) which allows the usage of a different psalter order than Saint Benedict's or the retention of the canonical hour of
Prime
A prime number (or a prime) is a natural number greater than 1 that is not a product of two smaller natural numbers. A natural number greater than 1 that is not prime is called a composite number. For example, 5 is prime because the only ways ...
which was suppressed by
Sacrosanctum Concilium
''Sacrosanctum Concilium'', the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, is one of the constitutions of the Second Vatican Council. It was approved by the assembled bishops by a vote of 2,147 to 4 and promulgated by Pope Paul VI on 4 December 1963. T ...
.
Influence
The
Psalter
A psalter is a volume containing the Book of Psalms, often with other devotional material bound in as well, such as a liturgical calendar and litany of the Saints. Until the emergence of the book of hours in the Late Middle Ages, psalters were ...
in the ''Breviarium Monasticum'' formed the basis of most forms of the Liturgy of the Hours until the
Reform of the Roman Breviary by Pope Pius X
The reform of the Roman Breviary by Pope Pius X was promulgated by that Pope with the apostolic constitution '' Divino afflatu'' of 1 November 1911.
The Roman Breviary is the title of the book obligatorily used for celebrating the Roman Rite ...
in 1911.
Benedictines may not substitute the Roman Liturgy of the Hours for the Monastic Breviary, because their obligation is to say the longer monastic form. In fact, the Benedictine Liturgy of the Hours would occupy some four to five hours of a monk's day; with gradual and sometimes intense elaboration, the daily office at one point grew to where it was absorbing an astonishing ten to twelve hours, especially on the most important feasts. Reform was, obviously, a frequent refrain in those orders who split away from traditional Benedictine monasticism.
Celebrating the Liturgy's Books
See also
* Rule of Saint Benedict
The ''Rule of Saint Benedict'' () is a book of precepts written in Latin by St. Benedict of Nursia (c. AD 480–550) for monks living communally under the authority of an abbot.
The spirit of Saint Benedict's Rule is summed up in the motto of th ...
References
{{Latin Church
Liturgy of the Hours
Latin liturgical rites
Order of Saint Benedict