EWTN Bookmark - 2019-10-06 - A Layman's Guide to the Liturgy of the Hours

[Music] and welcome once again to EWTN bookmark I'm Doug Keck your host our special guest author is one of our show hosts father Timothy Gallagher omv his book is a layman's guide to the Liturgy of the hours how the prayers of the church can change your life proudly published by EWTN publishing great to see you again father Rebecca it's always great to have you on the network on your series you were back in the early late spring into summer you were on my remember with with father Mitch on the live show talking in fact about this particular book layman's guide to the liturgy of the hours now you've done a lot of spiritual direction I think the first time we talked was probably almost in 7 8 years ago maybe even more more like 10 years ago believe it or not and you've done multiple series force now this is not the first book you've done on on the liturgy hours you did another one back in 15 praying the liturgy hours why a second book that first book was a book in which I just tell my own story of praying the Liturgy of the hours at that point for 40 years and you know there's a lot of writing on the liturgical side of the Liturgy of the hours the theological side but I had never seen anyone just tell the story of what it's like in practice to pray a day after day through the year so that's what that book was then out of that actually it was three wtn out of that came a series of the place that the Liturgy of the hours might have in the life of lay people and then the invitation to write this book so that's why we have a second book now specifically looking at the LAIV occasion and this prayer right that you're working out for ewtn mm-hmm as well okay it's because there's another title coming there is right okay so you also talked about this and you mentioned in the very beginning introduction you talked about the liturgy the hours as a sleeping giant in the lave vocation how so because for the past fifteen hundred years not 2,000 because with the Peace of Constantine when Christians could build churches and gather for prayer very quickly the lay people began gathering with the priests and Bishop to pray the Psalms the earliest form of the Liturgy of the hours eventually this passed in to the monasteries and so for about 1500 years until the Second Vatican Council the Liturgy of the hours the breviary the Divine Office was considered basically well that's a prayer for the priests right with the Second Vatican Council that changes and in the council and in the subsequent Pope's you have this quiet repeated warm invitation to laypeople to say this is your prayer too you are we would love to see you pray parts of this and it can make a real difference in your life so in that sense the sleeping giant is awakening and I'd say there's a second reason with all the problems that the digital world can cause it can do some wonderful things and one of the things that's done is to make the Liturgy of the hours very easily accessible without cost you can listen to it you can pray it on your phone while you're commuting listen to it in your car so the digital forms so there's listening to a prayer like this count as reading it like like listening to an audio book would be the same idea you know the question there is what helps the person to pray it so let's take for example a busy mom or a man with this work and family who just says I can't add any more prayer to my life I don't have any more time for this could you listen to it played from an app on your phone while you're commuting to work while you're driving to pick up the children from school or to go shopping that's what I mean about the digital forms can be a very beautiful way actually to pray it and sometimes for some people the only way right so so you talked about the first part of the book examined it alluded to the hours where it came from the second we'll review the five hours of the liturgy the hours the third place of the liturgy hours what it means to delay vocation a final part you're talking about practical steps now one of the things that you know for the average person who may not be liturgically oriented they hear the liturgy the hours well that sounds very churchy and then they hear hours and I think my lord I have hours to pray that's why the priests do it right great question or let's look at both terms liturgy liturgy simply means public official prayer of the church we generally associate it with the sacraments so at masses laid out for us by the church a baptism a funeral whatever it might be but there is another form of public official prayer of the church which is the liturgy that we're talking about now of the hours hours does not mean 60 minutes hours means cosmic time the hours of the day as they unfold so there's a brief prayer in the morning it could take up to 10 minutes shorter if we pray the shortened forms for morning prayer even shorter form for the middle of the day evening and night so that there are there are prayers for the various hours of the day as cosmic time unfolds in the day so it's in that sense that we speak of the hours and that's what's unique about this liturgical prayer every other form of liturgical prayer including the mass which is the high point takes place at one point in the day you know that feeling that we can often have that while I went to daily Mass and it's great but I just wish I felt closer than to the Lord throughout the rest of the hours of the day here's a form of prayer that keeps coming back briefly do ibly throughout the day which is the church's richest answer to that desire it's kind of interested in some ways and maybe this is anecdotal but it seemed like quite honestly coming out of vatican do for a while there was question about how many priests were praying their bravery or doing the Liturgy of the hours let alone laypeople getting involved in it but you tell this great story where you said I went to this parish and you said you had experienced the spiritual energy which is a vibrant center for spiritual life and then you discovered in a sense what that was right very large very active parish like an ongoing retreat endless lines of confessions every day maybe about 800 people at daily Mass with various masses in the course of the day catechism children over a thousand and so forth and part of what they do every morning before the 8 o'clock mass at 7:30 the priests gather in the back of the church about maybe 40 people with them and they prayed to parts of the Liturgy of the hours together at the office of readings and morning prayer it's really