Transcript

DiscerningHearts.com in cooperation with the Oblates of the Virgin Mary presents Praying the Liturgy of the Hours with Father Timothy Gallagher.

Father Gallagher was ordained in 1979 as a member of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary.

He obtained his doctorate from the Gregorian University and has dedicated many years to an extensive ministry of retreats, spiritual direction, and teaching about the spiritual life.

Father Gallagher has numerous books published by the Crossroad Publishing Company on the spiritual teachings of Saint Ignatius of Loyola and on the life of the venerable Bruno Lantieri, founder of the Oblates of the Virgin Mary, as well as Praying the Liturgy of the Hours: A Personal Journey.

Father Gallagher is featured on the EWTN series Living the Discerning Life and Finding God in All Things.

Praying the Liturgy of the Hours with Father Timothy Gallagher.

I'm your host, Chris McGregor.

Welcome, Father Gallagher.

Thanks so much, Chris.

And thank you so much for your willingness to open the Liturgy of the Hours for us, the great divine office that we may have heard about but we really, for many, uh, we're not sure exactly what that means.

A kind of, um, uh, inviting but somewhat mysterious title.

So yes, that will be our, our focus in these conversations is to explore that and specifically to explore from the viewpoint of the layperson what part can well, obviously for anyone

Mm-hmm.

any priests or religious or anyone who prays it, but with a special emphasis on, on focusing on the, the church's invitation to everyone, all vocations, including very specifically the lay vocation, to benefit from the richness of this prayer.

And I thought we might introduce that by just looking at some vignettes of people who do pray the Liturgy of the Hours.

So before we get into anything a little more systematic, let's just look at what the experience of it might look like.

Mm-hmm.

Um, when I was writing the little book that I, I did on this, amongst other things, I, I traveled to a university, uh, in a large city where there was, uh, a very active Catholic student center.

And I'd heard that these students prayed the Liturgy of the Hours, you know, this, um, periodic return to prayer throughout the hours of the day, maybe for 10 minutes or 7 minutes or 15 minutes in the longer ones-

Mm-hmm.

uh, in the morning, mid-part of the day, the evening, and at night.

And so I was curious to see what this would look like and so I had just finished celebrating the noon mass at the student center and I knew the students, some of them were gonna stay to pray the hour that's called the, uh, daytime prayer.

Now hour doesn't mean 60 minutes-

Mm-hmm.

but it's that hour of the day or those hours of the day that the church has in mind, so this might take, um, 10 minutes, something like that.

And, uh, after the mass, some of the students stayed.

They gathered in the forepart of the church toward the right and, um, I sat down with them.

Others came in after mass and joined them so there were about 15 maybe students there.

And some of them had the book, uh, with all the ribbons and pages and some of them were using their smartphones, um, because this is accessible now.

The Liturgy of the Hours can be prayed digitally on a smartphone or a tablet or a computer which is, uh, causing a real explosion of new prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours because it's so easily accessible now, and it's free.

You know, you don't have to go out and buy a $70 book or anything like that, uh, to, to pray it.

And it's all laid out for you there.

All you have to do is open it up and, and pray it.

So a number of the students were, were, were doing that.

Um, and then daytime prayer began.

Now what immediately, um, struck me was these students were singing these psalms with very simple melodies, uh, which obviously they knew very well and which were so catchy that you could just hear it once and start joining in with them-

Mm-hmm.

but they were singing them in harmony, sometimes with three voices.

Again, very simple harmonies, but, um, just an astoundingly beautiful.

You know, th- here is this pause in the mid-part of the day, which is what daytime prayer is about.

In the rush and bustle of the day, you just stop for a few minutes, and here was this reverent, um, deeply felt, and just very beautiful prayer being lifted up from these students to, to the Lord.

And it was striking to me because I'd prayed daytime prayer for probably about 40 years at this point between seminary and priesthood and I had never heard it prayed like this.

And these were laypeople, these were students who were teaching me about a whole new richness in this particular part of the Liturgy of the Hours.

Just students stopping in the mid-part of the day to, to pray.

And when the psalms were finished, which was just a few minutes, these are short psalms.

The church keeps this daytime prayer short so that people can pray it in the bustle of, uh, of a day.

