Summary
1 How It All Began
2 A Brief History of the Liturgy of the Hours
2.1 Origins
2.2 The Reform of the Liturgy of the Hours
3 From the Liturgy of the Hours to the Divine Office of the Communities
3.1 Some Guiding Principles
3.2 The Sacramentality of the Divine Office of the Communities
3.3. The Sanctification of Time
3.4. The Lucernarium
3.5 The Prayer of the Church
4 A Final Word
References
1 How It All Began
The reform of the Liturgy of the Hours undertaken by the Church fulfilled the important task of recovering the ecclesial sense of prayer, its celebratory character, and the most genuine tradition of associating prayer, through the hours of the day, with the paschal mystery (cf. IGLH, p.33, 38-39). However, it is a consensus that the official version of the Divine Office in the Roman rite maintained predominantly clerical and monastic characteristics (TAFT, 1999, p.303-305; JOIN-LAMBERT, 2009, p.83-90; p.99-100). In Brazil, its translated version was slow to reach the capillarity of the ecclesial fabric, making the reception of the reformed office in the post-conciliar period even more difficult (LIMA, 2011, p.31-34). But the difficulties turned into an opportunity, as a genuine process of reception began from the prayer experience of the faithful.
There are records at the CNBB, dating from 1986, about the formation of a group that would be in charge of elaborating an alternative and popular proposal for the Office, aiming at the participation of the faithful in the Prayer of the Church. But the idea of a popular divine office began much earlier, in the 1970s, on the initiative of Geraldo Leite Bastos, a presbyter of the archdiocese of Olinda and Recife, then parish priest of the Community of Ponte dos Carvalhos, on the outskirts of Recife. Father Geraldo had initiated a daily practice of prayer, under the impulse of the Second Vatican Council. In 1987, in an interview, he speaks of this experience:
For 17 years, we, from the community of Ponte dos Carvalhos, have been singing the Office. I have left written in the Parish Record Book the beginning of when we started to have a prayer different from the mass. I think our experience began for two reasons: first, because the mass had become somewhat formal. It was necessary to find another way to pray that wasn’t just mass. (…) Another reason was the contact with the brothers of Taizé, who had arrived in Olinda. I participated with them several times and noticed that they had a different prayer experience from the Monastery of São Bento. I began to think that the people could pray the Office. In those difficult times for the Church, I would often stay up until dawn praying a poorly prayed Office, reading all that psalmody… This led me to imagine a simplified, popular breviary, so that I, who had so much difficulty praying alone, could find a way to pray this prayer with the people. (LEITE BASTOS, 1988, p.56)
At that time, the Church in Brazil was living the impulse of the reception of the Second Vatican Council, undertaken, above all, by the conference of the Latin American episcopate in Medellín. In this context, the need for a prayer reference that better corresponded to the experience of the Base Ecclesial Communities was felt, as they emerged as a concrete expression of the Church as the people of God. Attentive to the conciliar principles and proposals, the CEBs wanted to deepen the path opened by popular piety that had guarded treasures of tradition such as the Little Office of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the custom of praying at certain hours of the day.
Later, in 1986, Father Marcelo Barros, then prior of the monastery of the Annunciation in Goiás, and advisor to the Base Communities, gathered a group of people to elaborate a Divine Office accessible to the communities. He took as inspiration the experience of Father Geraldo Leite and as an immediate reference the Liturgy of the Hours reformed by the Second Vatican Council, which had already been translated since 1971. Furthermore, the coexistence with the small community of the monastery of the Annunciation was decisive in this process, as a place to experience the celebration of the Office with the participation of the neighbors. In December 1988, the first edition of the Divine Office of the Communities (ODC) was published, which, in 2018, completed 30 years with its third edition, an occasion when it already had 21 reprints.
This is an experience born in Brazil, in the context of the reception of the Second Vatican Council in Latin America, in light of the Latin American Conferences of Medellín and Puebla. Although the ODC has been adopted in assemblies of the Youth Ministry and other ecclesial movements in the context of Latin America, there are no similar initiatives to the ODC in other countries of the Continent.
