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The Liturgy of the Hours—Are we Biologically Programmed?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2024
Extract
By the venerable tradition of the universal Church, Lauds as morning prayer and Vespers as evening prayer are the two hinges on which the daily Office turns: hence they are to be considered as the chief hours and celebrated as such.
Lauds is designed and structured to sanctify the morning ... This Hour, recited as the light of a new day dawns, recalls the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, the true light enlightening every man.
Vespers is celebrated in the evening when the day is drawing to a close ... we join with the Eastern Churches and invoke ‘blessed Jesus Christ, the Light of our Heavenly Father’s sacred and eternal glory; as the sun sets we behold the evening light and sing to God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit’.
These passages from the conciliar and post-conciliar documents of Vatican II make emphatically clear the Church’s tradition of prayer at the beginning and ending of the day, and connect this tradition with dawn, the rising light of the new day, and dusk, the waning light of the evening. In the Church’s tradition of prayer, these two Hours are given a Christological significance: Lauds recalls the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, and Vespers commemorates his death and burial. This paper looks at the biological as well as the liturgical rhythms involved in praying at dawn and dusk, and invokes a sacramental understanding of time, which was common throughout earlier ages, but has been lost in more recent times. It then examines the custom of prayer at dawn and dusk in other religious traditions besides Christianity and collates all this evidence to ask if there is any justification for arguing that human beings are biologically programmed for such activity.
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- Copyright © 2003 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Sacrosanctum Concilium #89, a.
2 General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours, #38.
3 Ibid. #39.
4 For a full discussion see: Dugmore, C.W., ‘Canonical Hours’ in Davies, J.G., (ed.), A Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship, (London, SCM Press, 1972), pp, 113-120Google Scholar.
5 ‘We must also pray in the morning, to celebrate the Lord’s resurrection by morning prayer’, Cyprian, On the Lord’s Prayer, 35. Quoted by William, G. Storey, ‘The Liturgy of the Hours: Cathedral versus Monastery’, Worship 50, (1976), pp. 50-70Google Scholar.
6 ‘For it was at this hour that the water and blood flowed from the pierced side of Christ and that (the Lord) gave light to the declining day and brought it to evening. Thus by beginning a new day at the hour when he began to fall asleep, he gave us an image of the resurrection .’ Hippolytus of Rome, The Apostolic Tradition 35, c. 215 C.E., quoted in Deiss, L., Early Sources of the Liturgy, (London, Geoffrey Chapman, 1967), p.71Google Scholar.
7 ‘....all pre-modern Christianity was fundamentally sacramentalist’. O’Loughlin, T., Journeys on the Edges, (London, DLT, 1999), p. 47Google Scholar. For a fuller examination of this whole topic, see Chapter 2, A Walk in Two Worlds, pp. 34-48.
8 All the following biological information is taken from the Annual Review of Physiology, Vol 55, Annual Reviews Inc. 1993, unless otherwise noted.
9 ‘Repeated late nights under electric light can disrupt a woman’s hormonal balance by depleting her supplies of the brain-signalling chemical melatonin, making some breast tumours more likely to develop, the research says ..... A new theory is now suggesting that melatonin, the brain hormone that helps the body to set its internal clock, may be to blame. The effect hinges on melatonin’s influence over the female hormone oestrogen ... Melatonin levels are known to be highest during nighttime darkness, and lowest during the bright light of the middle of the day. ........’ Extra risk of breast cancer for night staff’, The Times, Saturday, February 15th 2003, p.9.
10 ‘Light is an important controlling agent of recurrent daily physiological alterations (circadian rhythms) in many animals and probably man. Lighting cycles have been shown to be important in regulating several types of endocrine function ......’ Encyclopaedia Britannica 15:391, Radiation Effects of.
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13 1 Clement, 24, quoted in Hamman, How to Read the Church Fathers, (London, SCM Press, 1993), p.7.
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17 De Oratione, 25, 1-3,ed. Corpus Christianorum, series Latina I, Turnhout, Belgium, 272.
18 Explanatio in Psalmum 1,9 in Corpus Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum 64.8.
19 Confessions, 5.9.17.
20 On the Lord’s Prayer, 35
21 Jn 8: 12.
22 See Taft, “Thanksgiving for the Light”: Towards a Theology of Vespers’ C.E..257.
24 De Oratione Dominica, 35: PL 4, 560.
25 On the Holy Spirit, 29, 73, PG 32, 205. Quoted in Taft, op.cit., p. 40.
26 For a full discussion of the dating of Patrick’s life and writing, see O’Loughlin, St Patrick, the Man and his Works, (London, Triangle, 1999), p. 15-19 and references.
27 bid. ‘.....on the day we shall arise in the brightness of the sun, this is in the glory of Christ Jesus our redeemer, we shall be ‘sons of the living God’ and fellow heirs with Christ’ and ‘conformed to his image’; for ‘from him and through him and in him’ we shall reign. But this sun which we see, rising each day for us by God’s command, it shall never reign, nor shall its splendor last......We, on the other hand, are those who believe in Christ and adore him who is the true sun. He is the sun which does not perish and so we too, ‘who do his will’, shall not perish.’ p. 88 and notes.