One of the students went up to the lectern and did it's a short reading from scripture, it'd just be two or three sentences usually, but it's just a thought that sort of enters your heart and stays there and nourishes the day, and read it very reverently again as they all listened.

And then they had the final prayer and it concluded and a number of the students just left and went on to classes or lunch or whatever would come next, and some of them stayed quietly to pray.

Well, as you can imagine, m- by this point my interest was awakened and I wasn't going to miss any more of these, uh, hours of prayer.

And after the 5:30 f- mass in the evening, they gathered again, uh, a number of students.

There were about 30 this time .

they stayed after mass and others came in and adults would join them too, uh, to pray evening prayer.

And again, books and again, smartphones.

And this time you had a leader, uh, leading the singing on the piano and you had a cantor at a microphone.

And again, very simple melodies with, uh, occasional harmonization.

I remember especially the Canticle of Mary, her Magnificat, was sung very beautifully and was simple but very beautiful harmonies.

Well, the next morning I joined them for morning prayer and there were about 30 of them.

Uh, very much like evening prayer the night before, very in- simple, inviting, deeply reverent and prayerful.

And I joined them again.

This was my final evening there, uh, for evening prayer.

And this time there were about maybe 45 of them.

And then remarkably at 10:30, this is a student's schedule -

Mm-hmm.

um, 10:30, about 20 more of them gathered, packed into a little room, the church was closed at this point, and they prayed night prayer together.

The leader told me they had begun this quietly about six months earlier and it ha- and it was just growing as the months were going by.

Now, I'd never seen anything like that.

Um, laypeople, in this case students, periodically stopping in the course of the day to pray.

And I couldn't help but think what a richness this was because generally we think of our time in prayer together as the mass if we're able to get to daily mass and obviously that is the center, but these students had a whole nother richness available to them.

They could come periodically in the course of the day and join other students to get together and pray the Psalms, to pray the church's liturgy of the hours.

You can see where that title is coming from.

This is throughout the hours of the day.

Well, you can't help but see that and find yourself thinking, Well, what if others in the church were to do this?

Obviously this is something that is available to, to everyone in the church.

There's a parish that invites me every year f- for a good many years now, maybe another, maybe 10 years or so, to do a weekend retreat every year with their people.

And, uh, I've loved joining these priests and their people for prayer every morning.

They have a seven o'clock mass in the parish.

Usually a few hundred people come to this.

And the priests, the church opens around five in the morning and people are already coming just for personal prayer with the blessed sacrament exposed.

And the priests also generally come and spend a quiet time in prayer before the blessed sacrament.

At 6:30, they gather together in the pews and usually there'll be maybe 20 to 30, uh, laypeople or parishioners with them and they pray morning prayer from the liturgy of the hours, and they follow it with the office of readings, which is the more meditative piece which can be prayed at any time in the course of a day.

And it's a beautiful thing to watch the priests joined by their laypeople together in prayer every morning, sharing this liturgical prayer of the church as a preparation for the celebration of mass.

There are a number of parishes where you'll see this, people gathering before mass or after mass to pray morning prayer or, or evening prayer.

Just, uh, recently a lovely book was written, and I know you interviewed Daria Sakhi in Inside the Pages: The Everyday Catholic's Guide to the Liturgy of the Hours.

It's a very, very nice book.

And what's striking is that th- this is an introduction to the liturgy of the hours, so this would be for the layperson who really doesn't know what the liturgy of the hours is, whose attention has been caught by this form of prayer and would like to learn more about it.

Daria wrote this little, very easily read volume which gives a very, very effective introduction.

And I don't think you can read it without asking yourself, Well, you know, should I start this in, uh, in my own life?

But what I find very striking amongst other things about that book is that this is a laywoman, mother of seven children, who is inviting other laypeople to pray the liturgy of the hours.

Um, you can't see that and realize without realizing that the liturgy of the hours in the church's mind is no longer something that is just for priests and for sisters and monks and nuns, but it's very much a prayer for the entire people of God, for the laypeople very much as well.

As you said though, many instances where laypeople are beginning to find ways of praying it together and often we don't think of it as something that maybe we can do as individuals because it seems so daunting.

I mean, that there seems to be so much that it's, it's easier to come together as a group than have it all prepared, and that can be one of the blocks that can be eliminated if there's an understanding of what the liturgy of the hours are.

Sure.

The more we grow in our understanding of it, the more all the pieces make sense.

