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 McBride.

Welcome, Father Gallagher.

Thank you, Chris.

Continue our conversation about the liturgy of the hours and what an experience we may have in them.

And you've been sharing some of your own personal experiences to that end.

Mm.

Yeah, there are one more of those experiences I'd like to share, and this really is the most central of them all.

When I began seriously trying to learn more about the liturgy of the hours and I read that general instruction that we've quoted before, I was immediately struck by the fact that this instruction told me that the liturgy of the hours is primarily a prayer of praise.

So this is the real central, not the exclusive, but it's the central focus of the liturgy of the hours.

A prayer of praise was not something that I'd ever really thought much about.

I remembered, um, the nuns teaching us in grade school probably already.

You know the acronym ACTS, adoration, contrition, thanksgiving, supplication, which I even as an adult think is a very, a lovely way just to focus the different intentions that we might have in prayer to adore God.

Sorrow for sin, contrition, thanksgiving when our hearts are grateful, and supplication when we have needs that we bring to the Lord.

But the word, of course, praise, was, was not in there.

And I had always very much respected the prayer of praise, but I, I thought of it as something associated, for example, with charismatics with a, a given style of prayer, praise and worship music.

I had been in Hispanic ministry and had seen this kind of prayer that typified by singing and perhaps physical gestures of raising of hands and so on, and found it very warm and compelling, very happy to be a part of it when I was in those settings, but it was not a form of prayer that otherwise I would habitually do on my own.

And now, I realize that the church was telling me that this form of prayer that I'd been praying for so many years was primarily a prayer of praise.

And I began to see something that as I did more reading and learned more about this, that what praise does is to situate us in our truth as creatures before their creator and as those redeemed before their redeemer.

Now, I never doubted that.

I never doubted that I was God's creature, I never doubted that Jesus had redeemed me, but my awareness of this could easily fade in the course of a day and I could easily lose sight of who I am before God as God's creature and as one redeemed out of great love.

And now I begin to realize that praise is the way to live in this truth, to live in this truth that I am God's creature, loved before all ages, given life in time in this world, and called to eternal joy with God.

And that praise is the way to live in the truth that I am infinitely loved by the redeemer who gave himself for me.

And there was one quotation that expressed this best for me.

I still remember the, I read this while I was on retreat, found myself thinking for a long time about this.

So, Praise is the, this author says, essentially an unlimited appreciation of the grandeur of God.

And then the rest of the words were the ones that really spoke to me.

It is a loving appreciation that expresses itself in words and better still in song.

It is not a cold and objective statement, 'I am God's creature.

I am redeemed by the Lord,' but warm and human acknowledgement of God.

Now, when I began to think of praise as loving appreciation and warm and human ack- acknowledgment of God as my creator and redeemer, I began to find it inviting, and I began to find that I want to praise God.

And once this happened, then the liturgy of the hours changed from black and white to color for me at this point.

It really came alive because for the first time now, and this amazes me in retrospect how I could pray it for so many years without even seeing this, I began to notice, for example, that the very beginning of each of the hours centers on praise, Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, and then Alleluia, which means praise God, obviously.

And then, so many of the hymns are hymns of praise.

I sing the mighty power of God.

Praise the Lord, ye heavens adore him, and so many others.

The psalms and the canticles, which are the, the real heart of the liturgy of the hours repeatedly praise God.

I will praise you, Lord, you have rescued me.

Praise the Lord from the heavens.

Alleluia, salvation, glory, and power to our God, and so many others .

and then the Gospel canticles of Zachariah and Mary are canticles of praise.

Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel.

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.

And I began to see that, yes, praise really is the primary thing in the Liturgy of the Hours.

When I pray the Liturgy of the Hours, I am interceding for the needs of the world, as we've said, and that's very important.

But above all, my heart centers on loving appreciation, warm and human appreciation of the grandeur of God, of the love of God that brought me into being and conserves me in, in being today, and gives me the hope of eternal life, and the love of the Redeemer who gave his life for me and even today is my Redeemer.

And I began to realize from experience the answer to another question because I'd always sort of wondered, Well, why does God want my praise?

Why does God need my praise?

So one very simple experience on this particular day, I was praying in the Liturgy of the Hours, uh, Psalm 66, and read the first words of this.

Cry out with joy to God, all the earth.

We'll sing to the glory of his name.

We'll render him glorious praise.

Say to God how tremendous your deeds.

And found myself desiring on this day to direct those words to Jesus and found that as I did this, it made the, the words more concrete and relational for me.

We've talked in earlier conversations about how this is one level on which we can pray any of the psalms which find their fulfillment, like all of the Old Testament, in Jesus.

So let me cry out with joy to Jesus, let me sing to the glory of your name, Jesus, and render you glorious praise.

Let me say to Jesus how tremendous your deeds.

