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, Father Gallagher.

Thanks, Chris.

We've begun our discussion on the liturgy of the hours.

Who knew there would be so much richness to this, a great divine office?

Well, I think the church has always known that, and our task is to, um, enter into and break open the richness that the church has always seen there.

We had started looking at the history of the liturgy of the hours, how it got formed in the church, and this is just a very rapid summary of that obviously, but had mentioned that in the once the Peace of Constantine came and the church could build churches in the fourth century, in many of the churches around the Mediterranean Basin, Palestine and, um, Syria and so on, we find the members of the church gathering twice a day in the church for the praying of the hymns, as they're called, and morning prayer and evening prayer, with a format that is remarkably like the present format of those hours of prayer in the liturgy of the hours.

And this we- was called the People's Office, sometimes called the Cathedral Office because it might be prayed with the bishop in a cathedral.

And then parallel to that, we had the origins of monasticism in these centuries, and the monks also were praying the Divine Office or the liturgy of the hours.

With the passage of time, the praying of the People's Office waned and the liturgy of the hours moved almost exclusively into the monasteries.

And the monks were able to add other hours to it, so that in addition to morning prayers the day were starting and evening prayer in the latter hours of the day, they were now rising in the very early hours of the morning, in the middle of the night to pray, and then repeatedly coming together as monastic life permitted them to do for the praying of the psalms in- at midmorning, at midday, midafternoon, nighttime, and so on.

And this was really where the Divine Office, as it was called, and still continues to be called, originated.

Now, we fast-forward about 1500 years to the Second Vatican Council, and what the Vatican Council did was to recuperate the origins of the liturgy of the hours as a prayer for the whole church.

And what I'd like to do now is look at some, uh, ve- very briefly, uh, a one single quotation, it'll just be four sentences from the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy in Vatican II, but this is the quote that has really, uh, directed everything since.

And then we'll look at just a few things that the Catechism of the Catholic Church says, and then some things said by the popes since the, uh, since the council.

So what we're really exploring here is what does the church say about the liturgy of the hours?

In the eyes of the church, what is the, the liturgy of the hours?

Now I remember this first sentence that I'm going to read, um, in the process of writing the book when I re-read this sentence, probably I'd read it as a seminarian, um, and probably not since, so it's maybe about 40 years, you know, have gone by since then.

And I was immediately struck and stopped by this sentence, because this opens up the real heart of the liturgy of the hours, and I- I quickly realized in reading this single sentence here th- that there's a lot more here than I ever fully realized.

So the council says, Christ Jesus, High Priest of the new and eternal covenant.

So you had priests in the old covenant, uh, amongst the- the Israelites, and there was a high priest.

Well, Christ is the High Priest of the new and eternal covenant which he came to inaugurate in the world through his passion, death, and resurrection especially.

So, Christ Jesus, the High Priest of the new and eternal covenant, taking human nature, introduced into this earthly exile, our world, that hymn which is sung throughout all ages in the halls of heaven.

Now that's what really brought me up short.

So there is a hymn which is sung throughout all ages in the halls of heaven.

Sung eternally, therefore sung within the communion of the Trinity.

And this is a remarkable thing that this hymn of divine praise as the I- I'll read the second sentence, and then we'll come back over this.

He, Christ, joins the entire community of mankind to himself, associating it with his own singing of this canticle of divine praise.

Now what that says is from all eternity, there is an ongoing hymn of praise within the communion of the Trinity.The way I would think of it is, let's say for example we have a family that gets together.

A reunion or just, uh, on a Sunday afternoon.

And we have several family members together, and they just enjoy being with each other, and they find ways to share that.

It may not be put into words.

Sometimes it might be put into words, but just body language and the, and the enjoyment of being together and the wanting to be together, and the goodness of it.

Each delighting in the other persons, in the, the love that they see there, the goodness, the talents, the wisdom.

Something very joyful is being expressed now.

Take that to infinity.

