It is fitting, in
a way, that this post on Daytime prayer comes so long after my other pieces on the
Liturgy of the Hours, because Daytime Prayer (actually the three separate hours
of Midmorning Prayer, Terce, Midday Prayer, Sext,
and Midafternoon Prayer, None) is the most overlooked part of
the Divine Office. Without it, however,
we do not enjoy the fullest experience of the daily Liturgy.
As I mentioned
above, Daytime prayer has traditionally contained three separate prayer hours, whose
names come from the old Roman mode of designating time by counting the hours
after dawn: Terce at the third hour (tertius is “third” in Latin),
approximately 9:00 A.M., Sext at Noon, the sixth hour (in Latin sextus),
and None from the Latin nonus, ninth, at that hour of the
day (around 3:00 p.m.). These hours are
less prominent than the others in the overall scheme of the Liturgy, and so are
considerably shorter: just three relatively short psalmodies (with their
antiphons), a brief scripture reading (no more than one or two verses) and a
closing prayer.
Their brevity is
appropriate because they fall inside the period of the day when most of us are
the busiest with our worldly occupations, and longer prayers are more likely to
be omitted altogether. Not only that, we
can pray only one hour on a given day and still not miss any of the psalms in
the cycle, because we follow the usual four-week cycle for only one of the
three hours; most days we can choose at which of the three hours to pray the
cyclical psalmody, and if we also pray one or both of the other two there are
designated psalms (called the Complementary Psalmody) that are the
same every day. Even the busiest
layperson can normally find time to pray one of these brief hours during the
day, and even many of those under obligation to pray the Liturgy of the Hours
are not required to pray all three. We should take the ease and flexibility of
Daytime Prayer as an indication, not of its insignificance, but of how
important it is, since the Church is so concerned that we observe at least part
of the Divine Office in the midst of our working day.
And that is a
great part of the value of these prayer hours.
It is possible to pray all the other hours before work in the morning
and after were finished in the morning, leaving the greater part of our day,
the part that most occupies us mentally and physically, untouched by our sacred
project of “sanctifying time”. The very
fact of interrupting the normal flow of things, even briefly, to turn our
thoughts to God, and to pray with the sacred scriptures, draws together our
fuller prayers in the morning and the evening to cover the whole day.
We also find an
emphasis in the psalms and prayers of Daytime Prayer that helps us to put
whatever we do throughout the day into an “eternal” perspective. We see many images of work, harvest, and, at
None, the home life to which we are about to return. Many of the psalms also emphasize God’s
grace, mercy, and involvement in our lives.
For instance, the Complementary Psalmody for Midday Prayer includes
Psalm 125, which begins:
Those who
put their trust in the Lord
Are like
Mount Zion, that cannot be shaken,
That stands
forever. . .
The concluding prayer often directs our attention to the
divine perspective on that particular part of our working day. At the end of Terce on Monday of Week I, for
instance, we pray:
God our
Father,
work is
your gift to us,
a call to
reach new heights
by using
our talents for the good of all.
Guide us as
we work and teach us to live
in the
spirit that has made us your sons and daughters,
in the love
that has made us brothers and sisters.
Then at Sext:
Father,
Yours in
the harvest
and Yours
is the vineyard:
You assign
the task
and pay a
wage that is just.
help us to
meet this day’s responsibilities,
and let
nothing separate us from your love.
Finally, None’s prayer begins:
Lord,
You call us
to worship You
At the hour
when the apostles went to pray in the temple . . .
As the last prayer on Monday connects the hour of the day
with that hour in Salvation History, so the prayers for Friday of Week I give
us an almost hourly recapitulation of the events of Good Friday. The pray for Midmorning begins:
Lord Jesus
Christ,
at this
hour you led out
to die on
the cross
for the
salvation of the world . . .
Then at Midday Prayer:
Lord Jesus
Christ,
At noon,
when darkness covered all the earth,
You mounted
the wood of the cross . . .
And finally, the prater at Midafternoon begins:
Lord Jesus
Christ,
You brought
the repentant thief
From the
suffering of the cross
To the joy
of your kingdom . . .
No discussion of
Daytime prayer would be complete for me if I didn’t mention two of my favorite
psalms, 127 and 128, which we find in Midafternoon Complementary Psalmody. Both help us look at the work day that is
nearing completion in the context of God’s abundance and mercy, and remind us
that He rewards those who rely upon Him.
Psalm 127 begins with an image of
a house under construction to represent our need for God’s help: “If the Lord
does not build the house/In vain do its builders labor” ; the last half of the
psalm depicts God’s abundant blessings, as represented by our children:
Truly sons
are a gift from the Lord,
A blessing,
the fruit of the womb.
Indeed the
sons of youth
Psalm 128, the final Psalm of Daytime Prayer, beautifully
encapsulates the whole day of work by pointing to its end, in which we see the
whole chain of love and abundance, in which our “yes” to God’s love for us
finds fruitfulness in our work under His care, which is reflected in the
fruitfulness of our wife, who is compared to a flourishing vine, and that
abundance is in turn passed on to our children and our children’s
children. I can think of no better
closing for this essay than to reproduce Psalm 128 in full:
O blessed are those who fear the
Lord
and walk in his ways!
By the labor of your hands you
shall eat.
You will be happy and prosper;
the wife like a fruitful vine
in the heart of your house;
Your children like shoots of the
olive,
around the your table.
Indeed thus shall be blessed
the man who fears the Lord.
May the Lord bless you from Zion
all the days of your life!
May you see your children's
children
in a happy Jerusalem!
On Israel, peace!