The Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary

[angelcookie]

The rosary and angelus it is then

[MundaCorMeum]

The rosary and angelus it is then

Good call   . Once the baby is born, and you start getting some energy back, then you can reasonably add to things.  The Little Office book would be a great "welcome baby" gift, if anyone asks you for suggestions.

[aquinas138]

You also don't have to do the whole Office at first. In fact, I recommend against it. Make Prime and Compline part of your day, and once you feel their absence if you have to miss them one day, you can begin to add another hour. Matins should probably be last to add. It's WAY too easy to jump into such a devotion with so much zeal you burn out within a few weeks. Speaking from long experience!

[Kaesekopf]

How long does this devotion take each day?

I kept track one day and all seven hours took me a little less than an hour to pray. Matins and Lauds take the most time. Prime, Terce, Sext and None take less than ten minutes each. Vespers and Compline take a little more.

How are you taking that long for these Offices?

Maybe I'm just blowing through mine.... 

(I get through 1960 Vespers and Compline in around 15 minutes.....)

[Dymphna]

How long does this devotion take each day?

I kept track one day and all seven hours took me a little less than an hour to pray. Matins and Lauds take the most time. Prime, Terce, Sext and None take less than ten minutes each. Vespers and Compline take a little more.

How are you taking that long for these Offices?

Maybe I'm just blowing through mine.... 

(I get through 1960 Vespers and Compline in around 15 minutes.....)

Maybe I'm slow?

[Jayne]

How long does this devotion take each day?

I kept track one day and all seven hours took me a little less than an hour to pray. Matins and Lauds take the most time. Prime, Terce, Sext and None take less than ten minutes each. Vespers and Compline take a little more.

How are you taking that long for these Offices?

Maybe I'm just blowing through mine.... 

(I get through 1960 Vespers and Compline in around 15 minutes.....)

Maybe I'm slow?

I go around the same speed that you do.  It looks like KK is too fast. 

[Daniel]

How long does this devotion take each day?

I kept track one day and all seven hours took me a little less than an hour to pray. Matins and Lauds take the most time. Prime, Terce, Sext and None take less than ten minutes each. Vespers and Compline take a little more.

How are you taking that long for these Offices?

Maybe I'm just blowing through mine.... 

(I get through 1960 Vespers and Compline in around 15 minutes.....)

Maybe I'm slow?

I go around the same speed that you do.  It looks like KK is too fast. 

I'll point out, it's possible that you're both praying it incorrectly. Because it used to take me that long as well, maybe longer, but as it turns out, I was doing it wrong.

The (incorrect) way I used to pray it was, I would read through the psalms slowly, and sort of meditate on them, line-by-line. Not any super-deep meditation or anything, but enough to at least have some cognizance of what it was that I was reading, and to call to mind some of the typology behind it.
But as it turns out, none of that is necessary. And as I've been told, meditation during this particular prayer is a bad thing, since the Office (and presumably the Little Office as well) is public prayer. Not private prayer or meditation. (There's a time and a place for meditation, and this isn't it.) You're just supposed to read/say/chant the words, and that's it. In doing so, you participate in the Church's prayer by vocally expressing the sentiments of Christ / the Church. And your prayer is then good and glorifies God, because the Church's prayer itself is good and glorifies God. Regardless of whether or not you comprehend the words. (Though, you also should not willfully be distracted while praying it, since willful distractions are sins.)

Now I personally am a slow reader, so I likely would take a little longer than most people to pray it. But, overall, it's only supposed to take as long as it takes you to read/say/chant it at a somewhat rapid pace.

[Lynne]

I'll point out, it's possible that you're both praying it incorrectly. Because it used to take me that long as well, maybe longer, but as it turns out, I was doing it wrong.

The (incorrect) way I used to pray it was, I would read through the psalms slowly, and sort of meditate on them, line-by-line. Not any super-deep meditation or anything, but enough to at least have some cognizance of what it was that I was reading, and to call to mind some of the typology behind it.
But as it turns out, none of that is necessary. And as I've been told, meditation during this particular prayer is a bad thing, since the Office (and presumably the Little Office as well) is public prayer. Not private prayer or meditation. (There's a time and a place for meditation, and this isn't it.) You're just supposed to read/say/chant the words, and that's it. In doing so, you participate in the Church's prayer by vocally expressing the sentiments of Christ / the Church. And your prayer is then good and glorifies God, because the Church's prayer itself is good and glorifies God. Regardless of whether or not you comprehend the words. (Though, you also should not willfully be distracted while praying it, since willful distractions are sins.)

Now I personally am a slow reader, so I likely would take a little longer than most people to pray it. But, overall, it's only supposed to take as long as it takes you to read/say/chant it at a somewhat rapid pace.

This makes perfect sense. Thank you, Daniel.

[aquinas138]

But as it turns out, none of that is necessary. And as I've been told, meditation during this particular prayer is a bad thing, since the Office (and presumably the Little Office as well) is public prayer. Not private prayer or meditation. (There's a time and a place for meditation, and this isn't it.) You're just supposed to read/say/chant the words, and that's it. In doing so, you participate in the Church's prayer by vocally expressing the sentiments of Christ / the Church. And your prayer is then good and glorifies God, because the Church's prayer itself is good and glorifies God. Regardless of whether or not you comprehend the words. (Though, you also should not willfully be distracted while praying it, since willful distractions are sins.)

If by "comprehend" you mean "exhaustively understand the full significance of what you're praying," then I would agree, especially since it is impossible anyway with divinely-inspired texts like the Psalms. But you must, at least on a surface level, understand what you are reading. Otherwise it seems a bit like an exercise in magic. I do agree that study of the Psalms should occur outside of prayer.