2 A Brief History of the Liturgy of the Hours
2.1 Origins
The Divine Office is a concretization of the tradition that dates back to the beginnings of the Church. In the Acts of the Apostles, one finds allusions to a practice of prayer at the hours of the day, in continuity with the daily rhythm of Jewish prayer. In the 4th century, this type of liturgy had reached stability: lauds and vespers were celebrated daily, in community (ELBERTI, 2011, p.166). According to Egeria, the pilgrim who reported on the liturgy in Jerusalem in that same century, it was a daily practice, linked to the hours, especially at dusk and dawn, in memory of the crucified-risen one. It included the participation of the people, men and women, and even children. It was an expressive liturgy, not only with psalms and hymns, but with gestures and symbols, in a simple and popular way (cf. EGERIA, 1977, n.24,1-7). This model of office celebrated in the cathedrals, with all its biblical and theological density, simple and accessible to the people, tended to nourish the life of the common Christian.
However, with time, the prayer of the Church underwent a shrinkage to the point of being restricted to a certain portion of the people of God, which occurred for various reasons, such as the fixation of Latin as the liturgical language, the multiplication of the hours in some contexts, the complication and saturation of the rites, which excluded the people from participation and understanding of the words. According to Pietro Sorci, the main cause of the disappearance of the hourly prayer is due to eucharistization (celebration of daily masses and, sometimes, of more than one; occurrence of holy hours of adoration of the Blessed Sacrament) and everything related to it (clericalization, ecclesiology of the elect, sacramentalization), to the detriment of evangelization, including insufficient formation in seminaries. Furthermore, the erasure of this form of prayer was also due to the individual recitation imposed on the clergy, who ceased to gather the people to celebrate the Office communally (SORCI apud PEREIRA SILVA, 2015, p.15).
This reality brought to the Divine Office celebratory consequences, such as the impoverishment of gestures, the transformation of what was an expression of gratuity into a burden, inflicted by the “obligation.” The disconnection with the hour, since the recitation of the prayer was often done at any time of the day, led to a decrease in the paschal character of the Office. In monastic environments, on the contrary, the Office maintained its community style, linked to the hours and the liturgical year, but in Latin and with additions required by the condition of monastic life. In this way, what was simple and popular became complex and overloaded with elements, with psalms, hymns, readings, litanies, daily offices in honor of the Virgin Mary and the deceased, among others.
The people, for the most part, were often left to their own devices, without any opportunity for a true initiation into the faith and celebration of the mystery, and creatively sought in devotions the nourishment of the Christian faith as attested by the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy:
From the seventh century until the mid-fifteenth century, the differentiation between liturgy and popular piety was determined and accentuated, progressively, to the point of creating a celebratory dualism: parallel to the liturgy, officiated in Latin, a community popular piety developed, which was expressed in the vernacular language. (CONGREGATION FOR DIVINE WORSHIP, 2003, n.29)
In relation to the Office, the rosary, with its 150 Hail Marys, replaces the 150 psalms; the Angelus, prayed three times a day, occupies the hours of the Office; the Office of Our Lady gathers the hymns of all the hours of the Office of the Mother of the Lord and is prayed at a single hour, imitating the clergy in the disconnection with the hour.
2.2 The Reform of the Liturgy of the Hours
The purpose of the reform of the Second Vatican Council regarding the Divine Office was to make this practice return to the condition of “public and common prayer of the people of God” (GILH, n.1), recovering its dimension of community action, prayer of Christ to the Father, and prayer of the Church with Christ (and to Christ, according to Saint Augustine), making a memorial of his Passover. In addition, the Council changed the rubricist and clerical language of the Liturgy of the Hours to an ecclesial and paschal, gratuitous, and spiritual language.
We highlight, below, four aspects of the reform.