We have the three divine persons gathered together, living together in the community of the Trinity, each delighting in the infinite love and goodness and wisdom and, and power of the other persons.

You have the eternal hymn of praise that is sung within the womb of the Trinity, which is a beautiful thing.

Now what happens, the council says, is that when Jesus becomes man, the word becomes flesh.

That eternal hymn of praise is now introduced into our world.

And for the first time, that eternal hymn of praise is sung from a human heart and on human lips.

And the Liturgy of the Hours, the church says, is our association with Christ in singing that eternal hymn of praise.

And you can see why as I say is I, is I stopped and just thought about what this meant, it really, uh, stopped me.

This is the real heart of the Liturgy of the Hours.

This is really what's happening when let's say on a given morning with whatever tiredness or distractions I may pray the Liturgy of the Hours.

What's really happening is that the spirit who comes to the aid of our weakness as Paul says in Romans 8, when we, we do not know how to pray as we ought, Paul says.

But the spirit comes to the aid of our weakness with sighs too deep for human understanding.

So the spirit takes my sincere, but maybe somewhat distracted and tired prayer, and comes to the aid of my weakness and raises up my prayer and unites it with Christ who is our mediator with the Father.

And Christ associates my prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours with his own in that eternal hymn of praise and raises it up, made beautiful and powerful as it's united with his hymn of praise to the Father.

That's what's happening when we pray the Liturgy of the Hours.

So the council says, Christ joins the entire community of mankind to himself, associating it with his own singing of this canticle of divine praise.

Now, I think when we see that, if we went no further than those two sentences, something in us says, I want this.

I, I want to pray that way, and to give that prayer to the spirit who will raise it to Christ, who will bring it to the Father.

And you can see the power then in this prayer because my weak, or as one friend of mine, priest friend of mine calls it, my meager prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours is made powerful and beautiful, and filled with, um, efficacy as it is united with Christ and raised to the Father.

Then the council goes on.

I'll just read two more sentences.

For Christ continues his priestly work through the agency of the church.

And this is the official prayer, in this case, of the Liturgy of the Hours.

For Christ continues his priestly work through the age- agency of the church, which is ceaselessly engaged in doing two things.

In praising the Lord, and interceding for the salvation of the whole world.

And these are the two fundamental elements in the Liturgy of the Hours.

It is first and above all a prayer of praise.

And then secondly, and almost immediately after that, a prayer of intercession for the salvation of the whole world.

For all the needs of all the members of the church and all the people of the world.

And if we look at our prayer, those are the two things which are always at the heart of it.

So, so easily we may say if we're just praying freely, Lord, thank you.

I, I, I bless you for the gift of this day.

Help me to live it well.

Help me to do your will.

Well, the two elements are right there.

You know, that's the thanksgiving or praise, and then the a- asking of help, the prayer of intercession for our various needs and those of others.

And the church does this, the churches whom Christ associates with himself in this, in this praise and intercession, she does this not only by celebrating the Eucharist, which will always be the primary way in which the church does it.

This is the heart of liturgical prayer.

But also in other ways, especially And let's just note the adverb, especially.

Especially by praying the divine office or the Liturgy of the Hours.

It's a beautiful theology, as it were, of the Liturgy of the Hours.

Okay, and then just a few sentences from the catechism of the Catholic Church, which has a section of six paragraphs on the, uh, Liturgy of the Hours.

The mystery of Christ is incarnation and passover.

So his passover, his death and resurrection.

Which we celebrate in the Eucharist, especially at the Sunday assembly.

So now let's watch the link between the mass and the Liturgy of the Hours.

So the mystery of Christ, which we celebrate in the Eucharist every day, but especially at the Sunday assembly, permeates and transfigures the time of each day through the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours.So that what we celebrate at one moment in the day, in the Eucharist, now moves out and fills all the hours of the day through the assoc- associated liturgical prayer of the Liturgy of the Hours.