And as I did this, I just found my heart warming with the sense of God's deeply personal love for me.

And this is why I began to understand now, this is why God wants us to praise him, because when we praise God, a blessing comes into our hearts and into our lives.

We are lifted up.

We are fed on truth.

We know that we're not alone.

We know that we're loved.

We know that we have a Savior.

Uh, the truth of our whole existence in this world comes alive for us.

And that's why God wants our praise, and that's what happens as we pray this, um, beautiful, uh, prayer of praise which is the Liturgy of the Hours, which is primarily intended to help us live our lives on that level.

After praise will come supplication, intercession for so many needs, but this is the real heart of it.

So I've become now very grateful for the Liturgy of the Hours because it brings something into my life that was never there before, and that is a prayer of praise of God.

I think it's Saint Augustine who says that we, we would not have known how to praise God.

We had no words.

We wouldn't have even known how to do it, and so God gave us the psalms to s- to teach us how to, how to praise him, and that's what the Liturgy of the Hours can do for us.

I've heard it said, Father Gallagher, that the term glory, that it could also be translated in some ways as beauty.

So when we praise His glory, we also praise His beauty which is very, very all-encompassing, and it's, it evokes imagery for us that maybe the word glory fails to do in some cases.

But also that in, when you were, uh, sharing the experience that you had, we receive, in a way, a blessing that almost is, could we say, the Father, or the Son, and the Holy Spirit praising us as well for responding, for our beauty, what He sees, the, the beauty He sees within each one of us, the, the souls that He created.

I think all of that is very much on target.

There probably is too little beauty in the lives of most of us today.

So much around us in the culture is not beautiful, and beauty lifts us up and, and ennobles us.

Beauty is one of the, the four transcendentals, or the four qualities of God.

And so a form of prayer which opens us to beauty in so many ways certainly is bringing us close to God.

It's a, it's a lovely perspective on the Liturgy of the Hours as an avenue as a door into beauty into our lives, which is to say, a door into God who is the source of all beauty.

And there is something to be said about the liturgy of it all, that it, if it were just the praying of the psalms, that could be enough.

And if it were just reflecting on the, the canticles and the scriptures, that could possibly be enough.

But when you connect it with the church's nurturing, with that, that, as we've spoken before of the connection with the, the antiphons to help prepare our hearts, that the, uh, insight of the saints who help give us a perspective that we may want to enter into, into that, it makes it an incredible work of the people, doesn't it?

Yes, it's like, it's like not only a meal that's nicely prepared, but it's like, um, one of those really special meals, you know, like on Easter or something or Thanksgiving where everything is thought out and everything harmonizes and it provides, uh, a rich and nourishing feast.

And the Liturgy of the Hours really is that.

A- again, like all prayer, we're gonna have our ups and downs as we pray it in days of distraction.

But in the tapestry of praying this regularly, that really is what happens, that's really what we receive.

How might that look, Father Gallagher, I mean, for not only the average lay person or religious who may enter into it but even for the domestic church, the home?

All right.

Well then, let's, um, look at that question which is pretty important.

If, uh, someone is considering beginning the Liturgy of the Hours, has never prayed it before or never had much exposure to it, where do we start?

How do we begin?

So let's look at some of the, uh, avenues for entrance into this which are accessible to us.

As far as the, the book itself, so that we would actually have the Liturgy of the Hours personally in book form, there is a book called Christian Prayer.

And this is a single volume which gives the person who has the volume morning prayer and evening prayer and night prayer throughout the entirety of the year.

And there's also a selection of a daytime prayer and the office of readings in this.

So, this is a single volume which is has everything a person needs to, to get started on the Liturgy of the Hours.

There's even a shorter version of that volume which is appropriately entitled Shorter Christian Prayer, and you often see this in parishes when people pray the morning, uh, morning prayer, evening prayer together before or after mass.

This will be the volume that the parish will supply.

And that has the psalms for the, uh, four-week cycle so that a person could very well begin with this, and it's pretty easy to manage, uh, so that a person can begin in, in a form that is very accessible and as the person wants to expand with time can get maybe the, uh, complete volume and begin to learn more and more about the different ways this can be prayed.

What really makes the difference today is the digital forms.

One is iBreviary, and so a person can access this by computer, uh, or on a tablet or on a smartphone so you can carry it in, in your pocket, you know, or, uh, have it in the car, plug it into the car and, and so on as the person is driving.

It's free, so there is no expense at all, uh, with involved in this.

And what's lovely is that it's all arranged, so there are no pages to look up or ribbons to set or there's never any confusion about, how do I pray on this particular saint's day or Feast of the Assumption of Mary or on Christmas or a day in Advent and, and, and so on.

It's all laid out, um, so all we have to do is just, uh, scroll right through it and pray it.