The Divine Office is liturgy. Like all liturgy, the Divine Office is a ritual, community, and ecclesial action, and not a private action (cf. SC n.26). It is a lit-URGY (lit = people; urgy = action, office, work): an action of the people and an action of God (divine) at the service of the people. It is a liturgical action like any other. In it, the same elements that are part of the other celebrations of the Church (hymns, psalms, biblical readings, silence, prayers, music, symbolic gestures) were organized taking into account its peculiarity: the memorial of the paschal mystery linked to the hours in the daily rhythm, also articulating with the weekly and annual rhythm.
The people as subject. The Second Vatican Council wanted to return to all the people the right to celebrate the Divine Office, although it remained more within the sphere of the clergy and consecrated life. But it recommended that the laity “recite the Divine Office, either together with the priests, or gathered among themselves, and even each one in particular” (SC n.100). The General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours emphasizes that “the praise of the Church is not reserved for clerics and monks, neither by its origin nor by its nature, but belongs to the entire Christian community” (GILH n.270). The Divine Office is a liturgical action if the people become a praying subject, in the exercise of the baptismal priesthood offering the sacrifice of praise (cf. GARCIA, 2015, p.78).
The truth of the hours. The reform of the Second Vatican Council drew attention to the specific purpose of the Divine Office: “to consecrate, through praise to God, the daily and nightly course of time” (SC n.84). It emphasized the truth of the hours (SC n.94), highlighting, as main hours, Lauds, prayed at the break of day, in memory of the resurrection of Jesus, and Vespers, celebrated at sunset, an hour that recalls the Last Supper of Jesus and the cross (Lk 22:53). The Liturgy of the Hours is the Prayer of the Church, united to Christ in his prayer of praise, thanksgiving, and intercession, making a memorial of his Passover.
It was the Savior himself who linked our time to redemption: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled” (Lk 4:21), in other words, today the proclaimed Word transforms time into liberation and grace (cf. GARCIA, 2015, p.77). In the Liturgy of the Hours, the word of God pronounced, proclaimed, heard, lived, and actualized, interprets time as kairós, an event of salvation, a favorable time, a memorial of the new covenant (cf. GARCIA, 2015, p.72). There is, in the act of celebrating, a profound relationship between the hours of Jesus and the hours of the praying community, between his passion and the marks of passion that people bear in their bodies (cf. SC n.12; 2Cor 4:10-11).
Source of piety. The intention of the reform of the Divine Office was to make it a source of piety and nourishment for personal prayer (SC n.90). The Liturgy of the Hours is an expression of covenant and, consequently, a source of paschal transformation. It is glorification and sanctification. That is why it is crucial that we participate with our whole being and follow with our mind [and heart] the words [and gestures], and cooperate with divine grace so as not to receive it in vain (cf. SC n.11 and 90).
Despite these advances, the Liturgy of the Hours has remained quite “monastic” in its form. Some say that of the weak points of the liturgical reform, the most evident is the reform of the Liturgy of the Hours. In the movement back to the sources, the reform failed to restore the simplicity and rituality of the primitive practice of the Cathedral Office, with all its richness of ministries, symbols, and rites, celebrated with the participation of the people, as noted above. The reform took more into account the clergy and consecrated life than the people. Furthermore, due to the historical weight of obligation, in practice, there is difficulty in moving from recitation to celebration. The Brazilian version of the Liturgy of the Hours (LH) is exquisite from the point of view of translation, especially of the psalms, adapted for singing. But it carries within it these limits of the typical edition, such as the fact, for instance, of not having advanced towards inculturation, so desired by the Council itself (cf. SC n.37-40).
3 From the Liturgy of the Hours to the Divine Office of the Communities
3.1 Some Guiding Principles
The Divine Office of the Communities (ODC), taking the renewed Liturgy of the Hours as an immediate reference for its elaboration, sought to offer the people a popular version of the Church’s prayer tradition.
On the one hand, it was faithful to the Liturgy of the Hours (LH), because it obeyed the same structure, the same theology, and the same ritual sequence. As in the LH, the entire ritual elaboration of the ODC is intended to express the mystery of the crucified-risen one in the hours of the day, following the daily, weekly, and annual rhythm, with hymns, psalms, biblical canticles, prayers, and orations.