28 For a discussion of the date of the Nauigatio, see Dumville, ‘Two Approaches to the dating of the Nauigatio’, in Wooding, The Otherworld Voyage, (Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2000), pp.120-132; Wooding, ‘The Latin Version’, The Voyage of St Brendan, trans. John J. O’Meara, (Colin Smythe), p. 18.
29 Bourgealt, Cynthia, ‘The Monastic Archetype in the Nauigatio of St Brendan’, Monastic Studies 14, (1983), pp. 109-122. O’Loughlin, Thomas, ‘Distant Islands: The Topography of Holiness in the Nauigatio sancti Brendani’, (ed.) M. Glasscoe, The Medieval Mystical Tradition: England, Ireland, Wales, [Exeter Symposium VI], (Woodbridge, 1999), pp.1-20. O’Loughlin, Thomas, ‘The Monastic Liturgy of the Hours in the Nauigatio sancti Brendani: A Preliminary Investigation, (Forthcoming. I wish to thank Dr O’Loughlin for letting me read this in typescript.)
30 In this, the Nauigatio moves away from the traditional monastic fuga mundi mentality into a strongly world-affiming view.
31 See the articles referred to above; also the present writer’s ‘St Brendan the Abbot celebrates Easter: Scriptural and Liturgical Paschal Allusions in the Nauigatio sancti Brendani abbatis’, forthcoming.
32 O’Loughiin, ‘Distant Islands: the Topography of Holiness in the Nauigatio sancti Brendani’.
33 See Taft, “Thanksgiving for the Light”’, p.32.
34 Ex 29:38-42; 30:7-8; Num 28:l-8. All quoted by Taft, op. cit.
35 Posen, Jacob, ‘Jewish Worship’, in Davies, J.G., (ed.) A Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship, (London, SCM Press Ltd. 1972), p.207.
36 Taylor, J., ‘Islamic Worship’ in Davies, J., (ed) A Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship, (London, SCM Press Ltd., 1972), pp. 205-206Google Scholar.
37 http://www.ummah.org.uk/software/ptc/
38 See Baumstark, Comparative Liturgy, (London, Mowbray, 1958), p.4
39 The Liturgy of the Oder of Buddhist Contemplatives for the Laity, (Califomia, ShastaAbbey Press, 1990), pp. 47-54, 55-70, 71-76, 108-111.
40 Kanzeon was a bodhisattva; one who having achieved enlightenment himself chose, through compassion, to forgo nirvana until the ‘last blade of grass’ had achieved enlightenment, thus introducing a redemptive element which echoes that of the redeeming work of Christ. For a fuller account of the bodhisattva with comparisons with Christianity see Ozaniec, Naomi, Meditation, (London, Hodder Headline, 1997), pp. 68-70Google Scholar, The Way of the Bodhisattva.
41 The Liturgy of the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives for the Laity, Pre- Dawn Office; Avalokiteshwara (Kanzeon) Ceremony, p.47.
42 Raimundo, Panikkar, The Vedic Experience, (London, DLT, 1979), pp. 38-43Google Scholar.
43 Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: a reflection on the “New Age”, published by the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, 2003. Reported in The Tablet, February 8th 2003.
44 Ibid.
45 Hay, Louise L., You Can Heal Your Life (Eden Grove Editions, 1988), pp.89, 90Google Scholar.
46 PG 31,1014. Quoted in Taft, op. cit., p. 34.
47 Casel, The Mystery of Christian Worship, (London, DLT, 1962), p. 1-8.
48 O’Loughlin, Journeys on the Edges, p. 48.
49 That the human system is biologically programmed to respond to the seven day week is suggested by the fact that when, during both the French and the Russian revolutions the seven day cycle based on the Judaeo-Christian idea of a Sabbath/Sunday holy day of worship and rest, was abolished and replaced by a more secular arrangement, this latter proved to be impossible to maintain and in both cases was eventually abandoned. For the French revolution see Wells, N M., Time, (Harper Collins, 1999), pp.54,55; for the Russian see Meyer, Hans Bernard, ‘Time and the, Liturgy: Anthropological Notes on Liturgical Time’ in (eds.) Vos, and Wainwright, , Liturgical lime: Papers Read at the 1981 Congress of Societas Liturgica, (Liturgical Ecumenical Center Trust, 1982)Google Scholar.
50 Concluding prayer, Lauds, Thursday Week 1, The Divine Office, Vol 1, p.[107].
51 Concluding prayer, Lauds, Saturday Week 1, The Divine Office, Vol 1, p.[ 147].
52 Concluding prayer, Vespers, Tuesday Week 2, The Divine Office, Vol 1, p. [218].
53 Concluding prayer, Vespers, Monday Week 3, The Divine Office, Vol 1, p. [338].
54 Margot, Fassler, ‘Sermons, Sacramentaries, and early Sources for the Office in the Latin West’ in The Divine office in the Latin Middle Ages, (eds.) Fassler, and Balker, , (Oxford University Press, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, defines the Office as ‘....daily prayer, rooted in the cyclical changing of light marking out the steady passage of day to night and back again’, p. 15.
55 Pelikan, J., The Light of the World. A Basic Image in Early Christian Thought, (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1962), p. 13Google Scholar.