And it's very well done.

It's, uh, very, very well done.

It's in a number of languages.

It can be prayed now in ways that can absolutely fit into any vocation and any structure of the day without adding significant amounts of time to the day, and in fact, this is leading to, I, I'd call it an explosion of the Liturgy of the Hours, uh, among lay people today because it is so easily accessible now, or husband and wife driving together in the car and listening to it and praying it together in, uh, in that way.

And what's nice there too is that you're not alone when you pray it.

You have a kind of virtual community so that there's something really very lovely about this.

Another way of getting into the Liturgy of the Hours would be in the shortened form that is accessible through Magnificat.

There might be other forms of this, but, uh, this is one that is very readily accessible.

What the, the Magnificat publication or any similar publication does is to accept the invitation of the church to create shortened forms of the Liturgy of the Hours so that it can be accessible to all, a- and again with lay people with very busy lives in mind or families in their homes.

And so I'm just gonna take today's evening prayer as it's given in the, uh, Magnificat version and let's just image a family just finishing supper, so maybe the both parents are there and a few children are there with them and as the meal ends, they decide to end by praying evening prayer in this shortened form together.

This is gonna be a matter of maybe five, six, seven minutes.

Something like that.

So the leader, if it's the father, mother, one of the children would say, Christ suffered that we might rejoice.

And then all the others would answer, Come let us give thanks and praise.

Here's the invitation to praise.

The focus on the suffering is because today is Friday and the Liturgy of the Hours remembers the passion of Jesus on Fridays.

Then the Glory be, the invitation to praise, and then just one verse from a hymn, um, and the indication is given that this can be sung according to the tune of Love Divines All Love Ex- Loves Excelling so that if the family members know this, they could sing this verse.

See the streams of living water springing from eternal love.

Or if they don't know it, could simply recite the words of the, uh, of the verse, and this is all about grace and, um, it, it's a verse which speaks of confidence in God's never-failing grace in our lives.

And then we have just one psalm, which for today is 69, Psalm 69, and only six verses from this psalm.

We have the, uh, antiphon, My friends, it is who wrong me.

Before God, my eyes drop tears.

So this psalm reflects the passion of Jesus.

Jesus wept the tears of suffering humanity and so on, so the specific relationship to Jesus is made.

And then the family members would divide into two parts and alternate these six verses.

So three of them will say, would say, Save me, oh God, for the waters have risen to my neck.

The others would say, I have sunk into the mud of the deep.

There is no foothold.

And they would go through the psalm, psalms in that way.

So it's a prayer for freedom from oppression and burden and suffering, and everything we've said before applies.

It could be meditation on Christ and his passion.

It could be a prayer for the needs of the church and the world, for family members, and each individual could pray it for his or her own needs.

It concludes with the Glory be to the Father, and then we have just three verses from Ezekiel 47.I saw water flowing out from beneath the threshold of the temple toward the east.

And the water flowing from the temple blesses and heals, and brin- brings life wherever it goes.

And then the application is immediately made.

One soldier thrusts his lance into his side, and immediately blood and water flowed out so that the church sees the fullness of the water flowing from the temple in that vision, the blood and water flowing from the side of Christ, uh, the healing grace of redemption, the sacraments, and the life of the church.

Then you have the Canticle of Mary, so the church turns to Mary in the evening hours of the day with its antiphon.

The Canticle of Mary, the Magnificat, My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord.

Then you have the intercessions, and there are three of them that are given so that we lift up our hearts in prayer for God's people.

Lord Jesus, you wept over Jerusalem.

Grant conversion of heart to all those who have rejected you.

The family might consider family members who no longer go to church, or loved ones, or fellow workers, or people who, um, their hearts long to see come back closer to the Lord.

And here's a prayer for that.

Lord Jesus, you wept over the death of Lazarus.

Comfort those who mourn.

And it might be a, a sorrow in the life of the family or the individual.

Lord Jesus, you suffered sorrow and distress in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Abide with those who watch alone tonight in pain and fear.

And again, it might be people that we have in mind, or even personally.

Pray the Our Father, and then there's a concluding blessing as it were.

May the God of all grace, who called us to His eternal glory through Christ Jesus, restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish us after we have suffered a little.

Amen.

That's taken from, uh, 1 Peter 5:10.

So, I think that rapid overview just gives a sense of, o- of a richness that could come into a family's life that is doing this.

And if they're doing it daily, they're going to be living the liturgy of the church.

Imagine going through Lent that way, and how alive Lent will become for the family members.

I want to mention now a few books that could be of help in getting started in the Liturgy of the Hours.

And the first I've mentioned before.

This is Daria Sakhi's lovely little book, The Everyday Catholic's Guide to the Liturgy of the Hours.