beautiful to see it the people are very accustomed to it they know how to pray it they're at home with it and it binds the people in there priest together and starts the prepares the mass actually in a very beautiful way now don't you need some sort of special book or something to be able to prayer the how do you do it either in a book form or in digital form so people do both if you watch a group with people pray the Liturgy of the hours some will be holding the book and some will be praying it from an app on their phone so yes you do need the you do need some of you Dumbo I have done both when I travel it's so much easier to pray from the phone when I'm at home I pray from the book right you you say and talking about that event you say I was struck by the simplicity of this prayer what do you mean the simplicity the ease the fact that the people had long practice in this they didn't have to struggle the priest which is quietly at the beginning say these are the choices for today's prayers and these are the pages where you'll find let's say that hymn or a certain reading that we're going to do and then everything went very smoothly and that's what happens with the Liturgy of the hours it can seem initially confusing if you're using the print version especially digitally it's all it's very easy it's just all you do is scroll down it's all laid out for you but initially in the print version you struggle a little to know which pages with time that gets second nature and very easy okay you tell various stories and one story person says I believe that the regular praying of the Liturgy of the hours and daily Mass has done the most and remaking my mind and my heart as a Catholic now some people would say gee I you know I thought I had to I had to do was try to live out the faith and go to Mass on Sunday now I got to go to Mass every day and I got a all these additional players I thought the priests and the sisters were taking care of well there are two things involved there one is the question of vocation a monk in his monastery can do this and more a sister and her convent even a priest in his parish will do these things daily for a mother of three or four small children things might look very different so that's the first thing and if you if we go through in the book as I do what the church says about laypeople and the liturgy of the hours the church always respects the different circumstances so that's one thing to say but the other question is what do we desire you know I think of Augustine's line that our hearts are restless famously restless until they rest in you well our hearts really always want more and here is an excellent I would say even a privileged way to go into the more right and you make the point in Chapter two from where did the prayers come from me you talk about the Psalms 150 prayers the Old Testament you make the point that in fact Jesus himself prayed the Psalms Doug it seems to me that that sort of kind of ends any discussion if Jesus is our model and everything and Jesus himself prayed the Psalms how could we not want to pray the Psalms I remember one woman mother of a large family busy days telling me that she kept the Bible by her bed stand and every night she would read one of the Psalms when she finished the hundred and fifty she would go through it again it's that instinct to say these can make a real difference in our lives mm-hmm now you quote various Saints and you allude to a gust in there before you also had st. Ambrose describing the many ways in which the psalms bless us and he mentioned it soothes the temper distracts from care and lightens the burden of sorrow is that your experience what we find is that at times our hearts need to say things to God but we don't have the words to say them and this is what st. Ambrose and Saint Agustin and others are getting at in the Psalms you'll find the words you need for example st. Augustine says that of course we're called to praise God to recognize God as our Creator and Redeemer but we wouldn't have known how to praise God which i think is true for most of us so God gave us the words that we need to praise Him and that's the Psalms and the same thing is true for expressing sorrow desperate need joy hope etc all of that now st. Anthony she said another church fathers of course employs a lovely metaphor the Psalms seemed to me 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 I think that's why people through the centuries have loved the Psalms so much because when they when they read these Psalms and pray them they're saying yes that's what my heart needs to say I know exactly what he's talking about in these words they're a mirror to what my own heart is expressing and they give new words to say it to the Lord now you mentioned that the renewal of the liturgy at the Second Vatican Council touched the liturgy of the hours as well the term Divine Office continued to be employed but the title has we have been using liturgy hours replaced it as a preferred term both liturgy and hours are significant and you mentioned that before why did they decide to move from Divine Office to liturgy hours both terms are fine both are maintained as I said but Liturgy of the hours is actually the most precise term in describing this form of Prayer divine office simply means holy duty or sacred tasks it could apply to many things but liturgy of the hours is very specific public official prayer of the church liturgy that is prayed repeatedly at various hours of the day and so that title most specifically captures the essence of the prayer and what is there five different times or five different and what are those there's morning prayer daytime prayer evening prayer night prayer and then a fifth hour which can be prayed at any time of the day called the office of the readings now when you say what is the Liturgy of the hours I began praying the liturgy hours 47 years ago let me ask you was that because you were in seminary and you were supposed to do it or had you picked that up as a layperson no I never prayed it until I became a seminarian mm-hmm just never even occurred to me yeah you say we are essentially asking what in the eyes of the church is the Liturgy of the hours now that's a deep thing all right would you have the Catechism here I'm gonna summarize it in just a couple of sentences given our time here but I wouldn't invite the reader to go through this in the book actually absolutely the church tells us that within the Trinity from all eternity a hymn of praise as sung as the three persons of the Trinity mutually express their delight in each other the joy that they