The Liturgy of the Hours leads to and comes from the Mass.

It fills what happened at the Mass, or the mystery celebrated there, which is the dying and rising of Jesus, the heart of everything in our faith, the source and summit, as the council says.

That now moves out to the entirety of the day through the rhythmic, um, praying of the Liturgy of the Hours as the cosmic time of the day unfolds.

And I think I said this last time, but it's something all of us really want, even if we go to daily Mass, something in us wants that prayer to fill the rest of the day and maybe feels that it doesn't as much as we want it to.

It's beautiful, but then th- we get caught in the busyness of the day.

Here is this rhythmic liturgical return to prayer which arises from the Mass and then leads back to the Eucharist.

This celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, faithful to the apostolic exhortations to pray constantly, 1 Thessalonians 5:17, where Paul says, Pray constantly, or Luke 18:1 where Jesus says that we are to pray constantly and- without losing heart.

How do we do that?

As again I think we said, uh, in a previous conversation, the Liturgy of the Hours is not the only way that we can fill the day with prayer, but it is the way par excellence, it is the primary way, because it is liturgical prayer with all the power that we just described, uh, in which we return We, we, we pray constantly by filling the hours of the day with this prayer.

Is so devised, the Liturgy of the Hours, that the whole course of the day and night is made holy by the praise of God.

In this public prayer of the Church, which is what the liturgy is, the faithful and the catechism specifies clergy, religious, and laypeople, so all the members of the Church, exercise the royal priesthood of the baptized, which is another powerful thing.

We have the sense, and understandably because for about 1,500 years it was viewed this way, that the Liturgy of the Hours is really something for the priests.

The Church's answer is, that's absolutely right.

The Liturgy of the Hours is something for the priest, but we're all priests.

There is the ministerial priesthood, which is derived from the Sacrament of Holy Orders, and out of that priesthood, the ordi- the ministerially ordained priests, priests who say Mass in our parishes, will pray the Liturgy of the Hours.

But we all share the royal priesthood of the faithful, which is given to us in baptism, and that's why we are all, priests, religious, laymen, and laywomen, all of us share a priesthood which opens to us the Liturgy of the Hours.

And that's why the council is so insistent now that this is a prayer for all within the Church, for all the baptized.

So the, uh, all in the Church exercise the royal priesthood of the baptized, celebrated in the form approved by the Church.

So the Church gives us the, the format of the Liturgy of the Hours.

The Liturgy of the Hours is truly, and it's two things, the Liturgy of the Hours is truly the voice of the bride, that is the Church, the voice of the bride herself addressed to the bridegroom.

So this is the first thing that the Liturgy of the Hours is, it i- it is the prayer of the members of the Church, or Christ's bride, addressed to her bridegroom, the Lord Jesus.

It is the very prayer which Christ himself together with his body addresses to the Church, and it is also then the prayer, we address it to Christ.

Christ gathers our prayer, associates it with his own prayer, and raises it up to the Father.

The, uh, catechism goes on just a little bit more of this.

The Liturgy of the Hours is intended to become the prayer of the whole people of God.

We'll see this in Since the council on, repeated over and over again.

Christ's members participate according to their own place in the Church and the circumstances of their lives.

So priests devoted to the pastoral ministry because they are called to remain diligent in prayer and the service of the Word.

So priests will pray the Liturgy of the Hours out of the call to remain faithful to prayer in their ministerial service to the Church.

And I think all priests, uh, readily recognize this.

The priest may have, and ideally does have, his quiet time of personal meditation, which may be on scripture or however he does his Lectio Divina or uh, Ignatian contemplation and all the various ways in which he may do this.

He will have his daily Mass, but what brings prayer into the entirety of his day will be the different hours, the five times in the course of the day that he returns to prayer as he prays the Liturgy of the Hours.

Priests know this by experience, the difference that, um, that this makes in their day.

