Alcuin Reid: SPIRITUAL CONFERENCES ON THE MONASTIC OFFICE

 

Alcuin Reid: SPIRITUAL CONFERENCES ON THE MONASTIC OFFICE

GIVEN AT THE AD FONTES SUMMER SCHOOL

IN KRAŽIAI, LITHUANIA, 2013 & 2014

 

 After Friday Vespers:

 

Dirigatur, Domine, oratio mea; sicut incensum in conspectu tuo. This short verse and response that occur before the Magnificat in ferial vespers have a lot to teach us.

 

I come to the Divine Office with “my prayer” – perhaps with my heart full of joy at the mercy of God I have experienced and the blessings I have been given. Perhaps, more often, I arrive with a heart that is tired because of so many things – concerns and worries, the burdens of each day and even of the days ahead. I may even come with a heart that is wounded, or scarred by sin.

 

In praying the Divine Office all and any of these realities can be transformed into prayer. I can ask the Lord to take the prayers of my heart and make them like incense in his sight: a sweet-smelling offering that rises heavenward.

 

This is what the solemn celebration of Lauds and Vespers so beautifully celebrates in its use of incense.

But it celebrates something more. The incense is used ritually. It is used hierarchically. It is used ecclesiastically.  

 

And so too, our prayers which we ‘send up to heaven’ with the incense are no longer ours. They become the Church’s prayer. The Church gives them wings, as it were. 

 

Let us not underestimate this. The Divine Office forms a large part of the Church’s Sacred Liturgy – even if we must pray it by ourselves. In taking my place in celebrating it I, and my prayers, are no longer simply my own. They become part of the Church’s prayer. And I place myself at the service of the Church by giving voice to her prayers also.

 

This commercium, this exchange, is integral to praying the Sacred Liturgy and is particularly poignant in the Divine Office. From it we each have much to gain.