accept they experience in the love of the goodness the wisdom the beauty each person toward the other that him eternal hymn of praise has brought into this world when Jesus is incarnate and now for the first time that hymn of praise is sung human lips and from a human heart Jesus in the church associates us with that him and lifts our prayer together with his to the Father and that's the deep theological root of the Liturgy of the hours once we see that something in this begins to want it yeah there's a great image as a liturgy the hours the council tells us is our association with Christ and singing that eternal hymn of praise so we pick up the book we open the app on the phone we're a little distracted a little tired today but we're praying it with goodwill what's happening is the spirit who comes to the aid of our weakness when we pray as Paul says raises our prayer to Jesus who unites it with his own and raises it to the Father which is why it's so powerful with all of our tiredness and distraction and all the rest this has great power to lift us up through God to God and through us to bless others chapter 5 is this a prayer for the family you go through and talk about st. Paul Pope Paul the sixth Pope Paul the sixth and what he wrote and you talk about the invitation recite parts of the Liturgy of the hours as a family priest monks and some sisters recite all the liturgy hours but for families this invitation is not an all-or-nothing proposal which is important one part of allegedly hours perhaps five minutes a day is already a response to this invitation my conviction regarding prayer in general and in this case as well is that better begin with less than with more let's imagine a family that is subscribed to Magnificat let's say that monthly publication in which there's a shortened form of morning prayer evening prayer and night prayer and before dispersing after supper if it's a husband and wife or husband and wife and children they stay together for five six seven minutes to pray evening prayer together and do that every day what would happen in the family's life so that's the invitation it's very easy it's very concrete it brings great fruits into the family which was why st. Paul the sixth spoke of this as the highest form that family prayer can reach right it's also you talk about politics words permit me to extend the invitation to you to read or to consider praying morning prayer or evening prayer in your family this Advent or lent season why start with the because that might be an opportune time when people are looking for something new and something more to do to get closer to the Lord during those times so I'd all extend that invitation of course you can begin today at any time but why not consider at the beginning of Advent or the beginning of Lent taking them in magnificat shortened version and beginning this practice after supper let's say or before going to work but if it's together maybe after supper and just see what happens and this is my wager if a family does that for four weeks during Advent six weeks during Lent the family won't stop they will love but that's what you're counting on in a sense they'll get started with something they feel that they can do because there's an end time to it not feeling like they're committing forever that's as I say it's better to start with less than more you can always add more right okay in Chapter six what have the Pope said you st. John Paul the second 2001 yeah he returned to the theme at length in dealing with liturgy the hours and talking about the Psalms and canticles and also you quote Pope emeritus Benedict also made our further specification on this invitation encouraging people to do this yes both popes john paul ii began in pope benedict completed a commentary on the psalms for morning prayer and evening prayer and both of them john paul at the beginning benedict at the end repeated this warm invitation to lay people to consider praying benedict specifies some parts of either morning prayer evening prayer or night night prayer as a way to start okay i was gonna ask you prayer throughout the day when you go through those as if you were starting out is there one that would be more important to start out with you I mean obviously meeting God as you say meeting God in the morning is that the most important one if you were going to start with one the best one to start with is the one that best helps you to begin okay having said that in terms of the the relative structure of the day of the hours morning prayer and evening prayer are considered the two hinge hours but whatever best helps us to start right and you go through elsewhere in the book and talk about the different aspects and the diff time's praying it's sunset obviously the meditations you also put in the back of the book chapter 17 but I still have some questions so let's talk about some of those questions we're somewhere I'm assuming these are ones you created for yourself but you can imagine there are people's minds the liturgy hours may be beautiful but it seems so complicated ham psalms readings that's her I'm not sure I can do all that other ways of praying seems simpler and more accessible begin simply the easiest way to begin as far as simplicity is with the digital versions because there are no ribbons no pages you just tap on morning prayer and just pray it is you think that scares people when they see people flipping between the book and moving with the ribbons now they feel it's very complicated however most people when they begin with the printed version would not begin with the full four volume set there are two shorter versions one simply called Christian prayer where everything is found in one volume and there's even shorter Christian prayer which is often used in parishes where it's very simple there are just a few ribbons it's very easy to do you get used to it quickly and then if people want more they can always add more now obviously you're going and giving talks on spiritual direction maybe some on these as well am I to assume that as you traverse around the country you see more and more of this going on in local parishes absolutely yes the the interest that's why I mean about the sleeping giant awakening the interest in the Liturgy of the hours is quietly growing and as time goes by you see more and more of it it's interesting how these kinds of devotionals and things like that and and this kind of a prayer thing not only is it not the devotionals going away they're actually having new things being brought forward and regained which was the idea of vatican ii to take those treasures of the