And then the catechism says religious, so men religious, sisters, nuns, religious by the charism of their consecrated life, so the call of their life, that deep consecration to the Lord calls them too to pray regularly throughout the day, and so they will pray.

S- uh, many religious communities, obviously the monastic communities, will pray all of the hours of the Liturgy of the Hours.

Not all religious communities will pray all of it.

In a number of them, for example, their constitutions ask them to pray Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Night Prayer, and the oth- the other hours as they can and so on.So they'll do this according to what their constitutions establish, and then as always, all the faithful, and the catechism says as much as possible.

And then quoting from the council, Pastors of souls So your parish priests, should see to it that the principal hours, especially vespers, evening prayer, are celebrated in common in church on Sundays and on the more solemn feasts.

So that a parish could, let's say on Feast of the Immaculate Conception, or the baptism of Jesus, or the ascension, could gather in the evening for a, um, a solemn prayer of evening prayer, probably with music, and, uh, maybe a short homily, and so on.

The laity too are encouraged to recite the Divine Office.

And now let's just note the three different settings in which the catechism says the laypeople can pray the Liturgy of the Hours.

Either with the priests And we've mentioned earlier parishes where, for example, the, the pastor or if it's a religious community, the priest will gather in church before the morning mass to pray morning prayer, for example, and the laypeople join them, uh, or similarly, evening prayer, a number of settings like this.

Or among themselves, so when no priest is present, they may gather together in any setting, at home or in church, or, um, in any setting just among themselves because they all share the royal priesthood of, of the baptized.

Or even individually, and this will be the way many laypeople will pray the Liturgy of the Hours.

As I said last time, listening to it in audio form in the car driving to work or to pick up the children after school, or in a quiet moment before leaving for work or before the children are up in the morning, and so on.

Everything that is said from those particular documents seems to me, it speaks of disposition of our hearts in a way that as we approach this, if our disposition is, I am making this my personal prayer, if they look at it just in that view, it could become more of a task, or something like even a physical exercise that we have to engage in every day.

But what the church is saying, it's inviting us into a much bigger disposition of heart, isn't it?

Yes, exactly.

And that's why before we even look at the, uh, the nuts and bolts of praying the Liturgy of the Hours, I think it's very important that we look at, to use the precise term, the theology of the Liturgy of the Hours.

Because if we see that then, you know, as you say, Okay, it's time to pray this and I'm busy, but all right, I'll make time for it, or, I'm really more tired than I'd like to be at this point and I still haven't said evening prayer, and I really do wanna say it every day.

You know, all of, all of that kind of thing makes sense if we know what this prayer is.

So that's why w- we'll watch Pope John Paul II say this about the, the need for formation in the Liturgy of the Hours.

What are these psalms, for example?

Uh, what does it mean to pray them?

How does the church understand them?

Uh, why are we as Christians praying Jewish prayers?

You know, there's the relationship between the New and the Old Testament.

Um, and then what is the Liturgy of the Hours itself?

We've just touched on it for a few minutes just now.

Uh, you mentioned earlier the, uh, general instruction.

There you have a 70-page document that, that's the key document really for the understanding of the Liturgy of the Hours, which the church puts at the beginning of the first volume of the Liturgy of the Hours.

It's also published as a separate booklet, and of course, it's online.

You can, uh, find it easily online.

Um, if we really wanted to go thoroughly into the Liturgy of the Hours, its theology and the understanding of it, we would break open that document.

And, you know, at this stage of things, my own conviction is that if an individual, or I almost say better yet, a group, want to really get to understand the Liturgy of the Hours, then there's nothing better we can do than either read that document personally or go through it as a shared study, uh, with, as a group.

'Cause it, it seems to me, Father Gallagher, as you are breaking this open for us, that when we move beyond just our own personal edification and our own enrichment, and we look at the church is asking us to be full and active participants in the liturgy of the church, in the life of the church, that work of the people, it could be a remedy to what the malaise that kind of sinks in when it's just, I'm gonna be I'll just put it simply, it's just about me, or me and the Lord.

