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 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 back, Father Gallagher.

Thanks again, Chris.

Can you talk to us about the Liturgy of the Hours, historically where it came from and how it has become a part of the church today?

The Liturgy of the Hours actually goes back in its origins to the Old Testament.

And as we said last time, the Psalms, these 150 prayers in the Old Testament, are the are the real basis of the Liturgy of the Hours.

And throughout the Old Testament, we see the devout Jews praying these.

They had regular hours in the course of the day when they would pray the Psalms, uh, and they turned to them in times of peace and joy, in times of struggle and desperate need.

These were the prayers to which they, they turned.

And Jesus Himself knew the Psalms.

He quoted the Psalms and we, we see Him doing that a number of times in the gospel, and prayed the Psalms.

So for example, when Jesus on the cross cries out, My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

He's actually praying Psalm 22.

That's the first verse from Psalm 22.

Uh, just to know that, by the way, sheds a whole new light on what that, um, what that cry of His heart, His heart is because that psalm is a psalm that expresses deep anguish, uh, deep suffering, but finally resolves in a prayer of confident assurance that God will be with Him and, and see Him through the trial.

Um, now, if we went no further than that, if we just stopped to reflect that Jesus Himself prayed these Psalms, how can we not want to pray the Psalms?

If the whole of the Christian life is to do to live as Jesus lived, to imitate the Lord Jesus, He's our model in everything, the fact that Jesus Himself prayed these prayers is, is a powerful, um, open door or invitation into a consideration of praying these or letting these nourish our, our own lives.

And the early Christians continued this, uh, tradition.

They would pray the Psalms, um, certainly individually and then once the persecutions ended in the fourth century and they were free finally to gather together, they began praying them together.

So in the Psalms, devout Jews, the Lord Jesus who has the fulfillment of the God's revelation actually fulfills In, in Jesus you see the fullest meaning of the Psalms.

So for example, um, My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

as prayed in the Old Testament was the prayer of some person whose heart was in anguish and cried out to God in a time of desperate need.

As it's prayed by Jesus, as his prayer rises from his heart and on his lips to the Heavenly Father, that psalm now has a whole new richness for us.

It reveals to us the heart of Jesus and Jesus' prayer in the time of His suffering.

Um, but this is true of all the Psalms now.

They have a whole new richness in, uh, in the Lord Jesus.

Well, in the Psalms we find all kinds of prayers.

So there are prayers of confidence.

The Lord is my shepherd.

There is nothing I shall want.

Though I walk in a dark valley, I fear no evil.

You are with me, with your rod and your staff that give me courage.

These are prayers in which in times of darkness and struggle and hopelessness and anguish the human heart finds words in the Psalms to, to, to pray in such times.

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

Psalm 130.

When the heart feels deep longing for God, here are the words, Psalm 42.

Like the deer that yearns for running streams, my soul is yearning for you, oh God.

Oh God, you are my God, for you I long, Psalm 63 at its beginning.

Psalms that express, uh, prayers of great confidence and hope in God.

S- So Psalm 27.

The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom should I fear?

Psalms in times of sorrow when we've strayed when we've failed the Lord and we come and bring our failure to the Lord with repentance and contrition and here is the, the most beautiful of, of the Psalms of this kind of prayer which is Psalm 51 which the Bible understands as David's prayer after a time of grave offense of God.

Um, Have mercy on me, oh God, in your great compassion.

Wash me.

I'll be whiter than snow.

And then simple Psalms of praise just when our hearts delight in the Lord and rejoice in the goodness of what God has done in our lives.

So the last five psalms, for example, but there are many of them.

This is Psalm 146.

My soul give praise to the Lord.

I will praise the Lord all my days, make music to my God while I live.

This is a quote from Saint Ambrose on the Psalms.

A psalm, he says, is a cry of happiness.It soothes the temper, distracts from care, lightens the burden of sorrow.

Now, I remember as I read through this quote, I found myself thinking, Who of us doesn't need these things?

You know?

It soothes the temper, distracts from care, lightens the burden of sorrow.

It is a source of security at night, a lesson of wisdom by day.

It is a shield when we are afraid.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have that shield as a part of our life every day when we're afraid?