On the other hand, taking as a starting point the ecclesial experience of Brazil, the ODC was able to set aside what weighs down the structure of the Liturgy of the Hours and dared to be creative in that it incorporated new elements: the new way of celebrating of the Base Ecclesial Communities and the longing for prayer of popular Catholicism.
It is not a matter of proposing to the communities the office as it is in the Roman Rite, even if simplified or abbreviated. It is a new Brazilian style in the broader field of the Roman liturgical family. It would not be enough either to repeat or publish the customary prayers and songs of popular religion, or even of the prayer meetings of the journeying groups. The Divine Office of the Communities wants to be a real and intelligent synthesis, faithful to the great liturgical tradition and to the sensitivity and culture of our people (BARROS, 1988, p.30).
From the Latin American ecclesial tradition, the ODC inherited the Remembrance of Life, which is a more sensitive expression of the relationship between liturgy and life. According to Libanio, the liturgies that emerged in the Church scene of Medellín respond to the challenge of linking liturgy with liberating praxis “without breaking the backbone of gratuity, freedom, and contemplative beauty” (LIBANIO, 2001, p.107-108). The Office begins without any commentary, with an invocation of God and an invitation to praise. Only then does the presider invite the participants to bring experiences that have marked their lives.
Life, the events of each day, people, their anxieties and hopes, their sorrows and joys, the achievements and setbacks of the journey, the striking memories of history, of the community, of the Churches and of the peoples, the very phenomena of nature are signs of God for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. This is where our listening to the Word of God begins. To remember life, to bring it back to the heart, to share memories and concerns, is to help make prayer true (ODC, 2018, p.11).
But life is latent throughout the office: in the language of the prayers and petitions, in the psalms, in the hymns of the journey, in the memory of the martyrs who defended life on our continent. It is also worth remembering the care for the ecumenical dimension in the ODC, expressed in elements such as the ecumenical Our Father, the hymns of the sister Churches, the inclusion of images of God (of tenderness, kindness, compassion).
The great merit of the Office of the Communities is that it managed to make viable, in practice, what the Liturgy of the Hours proposes: that the office, like any other liturgical action, is not a private action, but a community action, a celebration.
In Brazilian popular cultures, the way to give each office a more celebratory character is to integrate the whole body and the universe that surrounds us into the prayer. In the Bible the psalms contain many bodily attitudes of prayer, such as turning to the mountain, raising one’s gaze and hands, bowing, kneeling, walking in procession (BARROS, 1994, p. 30).
Even without it being determined in writing, the practice created a style of celebrating that values the space, the singing, the ministries, the gestures (lighting candles, gathering around the ambo to listen to the gospel, offering incense…). All to lead to silence and to favor external and internal, conscious, and fruitful participation. In this sense, the great pearl in the ODC is the lucernarium in the vigil of Sundays and solemnities. This rite, which in the communities of the origins belonged to the daily Office of Vespers, was placed at the opening of the Vigil Office, emphasizing Sunday as a weekly Passover, in analogy with the rite of light in the Easter Vigil.
Regarding the interaction with popular Catholicism, the ODC is a successful example of the “mutual fecundation” between liturgy and popular piety, so desired by the liturgical reform (cf. SC n.13) and so often evoked by the documents of CELAM and the CNBB (CNBB, 1984, p.30). The work did not so much consist in adding external elements of popular Catholicism, but in making the Office correspond to the “piety”’ of the people, to their “longing for prayer and for Christian life,” to the “thirst for God, which only the poor and the simple can experience” (cf. Evangelii Nuntiandi, n.48). What stands out, in this harmony with popular piety, is the prayerful style, the form of repetition in the songs, especially in the openings, the simple and affectionate language, the absence of commentaries, which facilitates participation and establishes a loving relationship, a covenant between God and his people.
3.2 The Sacramentality of the Divine Office of the Communities
The Second Vatican Council presents the entire liturgy – not only the seven sacraments – as a sacramental event, in which Jesus Christ makes himself present, in the exercise of his priesthood, to glorify the Father and sanctify humanity.