While the Office is the prayer of the Church, it is also the prayer of the Christian praying it, who is a member of the Church, and so he or she should take care to pray it well and come to understand it better. The speed with which you pray should be comprehensible, not rushed or hurried, so that someone listening could understand what you are saying. The admonition that comprehension is not essential can too often devolve into excessively hurried reading. I would put all notions of "rapid pace" aside. The Office is supposed to be sung in common; simply reading it is a concession to private recitation, which is not what the Office was originally intended to be.

Admonitions in the past from moralists about proper pronunciation, moving the lips even if praying silently, rapid pace, etc., were often more about discussions of what was necessary to fulfill the canonical obligation of a cleric to recite the Office, not always advice for "best practices." A lay person is generally under no canonical obligation to the Office. It is more valuable to pray just Compline attentively and worthily than to speed-read through all the hours.

All that said, my speed is a lot more like Kaesekopf's!

[Jayne]

I don't usually meditate, but I want to recite the prayers at a pace at which I do not feel like I am rushing. If I go too fast it feels like going through the motions rather than praying with devotion.  I expect that speed varies from person to person.

[Dymphna]

I don't meditate on them either. Perhaps, like I said in an earlier post, I am slow.

[Dymphna]

I decided to time myself today. Matins and Lauds took eleven minutes each. Prime, Terce, and Sext each took four minutes. None took six. Vespers took nine minutes. Compline seven. All together, a total of 56 minutes, or slightly under an hour. 

[Daniel]

But as it turns out, none of that is necessary. And as I've been told, meditation during this particular prayer is a bad thing, since the Office (and presumably the Little Office as well) is public prayer. Not private prayer or meditation. (There's a time and a place for meditation, and this isn't it.) You're just supposed to read/say/chant the words, and that's it. In doing so, you participate in the Church's prayer by vocally expressing the sentiments of Christ / the Church. And your prayer is then good and glorifies God, because the Church's prayer itself is good and glorifies God. Regardless of whether or not you comprehend the words. (Though, you also should not willfully be distracted while praying it, since willful distractions are sins.)

If by "comprehend" you mean "exhaustively understand the full significance of what you're praying," then I would agree, especially since it is impossible anyway with divinely-inspired texts like the Psalms. But you must, at least on a surface level, understand what you are reading. Otherwise it seems a bit like an exercise in magic. I do agree that study of the Psalms should occur outside of prayer.

While the Office is the prayer of the Church, it is also the prayer of the Christian praying it, who is a member of the Church, and so he or she should take care to pray it well and come to understand it better. The speed with which you pray should be comprehensible, not rushed or hurried, so that someone listening could understand what you are saying. The admonition that comprehension is not essential can too often devolve into excessively hurried reading. I would put all notions of "rapid pace" aside. The Office is supposed to be sung in common; simply reading it is a concession to private recitation, which is not what the Office was originally intended to be.

Admonitions in the past from moralists about proper pronunciation, moving the lips even if praying silently, rapid pace, etc., were often more about discussions of what was necessary to fulfill the canonical obligation of a cleric to recite the Office, not always advice for "best practices." A lay person is generally under no canonical obligation to the Office. It is more valuable to pray just Compline attentively and worthily than to speed-read through all the hours.

All that said, my speed is a lot more like Kaesekopf's!

Thank you. I think that clarifies things

[Andrew]

The rosary and angelus it is then

Hey, if you have some desire to pray the Little Office but can't incorporate it right now, this might be of interest to you: The Little Office of Our Lady: A Treatise Theoretical, Practical, and Exegetical (<--Link). This was originally published in 1903, so it fits perfectly with the 1904 version of the Little Office that St. Bonaventure Press publishes (<--Link). It remains beneficial for all versions based on the original Latin office; however, ICEL's Little Office, culled from the Liturgy of the Hours, has no correlation what-so-ever with this treatise.

I choose the 1904 version for many reasons. One of the main ones is that it is possible that St. Gemma may have prayed this exact version prior to her death in 1903. There are some subtle and not so subtle differences between this version and the more modern printings. I own them all, lol.

The treatise on the Little Office is really enjoyable reading. The office is so little, yet the commentary is 438 pages long. Gotta love that. It is truly some spiritual reading that can be taken in bite-sized chunks that a busy mom can handle. Every single line of each hour, one antiphon at a time, one psalm at a time, in the order that it is prayed, is given with delightfully Catholic exposition in order to understand more fully the incredible depth of Our Lady's Little Office.

Anyway, thought this might be something of interest to you, even if you might not be able to pray Our Lady's hours right now.

[Lynne]

The rosary and angelus it is then

Hey, if you have some desire to pray the Little Office but can't incorporate it right now, this might be of interest to you: The Little Office of Our Lady: A Treatise Theoretical, Practical, and Exegetical (<--Link). This was originally published in 1903, so it fits perfectly with the 1904 version of the Little Office that St. Bonaventure Press publishes (<--Link). It remains beneficial for all versions based on the original Latin office; however, ICEL's Little Office, culled from the Liturgy of the Hours, has no correlation what-so-ever with this treatise.

I choose the 1904 version for many reasons. One of the main ones is that it is possible that St. Gemma may have prayed this exact version prior to her death in 1903. There are some subtle and not so subtle differences between this version and the more modern printings. I own them all, lol.

The treatise on the Little Office is really enjoyable reading. The office is so little, yet the commentary is 438 pages long. Gotta love that. It is truly some spiritual reading that can be taken in bite-sized chunks that a busy mom can handle. Every single line of each hour, one antiphon at a time, one psalm at a time, in the order that it is prayed, is given with delightfully Catholic exposition in order to understand more fully the incredible depth of Our Lady's Little Office.

Anyway, thought this might be something of interest to you, even if you might not be able to pray Our Lady's hours right now.

Thank you! And welcome!