And we are so often afraid.

And there are so many things in the world today that can awaken that kind of trouble of heart and fear.

And here's a shield when we are afraid.

It is a celebration of holiness, a vision of serenity, a promise of peace and harmony, St. Athanasius, another of the church fathers.

The Psalms seem to me to be like a mirror This is a beautiful metaphor.

to be like a mirror in which the person using them can see himself and the stirrings of his own heart.

He can recite them against the background of his own emotions.

And this is why the Psalms really speak so powerfully to us, because we recognize in them what's in our own hearts.

And we have this wonderful gift in the word of God that the Holy Spirit inspired these writers to find words for the things that we all experience as we go through life and live our life of faith in this world, sorrow and struggle and fear and joy and hope, uh, deep need, contrition, all of these different emotions that the heart can experience.

And here are the words that express them.

And that's why the Psalms really speak to us, because we real- we, we, we have words to say what we need to say and don't have words to say.

So that's what St. Athanasius means when he says, The Psalms are like a mirror.

I see myself in them.

I look in the mirror of these words, and I say, 'Yes, that's what's in my heart, too.' St. Augustine, uh, describing what occurred in his heart as he was in church as the Psalms were being sung and prayed, uh, in church.

How I wept when I heard your Psalms and canticles, being deeply moved by the sweet singing of your church.

These voices flowed into my ears, truth filtered into my heart, and from my heart surged waves of devotion.

Tears ran down, and I was happy in my tears.

Who wouldn't want that in his life or her life?

Father, that moment in Augustine's life can parallel our lives as well when we're listening with that heart, when we're open and we come to the Psalms to hear whatever it is that God is going to say.

And oftentimes, one would hear a particular Psalm, and it soothes an ache.

Another, it rouses a joy.

It's the same Psalm, and it, but it seems like a different message, doesn't it?

Well, the Psalms have their message.

You know, there are Psalms of, um, contrition, as I've said, or Psalms out of the depths, that are being prayed out of the depths of struggle, or that feeling of being abandoned by God in times of trial or joy.

So they have their message.

However, as you say, the word of God is infinite.

It's, um To use the comparison that, uh This is Saint Ephraim, the deacon, who has just wonderful, wonderful writings.

This is actually in the Liturgy of the Hours, where he compares the word of God to a traveler who has deep thirst and comes to a fountain where water is gushing forth and he drinks from the fountain.

He's unable to consume and assume everything that's gushing from the fountain.

It just, there's too much is pouring out for him to, to ass- uh, assimilate it all.

But he says that's the happiest possible thing for him because the next time he comes back, it'll still be there.

And the word of God is like that, said Saint Ephraim.

There's a richness that is far beyond our ability.

It's infinite.

It's the word of God who is infinite.

So that when we come to it, even the same person coming to the same Psalm at different points as the Psalms repeat over the weeks and months will find different things there, because the Psalms w- will speak to us differently depending on the different circumstances of our life, a given day, a g- a g- a given period in our life.

So yes, the, the Psalms, like the, uh, the infinite richness of the word of God as a whole, they will meet each person where he or she is as, uh, as they pray them.

That is one of those things that, for the Liturgy of the Hours, for those who enter into it, they may encounter Psalms on the surface just off the first read or the first pass, they may say, Well, I'm just not there.

I, I'm not I don't feel I need to hear Psalm 51, or, I'm reading this and this, this isn't speaking to my heart today.

But maybe there's an encouragement to pause for a moment and just see.

Is it really not speaking to your heart today?

Is there something there that could jump out if God is willing that in a relationship?

That's very possible that it could happen.

But there's another consideration that we need to bring into this, and your question now raises, um, gives us an opportunity to do that.

One of the powerful things about the Liturgy of the Hours, as we've said, is that it is liturgical prayer.

So it is my personal prayer, but it's much more than that.

It's the prayer of the whole of the church.

It's the official public prayer of the church .

so that when I pray the Liturgy of the Hours, I can do this with the consciousness that there are tens and hundreds of thousands of people throughout the entire world today who are praying that same psalm.

And some of them, if the psalm, for example, is Psalm 130, Out of the depths I cry to you, oh Lord, Lord, hear my voice.