church and make sure they were available to everyone and when we pray liturgical prayer we are praying right at the center of all prayer and that's what's unique about this this is why pope saint paul the six can speak of this for example as i mentioned as the highest points that family prayer can reach for example because this is liturgical prayer here's one questions you put in here Psalms or Jewish prayers from the Old Testament I'm a Christian whatever these Old Testament prayers have to do with me besides maybe they're beautiful two things one in their original literal form they express things that our hearts also Express desire to praise God fear desperate need of help and all the things that we've been saying but we don't pray them as people of the Old Testament we pray them as people of the New Testament we pray them as people who know that Jesus prayed them and Jesus fulfilled them so for example if we pray Psalm 22 my God my God why have you abandoned me obviously we can pray that as it was prayed in the Old Testament as a prayer out of my need but we can also pray it as an insight into the Heart of Jesus on the cross who prayed it himself on the cross so we pray them as we approach the whole Old Testament as fulfilled in Christ now you know you follow a set schedule so here's a question you asked that I thought was a good one you know what happens if the readings that day don't correspond with how I feel in my heart how do I pray when the words differ from what I'm experiencing my heart at that time or let's and I think you even use the example of some something happened in his life where there's a major catastrophe or something happened and I'm reading something that doesn't even have anything to do with that all right so let's say that something very sad has happened in my let's let's flip it around the other way let's say something very joyful has happened in my life and here is the sum of someone out of the depths I cry to you O Lord I may not feel that today but there is certainly somebody in the church and world who does there may be people that I know and many suffering throughout the world this is a prayer of the churches as the church's official prayer so I am praying not just in my own name but my prayer of that Psalm lifts up the sorrow and the pain of these people to God so every time we pray the Liturgy of the hours we bring the whole church with us and it will apply always to many okay you also make the point here if somebody makes the point or would ask the question I say since it's the Old Testament you run into this sometimes you know the Psalms can be violent you know I'm sitting there and I'm trying to find peace in my life and I'm reading this violent song may their children the children of our captors be smashed against the rocks right how do you pray something like that well that's the example that I use in the book and st. Augustine in his commentary on the Psalms says this what does that mean what does it mean to smash the children against the rocks it means to crush evil desires in their very beginning before they can grow at all so that's the principle that underlines all of this as and I love this myself now when you pray these Psalms with violence it's always directed at enemies and the enemies are Satan sin evil and all that that goes along with that death we ask that these these enemies be smashed against the rocks so that their power is removed right and this is an interesting question which you challenge yourself you say that you've spoken of liturgy hours will you come clean is it always uplifting does it always bring consolation my guess is nothing always does virtually anything no there is in the spiritual life what CS Lewis calls the law of undulation you know there are as there is in any relationship even the best of friendships and the strongest of Love's there are times when it's more or less felt and that's going to be true in the life of Prayer what makes prayer fruitful is fidelity through the tapestry of these ups and downs and we surely grow as we do that now could one decide to pick up this book and read this book just to get an understanding as a guide without having to necessarily commit to do to the liturgy the hours yes but I will offer another wager here I would think that anyone who goes through as you will if you read the book what the church says about the Liturgy of the hours and laypeople will close the book at least wondering you know is it time for me at least to think about this mm-hmm and that's the beginning so how long from the time it was decided you're going to put this book together to take you to put it together did you have all the pieces already in just a matter of assembling it or was there a period of time the material was together put together because I did this as a series for WDN a few years ago so this is basically taking that material taking that material amplified working with it but it's that material so have you found over the period of time that you've been teaching this between the series and others that you've attenuated some of your teach found things that worked or didn't work as well etc I would say that I have not at all attenuated I've only grown in my sense of the beauty and importance and fruitfulness of lay people approaching this form of prayer if I've modified anything it may be in the pedagogical form of presenting it but I grow more and more convinced of the power of this and look we know things are not easy right now in the church and in the world a source of strength which the church can call as I've said a few times very high up there on the terms of prayers that can bless our lives gets more and more important as time goes by are you always so calm father all right well when you take the time to get your next book out hopefully for us I think it will be for us I'm sure we'll see you again always a pleasure great to see on the network and keep up the wonderful work and go out there spreading the word about the Liturgy of the hours a layman's guide to the Liturgy of the hours is the title and it's published by us right here at EWTN so we're very proud about it how the prayers of the church can change your life amen bye father Timothy Gallagher omv available through our EWTN religious catalogue EWTN our c-calm that's the store that was started by Mother Angelica back in 1996 the best place to get all things Catholic and we'll see you next time right here on EWTN bookmark Thanks [Music] you [Music]

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Length: 26min 47sec (1607 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 07 2019