If anyone listening feels a desire to explore the Liturgy of the Hours and wants a tool to get started, this is, uh, exactly the book that he or she would need.

The Everyday Catholic's Guide to the Liturgy of the Hours.

It's short.

It's very well-written.

It's easy to read, and it gives all the startup information that's necessary.

A second very fine book, and this would be for people beginning and for those perhaps who have prayed the Liturgy of the Hours for many years.

I've heard of bishops giving this book to all of the priests of their diocese, for example.

And this too is by a layman.

It's striking that both of these books are by laypeople.

John Brooke, and it's his book, The School of Prayer: An Introduction to the Divine Office for All Christians.

The School of Prayer: An Introduction to the Divine Office for All Christians.

It's a small book, can easily be carried, uh, with us as we go to pray in one place or another, and there are two parts to it.

In the first part, he goes through an un- the understanding of the Liturgy of the Hours, and that's very well done.

We get a sense of its history and its components and its meaning.

And then the second part is, I think, even the greater richness in it, because what he does is he takes all of the psalms and canticles that are prayed in morning prayer and evening prayer, and he gives you maybe about a page and a half of, um, background information, breaking open the meaning of the different verses and so on.

So that if a person, um, uses this over time, a person is going to really get a very deep sense of what these psalms are and how they're, how we pray them as Christians.

Uh, sometimes what I'll do is I'll just take, uh, an individual psalm in the Liturgy of the Hours and on that day go through what, um, John Brooke has to say about it.

And it, as you do this over time, you really get a good feel for the, um, the meaning of these psalms so that we can pray them with a whole new richness.

And then I'll mention my own book, which is, um, Praying the Liturgy of the Hours: A Personal Journey.

And this book is not an attempt to give the ABCs of the Liturgy of the Hours as Daria Sakhi does, for example, but just to describe the actual experience of praying it over a number of years, with, uh, some of the inevitable struggles that we have in any form of prayer and the resolution of them, and how, uh, this prayer has become increasingly precious to me o- over the years.

Much of what I've shared in these conversations is coming out of, uh, these years and the exploration and, um, I hope, I'd like to think, the growth in the prayer, in this prayer over the many years.

I, I'd like to conclude finally with a personal witness by a layman, um, about the Liturgy of the Hours.

And this is a man named David Clayton, and he spoke well about it in terms of its meaning, its nature, and components.

But finally, he told the people why he prays the Liturgy of the Hours.

And he said, The reason I pray it is because it gives me joy.

Now, he told the people, It does many things.

It brings out the Mass more for me.

It makes the Mass come more alive each day.

Through the Liturgy of the Hours, I'm more aware of the church's daily liturgy.

The Liturgy of the Hours helps me in my devotional life, which makes very nicely the point we mentioned earlier, that it's not either or.

Uh, each compliments and enriches the other.

So he says, um, Praying the Liturgy of the Hours brings me closer to Mary, because she's so present in the Liturgy of the Hours.

You celebrate all of her feast days, and she's there every day in the Liturgy of the Hours.

And he said, Praying the Liturgy of the Hours brings me closer to the saints, because you're celebrating them, um, and often even reading some of their writings and so on day by day .

and that the rest of this now is a little, literal quote from his talk.

The Liturgy of the Hours is a source of joy for me.

My experience of doing the Liturgy of the Hours is that I have a sense of the deepening of the joy of my Catholic life.

And he told the people that, For me, my Catholic faith is my greatest joy and the Liturgy of the Hours deepens it for me.

When I pray the Liturgy of the Hours, life is less of a battle.

Yes, there are ups and downs.

Things are not always perfect, but the Liturgy of the Hours gives me a sense that there is an assistance during the day.

That's what keeps me doing it.

We're encouraged to do it as lay people.

I'm not bound to do it, so it's a choice that I make.

I do it because I want to, because I feel that it improves my life and helps me get where I want to go, which is heaven.

And I think there's no better comment on the Liturgy of the Hours that could be made than that.

Uh, David, uh, is a Benedictine Oblate, and part of that legacy of Saint Benedict, once again, it kind of brings us around, doesn't it?

To where we began, that desire for those to enter into balance in their life.

And the Liturgy of the Hours can offer that in a time when there is so much, can we say, imbalance-

Mm-hmm.

in the world.

His comment really is that it brings harmony into my life.

The components of my otherwise somewhat scattered life, or possibly scattered life, come back together and find their center and find their harmony.

And, you know, I- I would, I would, I would say the same in my own life.

Um, the Liturgy of the Hours, it, it's always there.

It's always bringing you back to the Lord.

Uh, you never go very long without the Lord in the course of a day.

So that harmony is a, is a beautiful way to describe it.

It brings us back to God.

Thank you so much for introducing us and encouraging us in the practice of the Liturgy of the Hours, 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.