And my heart is joyful in the Lord today, I can pray this with the awareness that many other people throughout the world, both those who are joining with me in praying these psalms and the millions and billions of people throughout the world who so desperately need God's grace and for whom I'm praying as I'm saying this, many of them will be in that circumstance so that as I say this, I say this with the awareness that I'm part of the whole family of the church and the world lifting up this prayer today to God.

And there will be many for whom this will mirror exactly, as Saint Athanasius says, this will mirror exactly what's in their hearts.

So, that's part of the richness of this is that I pray this with the awareness that I am part of the entire church praying for the entire entirety of the church and the whole of the world.

And in that sense, the psalm will always speak very deeply to, um, to many.

Wow, that sounds like the call to solidarity.

It's almost that charism of, I move forward but I bring my brothers and sisters with me.

And we can do this with the general awareness that I've just described which is a beautiful thing and we can also do this more specifically.

My heart may be in joy today but I know that my sister or my spouse or my child or someone else in the parish, um, is really struggling today.

This is the day of getting the results of the biopsy, for example, or some, um, very challenging day of the college age son or daughter in, uh, at the university today or whatever it might be in the business world.

This is the day when I'm gonna find out whether my job is still mine or not, you know?

Uh, I can pray it very specifically with these people in mind.

Just to share something personal that I do as I pray the Liturgy of the Hours along these lines, when people ask me to pray for them and whenever I say, Uh, yes, I'll pray for you, what I do is, um, I don't take that lightly and what I'll do is I'll, I'll write their name on a small sheet of paper and it goes in my book of the Liturgy of the Hours.

And I'll review.

Now the list is so long that I can't review all the names every time but periodically I go through them all and each time I pray it, I look at at least several of these persons and their needs so that they are very consciously a part of my prayer as I pray the Liturgy of the Hours each time.

So that we can pray it with that awareness that yes, we are lifting up the entirety of all the needs of humanity and those people that we know concretely, we're lifting all of this up to the Lord in the Liturgy of the Hours.

Beautiful.

Well, let's take a very rapid look at where this came from.

So how did we get the Liturgy of the Hours?

Where, where did it come from?

Well, the roots obviously, as I mentioned, are the psalms.

So, from the time the psalms began to be prayed in the Old and then the New Testament in the early church, uh, we, we witness the origins, the remote origins of the Liturgy of the Hours.

With the, the Peace of Constantine in the fourth century, for the first time now Christians are able to build churches and to gather, uh, together for prayer in the churches and the tradition arose, uh, quickly, of which I don't think we're too often aware and that is that the, the Christians would gather in the church in the morning at the start of the day and would return again in the evening for what they called morning and evening hymns which was the praying of the psalms.

So, we have documents showing this happening throughout the early church in Palestine, Antioch, Constantinople, Africa.

We have mention of this in, um, councils of bishops in Spain and, and elsewhere.

They would gather together in the, um, in the church.

If a bishop was present then the bishop would lead.

If not, if there was a priest he, he would lead.

And then the people would sing the psalms that were the morning psalms and in the evening the evening psalms, and they didn't vary them so the people learned the psalms by heart and they could sing them.

And then they would add other, um, prayers from the Bible outside the psalms, different canticles, uh, in the Bible.

In some places, they would be there would be a brief homily and they would conclude with intercessions for the needs of the people in the church and a final prayer.

Uh, now you can already hear in that very much the origins of the Liturgy of the Hours.

At the same time as the monastic life was developing, the monks were also doing this in the monasteries.

So, you had these two streams of prayer, what, uh, the, the writers call the Monastic Office and the, uh, Cathedral Office or the People's Office.

With the passage of time, the People's Office waned and the, the prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours passed ex- exclu- almost exclusively, never fully exclusively, but, um, became largely identified with the prayer of the monks in the monasteries.

A vestige of that earlier People's Office, however, has always remained, uh, down to present times and this was the, um, the, uh, Sunday evening Vespers which was a tradition in parishes for many centuries, uh Um, like a number of things, has tended to wane a bit in, uh, in recent decades but is something that the church still recommends and is done in, uh, a number of parishes.