I think it's very much like any form of prayer in the church, the mass.

The more we learn about the mass, the more its articulation makes sense.

Why this comes first and then this and then this and the meaning of all the individual pieces.

And as we get that understanding, we can pray it with a whole new ease and depth.

Um, I would say the same of the rosary, which can be prayed very fruitfully, uh, in any circumstances, but there too, as we read, for example, Pope John Paul II's letter on the rosary or things that Pope Paul VI said a- and, and many other sources and we learn more about it as a contemplative prayer, um, we can pray it with a new richness.

And the same is true of the liturgy of the hours, that the more we can learn about it the more we find ourselves saying, Oh, I like that.

And we also find ourselves saying, I wonder if I couldn't find some way to, to bring some of this, at least, into my life.

The inviting thing about it is that this is a Prayer of the Hours.

It's the only official form of this kind of prayer that the church has.

Everything else, um, especially the mass, which is absolutely the center, or the rosary, or any of these forms of prayer that we mentioned, tend to be at a given moment in the day and they bring their blessing.

But you know, Chris, you know that feeling I think we all have that, I have my formal times of prayer, uh, and they bring blessing into my life, but then I come to myself with a realization at some point in the day.

You know, it's been a good many hours in the day that I haven't explicitly thought of you, Lord.

Or I haven't my heart has not been lifted up to you in some conscious way.

And we regret that.

We because we, we want to live the day in communion with the Lord.

Not only in the formal times of prayer, but throughout the hours of the day.

Well, here is the church's richest, most powerful, most effective answer to that desire in every heart that loves the Lord Jesus.

This is a Prayer of the Hours.

It's like the students periodically stopping in the course of the day for a few minutes.

Uh, it doesn't mean we go off to church for an hour every time.

It's, uh it can be done very, uh, do-ably.

And especially now with the digital availability it can be done in all kinds of circumstances.

This is the deepest answer, the richest answer, not the only, but the richest answer that the church has to that desire.

And that's why I think as, as people learn more about the Liturgy of the Hours, they can't help but find themselves interested.

I know I listened to your interview with, uh, Daria Sacki and she described there how she first came to the Liturgy of the Hours that, as a college student, a priest would invite the students to join him for night prayer.

Very simple, just for a few minutes with, um, photocopies of the pages from the Liturgy of the Hours.

But that simple exposure was enough to awaken a desire that, uh, obviously has led where it has led in her life.

And I think that's a common pattern with the Liturgy of the Hours.

But we have a lot more to say about all, all that-

Mm-hmm.

as we go forward.

Um, there's a reason why this prayer is so inviting as we get to know more about it.

But your, your question allows me to, to touch on some other ways of praying the Liturgy of the Hours which expand our sense of how and when we can actually pray it.

Uh, other circumstances when I was writing the little book on this, I had a conversation with, uh, a layman married man lawyer, um, who gave me the freedom to share his experience.

But it's very simple.

He, um, had a pretty severe accident at one point and was pretty much incapacitated for a while, which was very hard for him because, um, he said, As a lawyer, I'm used to being in control.

You know, I see what needs to be done.

I make it happen.

And now, for the first time, was in a situation in which he was no longer in control.

And, uh, his prayer life was, was, he says, adrift, it was dry.

He was struggling even to pray, uh, in this time when a priest, a retired priest who was a friend of his came to visit him.

And knowing something of the struggles that, uh, he was undergoing brought the book of the Liturgy of the Hours for him and told him that he thought that in his circumstances, struggling with the, with the, um, accident, he might be able to relate pretty deeply to the kinds of things that you find in the Psalms which are the backbone of the Liturgy of the Hours.

Basically, there's more to it but basically to pray the Liturgy of the Hours is to periodically pray Psalms in the course of the day.

And everything is there.

You know, struggle and sadness, near despair.

Out of the depths I cry to you, oh Lord.

Prayers of confidence, praise, joy.

There's the whole panoply of human emotions, it's all there.

And the, uh, the lawyer said that, uh, the priest had written an inscription in the, uh, book of the Liturgy of the Hours which was the first verse from Psalm 25.

To you, oh Lord, I lift up my soul.

I trust you.

Let me not be disappointed.

And he said those words were true, And I wasn't disappointed.

Uh, the Liturgy of the Hours became a, a real support for him in that difficult time.