It, this becomes, I'm being asked through membership into this body of Christ to be a functioning member.

I mean, we're called to do something because it means something.

That's a very beautiful image of, um, what it can mean to share the liturgical life of the church, with the awareness that it isn't just my It, it is my prayer.

We'll, we'll be seeing all of this, but it's much more than that.

It's liturgical prayer, and, um, it's the prayer of the whole church.

There are many thousands throughout the world praying the same morning prayer that I'm praying today, if I'm praying it.

And all of us together are praying, certainly yes, for our own needs, but very consciously for the needs of many people whom we know for the entirety of the church and the world.

That's a lovely application of the council's call to an active and full participation in the, in the liturgy.

If we expand that as the church, as we see here, is, is warmly inviting- all, including laypeople, to do, to include the liturgy of the hours.

This call to the liturgy of the hours, um, as we're beginning to see, and we'll, we'll, we'll see, um, more clearly as we look at the post-conciliar popes, it's a quiet thread which is there since the council on.

It's been there.

Um, it's like a sleeping giant in the spiritual life.

It, it, there's a great power in it, and those who begin to pray it experience it, uh, and that's really, that's really what led me to wanna write about this, and even now, the, these conversations is to hope that I, I would hope that we can just offer one more invitation along the lines of what the church, um, herself is doing to consider praying this.

There's an alarming statistic that is known by many.

For those who are brought into the church through what we've come to know as RCIA programs, many come in with that conversion to grow deeper and to know the Lord through the full communion into the church, but sadly, a third will no longer be practicing the faith after the end of a year, and maybe, uh, th- the number even goes to almost half won't be in four years.

Could it be because they haven't been nurtured in what this daily, even hourly type of enrichment, this encounter that they could experience were not As you have indicated, were not forming them fully into the life that the church is asking them to live?

Well, you know, I think, Chris, that there's a wisdom in the way the church is approaching the invitation to pray the liturgy of the hours.

Uh, it's warm, it's strong, it's repeated, a- and it's been kind of quiet.

Uh, you could miss it unless you're reading these kinds of texts or unless people are doing the kinds of things that we're doing now, or I mentioned earlier, earlier on Daria Sakhi's book, you know, on the liturgy of the hours for, for laypeople.

These kinds of things are happening.

Of course, this is exploding in the digital world, which is making the liturgy of the hours available in just whole new ways to all in the church.

Um, but I think there's a wisdom in the way the church does this, because this is an enormous change in the life of prayer, actually, that the church is proposing, and this is after 15 centuries in which laypeople just simply understood that, Oh, that's something priests do.

You know, priests, you see them with the black book with the ribbons.

That's something priests do.

It's never, it's not something So we have, uh, wonderful prayers, the rosary and all different kinds of pr- uh, ways of praying, but we have not really understood that this is a way of prayer and this is an eminent way of prayer, which is offered to us as laypeople as well.

So, I think w- we need a time in which this new perspective on the life of prayer can, um, be assimilated, and I think that is happening.

Uh, would we love to see it just explode?

Absolutely, because as you're suggesting, the benefits are enormous.

Yes, what will keep us faithful to Christ in the long run always comes down to one thing, and that's prayer, and the heart of prayer is liturgical prayer, and so the closer we are to the mass, as the center of liturgical prayer, the more strength we're going to get.

But if we can understand that we're also offered liturgical prayer in a way that can fill the hours of the day, the power in that is just, um You know, nothing is impossible for God, you know?

Well, we've come to the close of yet another episode, and there's so much more to talk about.

I'm looking forward to hearing about the teachings and encouragements of the popes in our next episode, but any final thoughts?

Well, I'd like to hope that as we're speaking and as our listeners are listening, the question is at least, um, beginning to arise, Is this something that could possibly be a part of my life of prayer?

And we'll say a lot more about that as we go forward.

Thank you so much, Father Gallagher.

Thanks, 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.