In article 7 of the liturgical Constitution, among the sensible signs that signify and that realize what they signify, is the assembly that prays and psalmodizes, because in it Christ makes himself present and acts with the power of his Spirit. We can say that the gathered assembly, the time, the music, the psalms and canticles, the prayer, the gestures, and the words are sensible signs that touch the corporality of the participants, evoke the invisible mystery of Jesus Christ, and through the action of the Spirit, realize the paschal transformation.
3.3 The Sanctification of Time
Let us take the category of time, so important for understanding the hourly liturgy of the Divine Office. In the Scriptures, the terms chronos, kairós, and aiôn respectively relate to the course of human life, the time of God’s action in the history of humanity, and human time as an intercession between the historical given and its eschatological meaning. In all acceptations, time is a notion strongly identified with the human being (AUGÉ, 2019, p.36-38). In such a way that the notion of the sanctification of time says nothing other than the sanctification of the human being himself through his memorial insertion into the very temporal experience of the incarnate Word, the history of salvation. Time is sanctified by the Liturgy of the Hours because, along with the Liturgical Year, it contributes to giving new meaning to the time of human life (PINELL, 2005, p.216).
Time as a sensible sign becomes more evident at dawn and at dusk because of the incidence of light. These moments were established as a memory and renewal of the covenant. Without the word, light does not signify; without light, the word is not made visible (cf. GARCIA, 2015, p.150). The word narrates the paschal mystery of Christ and the Church, in the light that illuminates the darkness of the night, or in the sun that brightens the dawn. The invisible but audible word in the psalms, readings, hymns, and prayers interprets the sensible sign, making the Word visible (cf. GARCIA, 2015, p.72). Therefore, care for the truth of the hour is a condition for the Word to be able to interpret the light.
3.4 The Lucernarium
The rite of the lucernarium, in the vigil of Sunday and major feasts, is composed of the opening and the lucernarium hymn. The vigil office begins in the dark, in silence. A meditative refrain is intoned in a low voice, to awaken in the heart the longing for the living God. As usual, without any commentary, the presider stands up and begins the verses of the Opening, which the assembly repeats:
– Come, O nations, to sing to the Lord! (bis)
To the God of the universe, come and celebrate! (bis)
– His love for us, firm forever! (bis)
His faithfulness endures eternally. (bis)
Candles are lit
– For you, Lord, every night is day. (bis)
The densest darkness soon becomes light. (bis)
– You are the light of the world, you are the light of life! (bis)]
Jesus Christ shines forth: you are our joy! (bis)
Incense or fragrant herbs are offered
– May our incense rise to you, O Lord! (bis)
This paschal praise, an offering of love. (bis)
– Our praying hands rising to the heavens! (bis)
May they arrive as an offering to the sound of this hymn! (bis)
– Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit. (bis)
Glory to the Holy Trinity, glory to the blessed God. (bis)
– Alleluia, sisters, alleluia, brothers! (bis)
People of priests, praise to God. (bis)
The first words of the opening are a convocation to praise, with verses from Psalm 117. In these words, we hear Christ himself calling the community to participate in his prayer to the Father, as he so often did in his earthly life (cf. Mk 6:30-31). We make the sign of the cross on our body in the first verse, recalling our baptism, by which Christ associates us with his paschal mystery and his prayer. The opening song continues, with words that join the gesture of lighting the paschal candle and the candles to narrate the victory of light over darkness, which correspond to the afflictions of the people. The function of the prayer of the hours is to cry out, to place under God’s gaze what is happening in the world. God hears the cry, looks at the hearts of those who suffer, and comes down to save (cf. Ex 3:7-8).
A container with burning coals is placed on the altar. Still in darkness, but now illuminated with the flames lit in the hands of the assembly, the offering of incense is made, a sign of the spiritual sacrifice of the priestly people, accompanied by the sung verses.