This was maybe some 15 years ago and he's continued to pray it ever since in his life.

I was listening to a talk on the Liturgy of the Hours by a layman and, uh, he described how as he would come into his work area, he worked in his own home every morning and was getting things set up.

He would have the audio version of the Liturgy of the Hours playing, Morning Prayer.

Just as a kind of a backdrop just as he was moving about, setting things up, getting ready for the work of the day which is another beautiful, um, open door into how the Liturgy of the Hours, even prayed in a somewhat informal way just as a backdrop to the start of the day can come into the lit- into the, um, into our day where people who have the audio version, you know, so people are reciting the psalms, singing the hymns, uh, playing as they drive to work or go to pick up the kids or, um in all different kinds of situations.

And then the last little vignette that I'll mention of this is the shortened form of the Liturgy of the Hours that we find in the monthly Magnificat which a lot of people use and love.

And a monthly publication, a little booklet which gives you the readings for the mass of every day and a brief meditation, but they also include a brief form of morning prayer, evening prayer, and night prayer.

And for many people that's the first step into the Liturgy of the Hours.

It's so, it's short.

It just takes what, three, four, at the most five minutes to do it in the morning, in the evening at night.

Um, but it's a very welcome way to ease into the Liturgy of the Hours.

Actually, what they're doing is something that Pope Paul VI invited the church to do back in the mid '70s when he wrote on this, to find creative shorter ways to make the Liturgy of the H- Hours available to all, very much including the laypeople in this.

And the Magnificat publication has really done this in a wonderful way.

One thing that we encounter with the Liturgy of the Hours, as you said, it's something that we pray within the cycle of a day for each hour, but then it's also something we pray in a cycle throughout the liturgical year.

It's the rhythm of our life, not only during the day, but during the weeks and then the months as we are moving from season to season.

And that's why, isn't it, Father Gallagher, that it's not about having one simple book that has the same prayers, the same things.

It, this is why it seems important to have a publication like Magnificat and others that also offer that service or something to kind of help us, because it's bigger but it's simple, it, it, all kinds of things, isn't it?

Yes.

It actua- it does.

The Liturgy of the Hours, um, as the title says, indicates that there is a wider context.

The Hours are part of a day, but a day is a part of a week, of a month, of a year, uh, of a whole cycle of repeating time as the years of our life go by.

And the Liturgy of the Hours actually it's, it's a reflection of cosmic time brought into prayer.

So the rhythms of cosmic time that God has built into, into the world are reflected in a periodic return to prayer as that cosmic time unfolds.

And it does reflect the church's liturgical cycle so that, uh, if we're praying the Liturgy of the Hours during Advent, the prayers are very much attuned to Advent or to Lent or to the Easter time or the Feast of the Assumption of Mary or, um, Solemnity of Christ the King or whatever the particular day might be.

So that what happens is that the liturgical prayer of the Mass Let's say on a given Sunday, we, we go to Mass and that pr- is the center of the prayer of the day.

We join with the assembly on the Lord's Day to celebrate the Eucharist.

But then if we have the Liturgy of the Hours as a part of our day, the Mass, the liturgical prayer of the Mass extends throughout and permeates all the hours of the day.

Um, so the Liturgy of the Hours, let's say if the Mass was, um, the second Sunday of Lent, then the, the prayers of the Liturgy of the Hours will be prayers for the second Sunday of Lent.

And they'll take us back to the Mass as the center and they lead out from the Mass as a blessing throughout the hours of the day.

Now, as far as, uh, the complications in praying the Liturgy of the Hours, this is kind of a classic issue, but things are easier than they've ever been, uh, along these lines now, because it used to be For example, when I first began praying the Liturgy of the Hours, we were given four volumes of a few thousand pages each with maybe six ribbons.

Mm-hmm.

And you had to find your way, uh, through all of this to, to learn how to pray the given hour.

And that can be learned.

As you pray the Liturgy of the Hours gradually over time, that gets easier and easier.

But the publications that you mentioned lay it all out for you so there are no pages to search for or ribbons to place.

It's just all given very easily and in the digital forms, as I mentioned, so you can pray it on the computer or on the tablet or on the smartphone.

Again, it's all laid out for you so that all you have to do is scroll through it and, uh, and pray it so that it's easier than it's ever been in the church's history now to pray the Liturgy of the Hours.