As we said earlier, what's been added now is, um, in many parishes, you'll have people gathering in the morning or evening for Morning Prayer or Evening Prayer in conjunction with Mass.

Uh, there, a pilgrim who went to the Curé of Ars parish in, uh So this would be the mid-19th century, 1850 roughly, something like that, left a description of what a typical Sunday was like at the point when the par- the holiness of the life of Saint John Vianney had really transformed his, um, his parish and his people.

The people would go to Mass in the morning.

Everyone was there for the, um, the church would be packed and then at 1:00, people would come, the bells would ring, people would come back a second time to the church and at this time, there would, uh, be a teaching of catechism and the praying of vespers or, or Evening Prayer.

And actually, they came again a third time at nightfall for, uh, a night prayer and then the, the Curé of Ars would give these simple talks from his heart that the people really grew to love.

But there you see the, the earlier People's Office is continuing.

Its lay people gathered together in the church, uh, praying a part of the Liturgy of the Hours.

Now as the Liturgy of the Hours passed into the monasteries, the monks expanded the different times in the day in which they would pray this so that from the two key, or the church calls hinge moments, of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, the monks began to add prayer also in the very early hours of the morning.

They would rise in the middle of the night, at, uh, very early morning dawn upon rising, in the mid hours of the day as well, and at night so that, um, what was developing now was the rhythmic praying of the Psalms throughout the entirety of the day.

And this is what came to be called the Divine Office.

Um, office, office, uh, think of something like the office of the mayor, that is a- a- a task or Divine Office, sacred duty, holy task, whatever way we want to describe this, of praying the Psalms rhythmically throughout the entirety of the day to fulfill the scriptural, uh, injunction to pray without ceasing.

So we have in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, Pray constantly, Paul says.

Well, if we stop for a moment and think about that, is that possible?

Where Jesus, uh, tells us that we are to pray always and without losing heart in Luke 18:1.

Well, how do we do that?

And one of the answers, one of the- the deep answers in the church's tradition has been the Liturgy of the Hours or the Divine Office and that is this periodic return to praying the Psalms with their additional hymns and readings and so on as the hours of the day unfold.

What's interesting, you brought up the etymology of the, of the word office and essentially it's, uh, the work but also the- the origins of the word liturgy, eh, traces back to the work of the people so here we are at the- the work of the people in prayer through the hours of the day.

I mean, and at different times.

It- it's a call to action, isn't it?

It is a call to action, but I'd say it's the deepest call to action because it's the call to what gives energy for any action and that is the- the periodic return to prayer.

Just, if you can think of the difference between a day in which we have a formal moment of prayer in the morning, maybe a prayer with scripture, Lectio Divina, um, daily Mass, the rosary, and maybe we have a time again in the evening, and this is a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Anyone who's doing this is already living a life of- of real prayer.

Uh, which So there's a great richness but what if the additional richness is added into this of the return to God briefly at different moments throughout the hours of the day?

That's when that ideal of, um, praying constantly finds a concrete realization and becomes something that's really doable, uh, in our lives.

So for example, the mother who's driving to school at, um, 2:30 in the afternoon to pick up the children and is listening to Midday Prayer, um, from her smartphone go- played over the sound system in her car as she's driving.

It's a beautiful thing.

This is exactly what, um, the church has long seen the Liturgy of the Hours to be, an official public prayer of the church, therefore the- the liturgy, which can be prayed at, uh, is there for all the different hours of the day.

It's really incorporated into the domestic church.

Oh, that touches another lovely thing which we'll get to, um, very explicitly and that is that the Liturgy of the Hours, again, it is an individual prayer but it's a, it's a communitarian prayer, it's an ecclesial prayer and so the church's, uh, very conscious invitation to families which are the domestic church.

It's a lovely phrase, you know, the- the- the church as it is present in this domus, house, this- this, um, in this family and, um, the vision of the church or the invitation, warm invitation of the church is to consider praying it maybe, uh, some short parts of the Liturgy of the Hours as a part of the family's life of prayer.

So you could conceive, for example, of a family, husband and wife, the children who are at home, at the end of supper, spending five minutes- praying the shortened form of the, of evening prayer from the Magnificat, for example, something like that.

