11 September 2009
Question for Treasury Users
I noted with some interest that Pr. Petersen had an article in the latest Gottesdienst, in which he advocates the use of the Treasury for praying daily Matins and clearly implied he used the whole of the daily propers for Matins. I had tried since it came out to divide the Treasury's daily propers between Matins and Vespers - it worked okay. But there were definitely some awkward bits. Lately I too have been praying the whole of the Treasury's daily propers at Matins and just picking up some Psalms for an abbreviated Vespers, and I find it works better than dividing them up. My question is: how many of you use the Treasury "all at one office" each day?
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I use it for Compline, but I only read the OT...adding the NT and Lutheran writers put the kids to sleep before I could finish Compline! :)
I use the TDP for my lectionary and Reformation-era reading, in conjunction with my Synod's Book of Common Prayer.
I use the Old Testament reading and the first Psalm for Matins (Morning), followed by the New Testament reading and alternate Psalm for Diurnium (Midday). In the evening, at home, my wife and I select from a cycle of evening psalms and usually read through a book of the Bible in course.
I read the Lutheran writing, usually, in the Morning; pull a selection from "Readings from the Early Church for the Daily Office" at midday, and at evening, my wife and I usually discuss the readings or read a Patristic reflection, either from "Day by Day with the Early Church Fathers" or from an appropriate volume of "The Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture".
Rob+
I can never stop and not read the rest of the readings, so I'm one of those who use all the propers. I split my Psalms readings between morning and evening.
I read them all at Matins as well.
I read the NT lesson in the morning, along with the writing, and the OT at Vespers. I use the Brotherhood Prayer Book for the Daily Office. I usually pray about 3 Psalms consecutively in the morning and afternoon, just picking up where I left off before. It takes me longer to get through the whole Psalter, since I am not always able to pray the Office, but that way I don't skip any. I used to do that with the Scriptures too, until TDP. I use all the propers out of BPB.
I use all the propers at matins. I usually don't make vespers at the of the work day or compline at night. I have tried to use only the OT reading for matins, intending to use the NT and writing for vespers or just after lunch 'snack' but that never happens. I tell folks that I thought I was regular in prayer. Then the TDP came along and showed me how weak my flesh really was.
That the question would even come up illustrates why I am not a TDP user.
It exudes the Vatican II atmosphere of "you could do this, but you can also do that" with the inevitable voices saying "so why not this or that too".
The hours have specific characters, which do not mix and match, tailor to suit.
Or did. Matins doesn't even exist now, even as a morning prayer. It's an anytime Office of Readings now.
Those who pray the communal hours outside of community but under canonical order have always unofficially tacked and filled to get it done and meet the canonical rule. So tack and fill! No biggie. It's a venerable, uh, tradition!
Of course there's the question of why pray communal hours outside community while NOT under canonical order to do so, but we leave that for another time.
Why not -- since we seem debloodydetermined to offer novus ordo style contemporary worship alongside traditional as both traditional yet resist all other forms of contemporary worship -- don't we reconvene our liturgical machers and gonstermachers and come up with an anytime Vatican II For Lutherans Office of Readings? That would solve the whole thing!!
But Terry, your comment totally ignores the history that the offices have had in the Lutheran community for some centuries. For us, Matins STILL has a very distinct character - that of praise and adoration, even though it is composed of the old Matins and Lauds with a bit of Prime thrown in for good measure. Similarly with our Vespers. The Roman history of these offices since the Reformation is interesting, but it is not OUR history. Since the time of the Reformation, Lutherans have used these daily offices for significant Scripture reading (not just the snippets in the Roman Breviary), often using a chapter each in Matins and Vespers and with a fair number of Psalms (usually used sequentially). The Treasury is very much of a piece with that historic Lutheran use of the office, though it also is purposefully designed to allow a simpler use for daily devotions. That's hardly a Vatican IIism!
My point is two-fold.
One -- since we seem quite at ease falling in line with not our but Roman history since the Reformation, read since Vatican II, wrt to lectionaries, calendars, and an approach to liturgy as A or B or C etc but modifying it with our content, then why not wrt to the Office too?
Two -- that, of course, is one of my rare forays into irony; I am making no such suggestion, but making the suggestion rather that to do so would be exactly of a piece with other things we have been doing liturgically, and that doing so results in completely encouraging the whole idea that we can borrow forms designed to express a content that is not ours and supply the content ourselves, it making no difference whether we look to Rome or the East or the Willow Creek or whoever, the approach is the same. It's about the approach.
The Psalms have been the core of communal daily prayer well before Christianity even. Hell, Peter was praying Sext, as we call it now, when he got the vision that it really is OK for guys like you and me to come aboard! TDP just stikes me as like kids playing dress up in mom and dad's closet, not even deciding whether it's the civil or church calendar.
I almost always pray both Matins & Vespers, using the 30-day Psalm sched, NT at Matins, OT at Vespers. Vacillate on the writing (sometimes one, sometimes the other, sometimes not at all).
If I'm running late in the AM, I may omit lesson from Matins and use both at Vespers. I prefer not to do this, as cramming it all into one office seems a bit of overload for me.
If I were to attempt communal prayer without a community, p 32 and p 41, with material from "General Prayers" and readings from p 161 et seq from TLH would do it just fine, with not a thought to what tacking and filling any given day may bring.
I use it to pray Matins (with the Psalm of the day, the Psalms for the morning using the 30 day schedule, the OT Reading and the text I am preaching on for the coming Sunday, the BoC reading of the day for the devotion, and the prayer of the day) Vespers (pretty much the same set-up with the NT reading, the evening psalms, the Writing of the day) and Compline (although not every day). It works great and I absolutely love it.
Re. "Past Elder" ... oh, brother. Give it a rest already. Get over it, guy. We ain't a bunch of Papists with legalistic rubrics and rules.
I'm an 'all in one user' because it's the only way that I can be consistent with a prayer time - it helps me to be a bit more disciplined. I fear if I tried to "do it all the right way" I'd fall out of the habit.
So at a minimum, I read all of the propers over the "noon hour" along with the short noontime ordinary.
(I'm also a layman non church-worker, so this all has to happen 'on my own time', as it were.)
Well geez, PTM -- "We ain't a bunch of Papists with legalistic rubrics and rules", that's exactly my point.
So 40 years ago Rome comes up with a "this, that or the other, A, B, or C" style of contemporary worship, then the other heterodox churches fall in line, we gotta fall in line too?
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