It seems as though it's something that we enter into.

It's almost like a door into the church, the sanctuary.

You're going back and forth, as opposed to something that we just do.

There's an ebb and flow which we're participating in.

That's what I hear you're saying.

Well, you touch on something very, very deep in the Liturgy of the Hours, uh, something that's true of all prayer and in its specific way with the Liturgy of the Hours and that is that prayer is a relationship and you enter into To enter into prayer is to enter into a relationship.

It's to meet the Lord.

And this is one of the many reasons why the Psalms are so special.

You have, uh, Saint Augustine who says that we didn't know how to praise God.

We wouldn't have known.

We just didn't have words.

We wouldn't have known how to begin to do this, and so God Himself gave us words.

Um, and when we pray the Psalms and then the other parts of the Liturgy of the Hours, what's happening is that we are entering into relationship with God, praying to God with words that God Himself has given us, uh, as words which in a uniquely powerful way express the things that our hearts need to say.

And so entering into it, I think, is a very rich way of describing what the Liturgy of the Hours is in its real depth .

and the ebb and flow.

It's like the ebb and flow of life.

You know there, there are more intense moments, there are quieter moments, uh, in the course of a day, a week, and a year.

And the Liturgy of the Hours is like a friend that's always there.

It knows, references, and respects that ebb and flow and invites us to live it now with a new prayerful richness as we go through the unfolding of the hours and the, uh, unfolding of the events of our day and of our lives.

If it is something that, as you said, that the Lord gives to us i- in that scripture, His communication to us, then it also calls upon us a, a degree of listening, doesn't it?

Prayer is always first a listening.

You know one of the classic definitions of prayer is conversation with God, um, or conversation with Christ.

Those, those words, they seem to make sense to us.

We can easily nod to them.

But I think they really come alive when we see them on the level of experience, and I think that's what you're touching right now.

That in order to say these words to God, we need first to hear them from the Lord and that's what's happening when we pray with scripture, and in this case, with the Psalms.

We allow God to speak His word.

This is the Word of God.

We allow God to speak His word to our hearts.

The Lord is my shepherd.

I shall not want.

And as I hear that, as I allow the Lord to say those words from Psalm 23 to my heart, as God's grace may give, my heart is moved with the realization that, yes, You really are my shepherd.

And no matter how dark this particular day and what lies ahead in it may seem to me, I, I shall not want.

You are with me.

With Your rod and Your staff, You give me courage.

And then my heart s- at this point, God has spoken His word to me and at this point, my heart now speaks in return to God, Yes, You are my shepherd.

I trust in You.

I believe that I will not want.

I trust that You'll be with me in the course of the day that lies ahead.

Now, just quoting that single verse from one psalm is a little window into what praying the psalms in the Liturgy of the Hours can be.

If we do this, eh, throughout the hours of the day, it's, um after the mass, there's nothing like this in the life of prayer that the Church offers us.

That's what it means that this is liturgical prayer, which is the real center.

All forms of prayer are beautiful and powerful and all are compatible.

They just all add different richness, a different richness to the life of prayer.

But the Liturgy of the Hours does add a unique richness in the sense that we have just begun to describe.

And that's why, that's why I wrote the book, actually.

Um, it's why the Church and the Popes since the council just keeps repeatedly inviting laypeople to be aware this is for you.

It's for all in the Church.

It's not just the prayer of the priests and religious, but this is a richness which, which is there for everyone in the Church.

And my hope is that as we go through these conversations, something of the reason for that will become apparent.

Well, I'm looking forward to our future conversations, because we have so much to explore in this richness that's the Liturgy of the Hours.

Any final thoughts, Father Gallagher?

Well, the final thought when we talk about prayer is always the same and it's the question, is it possible that the Lord is inviting me to consider this form of prayer in my life?

Maybe just take that, um, that question to prayer and let that question be there as we continue to explore this topic.

Thank you so much, Father Gallagher.

Thank you, Chris.

You've been listening to Praying the Liturgy of the Hours with Father Timothy Gallagher.

To hear and/or to download this discussion along with many others, go to discerninghearts.com.

This has been a production of discerninghearts.com.

I'm your host, Chris McGregor.

Join us next time for Praying the Liturgy of the Hours with Father Timothy Gallagher.