Or they all get out their smartphones and pray it, you know?

Well, it is interesting.

It, it seems to be the Holy Spirit's response to that desire of the heart that says, I just wish I could spend more time at church.

I wish I could b- have that, but I'm so busy with all my activities.

Well, this is the church coming right into your car.

This is the church coming right into your home, right into your walk.

It's meeting you.

The mystical body of Christ coming to you, really, d- isn't it?

Absolutely.

That's a beautiful way of saying it, that the, the church comes to us, right where we are, and presents this form of prayer to us.

And another reflection on this that, uh, often occurs to me is we're all well aware of the possible negative uses of digital technology, and which is so pervasive, it's everywhere.

You can it's right in your pocket, you know, as you're, as you're walking, and the, the possible, uh, dangers and pitfalls of that in many different ways.

But here is this incredibly rich application of digital technology in that the Liturgy of the Hours now is available in a way that never in the church's history has it ever been available, as we just said, in your car, or as you're walking around the lake, or while you're exercising or preparing dinner, or, um, whatever it might be.

Uh, it's one of the beautiful, beautiful gifts that God has given to His church in our time through a new kind of technology.

It's a kind of, um I guess you could call it a kind of redemption of digital technology in the sense that it, it allows us to, to take this instrument and use it for wonderful, wonderful good.

If you ever see a, a priest with, uh, earbuds and his smartphone in his pocket, you know, walking or something, you can well guess that it might be the Liturgy of the Hours.

And you'll see lay people obviously doing this as well.

Well, since we, we're talking about the Liturgy of the Hours, let's just focus, and we got onto that title, let's just, um, focus, um, quickly on that, but I think we've already said enough about it.

So there are two things are there in that title, Liturgy of the Hours.

So this is official public prayer in the church, like the mass, like the other sacraments.

So you, you go to a baptism, there's a ritual of prayer.

Any baptism throughout the world uses that same, uh, ritual.

Or you're present at an ordination or a wedding or the anointing of the sick.

In the same way, the Liturgy of the Hours is liturgical prayer.

It's official.

The church gives us the fo- the church establishes the format and gives it to us.

And, uh, what is unique, however, by contrast, with every other form of liturgical prayer, is that this is a liturgy of the hours.

So the mass or a baptism or a wedding takes place at one given moment, but the Liturgy of the Hours extends this liturgical prayer throughout the entirety of the day.

As you said, very lo- in a very lovely way, this is the church coming to us, uh, in our prayer.

So it can be called sometimes, um, Divine Office, as we've said.

The church still does use that title.

But the, the, the preferred title now is Liturgy of the Hours because it most specifically describes exactly what this form of prayer is.

Sometimes you'll hear a third title, which is Breviary.

And, uh, the breviary actually refers to the book itself that you hold in your hands as you're praying it.

And the title breviary comes from the Latin brevis, which means short.

That term arose, breviary, uh, after the Council of Trent, which like Vatican II looked at the, uh, Liturgy of the Hours and, um, modified it, basically shortened it.

So many things had been added to it that it became very difficult to sustain as a daily prayer.

So the Council of Trent shortened it, and that's why the book came to be called the breviary or the shortened form of the, uh, Divine Office.

So you'll hear tho- those different terms.

Uh, as we'll use them, we're going to say, we're going to use Liturgy of the Hours most because that's the title the church most commonly privileges.

We, we might speak of the Divine Office sometimes, and if we use the title breviary, uh, we'll be using that in the sense of the book itself actually of the, um, of the Liturgy of the Hours.

Well, we've touched on so many things, uh, and there's so much more.

But in closing on this particular episode, any final thoughts, Father Gallagher?

I think just to ponder about what place the Psalms could have in my life of prayer.

I remember a woman telling me that she had that she didn't know the Liturgy of the Hours.

This was, um, before the, the Second Vatican Council, uh, when the church so opened this up to us all, but she had a Bible on her bed stand, and every night she would read one of the Psalms.

What if we were to consider the Psalms as part of our life of prayer?

And if we do, we're going to find ourselves very close to the next question.

What about even a little bit of the Liturgy of the Hours in my life of prayer?

But we'll say more about it.

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.