We say "Our Office," and our use of the
term is a recognition that it takes precedence of all our other functions. It
is pre-eminently our Office, our duty. Sometimes it is called "the holy
Office" because, whereas all our other activities, however important, are
more or less worldly (though they must be turned to the glory of God), this is
essentially an act of divine praise.
It is even described as "the divine Office." And, in point of fact, our Office is divine. In it, God is the object which occupies our spirit and heart. A divine occupation indeed! God Himself does nothing greater than to contemplate and love Himself. The creation and government of the world is as nothing to Him in comparison with this act which constitutes from all eternity His intimate life. So also, be it said, the execution of the noblest masterpiece of human art or the greatest work for the civilization of the world is little to us as compared with this magnificent exercise of our faculties. We can aspire to nothing higher than to attach ourselves to God by our thought and by our love.
That can, of course, be done apart from the Office. But nowhere can we do it better than in our Office. Because at that time we are not left to our personal efforts, to our poor human speech. It is the very Spirit of God Who enters into our soul and uses it as an instrument well attuned by baptism for that divine worship; it is the very Spirit of God Who passes through our lips to sound the divine praises.
The spirit of God found, in the midst of the ages, the perfect instrument for divine praise in the humanity of the Savior Jesus. David, whom our saints loved so much and who was so often associated with Our Lord in the spiritual espousals and other favors granted to our women saints, David was but the figure of Christ when he expressed in his psalms the various sentiments of his soul. Thus, Our Lord appropriated them from His childhood at Nazareth. He was pleased when He heard them well rendered in the Temple. At the Last Supper He sang the psalms of the Hallel. And the supreme words He uttered on the Cross were those of the psalm Deus, Deus meus, which His soul must have continued in silence, and which expressed His state of crucified dereliction as perfectly as though David had actually seen Him dying in that agony.
Incorporated in Jesus by the sacramental character which enables us to take part in the worship He renders to God, we derive from the eucharistic communion the grace to do so more and more worthily. If we cannot daily assemble in church like our conventual brothers and sisters, let us at least in spirit repair to the altar on which the sacrifice of Calvary is renewed each morning, and in union with Him Who is the Head of our choir, and with the same intention as His, let us celebrate the divine praise.
Some of the psalms are applicable only to Him, and
we repeat them as in Him, lending Him our voice, as the priest does in the
eucharistic consecration. There are many more which apply only to us; but He
says them with us, He Who is the Head of us all, Who instils His Spirit into
His members and Who identifies them with Himself.
A priest who was an honor to our Third Order, the spiritual son of Mother Agnes Langeac, M. Olier, composed some beautiful devotions for the Holy Office from which I extract the following passages: "Oh, my God, Whose pleasure and delight is in our Savior Jesus Christ, Who Himself alone, by virtue of Thy Holy Spirit by Whom he has been filled, renders to Thee all the honor and all the praise ever rendered to Thee by the holy prophets, the patriarchs, the apostles and their disciples, by the angels in heaven and the saints on earth; express in our soul and throughout the Church that which He alone perfectly renders to Thee in Heaven. May the Church, O my Savior Jesus, unfold that which Thou didst enclose within Thyself and may she express outside herself that divine religion which Thou hast for Thy Father in the secrecy of Thy heart, in heaven and upon our altars.”
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