After the opening, the presider invites the participants to bring forth the memories that identify the lights of the journey or the nights that persist…
Next, the hymn “Radiant Light” is intoned. This hymn, older than the Gloria, dates back to the 2nd century and is cited by Saint Basil (BASIL, 2003, p.403). In the ODC (p.265), the version is by Reginaldo Veloso, in responsorial form, to ensure the participation of the assembly through a refrain that is repeated at each stanza.
Radiant light, light of joy,
light of glory, Christ Jesus
–You are of the immortal and happy Father
the brightness that shines in everything!
– When the sun is setting
we see the light of the night!
– We sing the Father and the Son
and the Divine One who leads us!
– You deserve the purest song,
O Lord of life, you are the light!
– Your glory, O Son of God,
the whole universe seduces!
– Let heaven sing, let earth and seas sing,
the victory, the glory of the cross!
The words of the hymn continue to narrate the mystery manifested in the lights that break through the dark. They make the assembly recognize, in this image of the illuminated night, the presence of the Risen Christ, to whom the hymn is addressed. Before the dying day, the believing community contemplates the light that does not die. The text identifies in the “brightness of the Father that shines in everything,” the only-begotten son who proceeds from the Father, who is the source of life. The purest song is devoted to Christ, the Lord of life, who seduces the universe with his glory, for which the heavens, the earth, and the seas intone their song.
Efficacy presupposes the awareness of the assembly of being inserted in an event of salvation, in which Christ, through the action of the Spirit, realizes in it the mystery of his Passover. By transforming time into kairos, the passage from death to life is realized in the Church. After all, the ultimate end of the liturgy is sanctification (SC n.10 and 33). Thus, little by little, each person is led to overcome all that is old to reach the stature of the “new creature” in Christ.
3.5 The Prayer of the Church
To gather to pray is a primordial action and a vital requirement of the Christian community. When the Church Fathers emphasize the importance of the Christian assembly, they do not only think of the Eucharist, but also of other common moments of prayer and praise.
Article 83 of Sacrosanctum Concilium makes a statement that reclaims the LH as a structuring part of the entire liturgy of the Church:
Jesus Christ unites all of humanity to himself and associates it with his song of praise. And he continues to exercise this priesthood, in the Church, which praises the Lord without ceasing and intercedes for the salvation of the world, not only with the celebration of the Eucharist, but in various other ways, especially through the Divine Office.
Article 84 says that in this prayer “Christ addresses the Father, through his body.” That is, this prayer belongs to the whole body of Christ. The prayer of the community and of each person who prays is a sacrament of the prayer of Christ. He is the mediator of the new covenant; through him, humanity has access to the Father. The Father always listens to the voice of the Son (Jn 11:42). “It is necessary, therefore, that when we celebrate the Divine Office, we recognize the echo of our voices in the voice of Christ, and his in ours” (PAUL VI, 1971, n.20).
One of the merits of the ODC is precisely that of providing a way for the people of the communities to have access to the prayer that belongs to them and to be able to participate actively, consciously, and fruitfully. Not only that, but it has triggered a process of learning to pray with the Church, of discovering the psalms as a school of prayer, of recognizing in them the voice of Christ, and of making prayer an experience of gratuity and loving covenant. It is something that does not happen automatically. It is necessary to learn.
Saint Benedict offers a “golden rule,” which Sacrosanctum Concilium adopted and applied to the whole Church: “Let the mind be in harmony with the voice” (SC n.90; RB n.19). The mind “is not only equivalent to reason, but to the inner person with their knowledge, their will, and their feeling. It is almost identical to the heart, especially the dominant part of the soul (cf. GRÜN, 2019, p.30-31). The voice refers to the manifestation of the Spirit; it is the voice of God that we must hear. The heart must be in tune with the voice (cf. GRÜN, 2019, p.30-31).
Let us think of the psalm.
The general criterion for choosing a psalm in the office is the hour. The person does not choose the psalm, it is offered. Let us take psalm 30(29) in the evening office (ODC, p.52).
The evening falls, the night comes
sadness, weeping, pain,
in the morning the sun is reborn,
new day, joy.
1. Lord, I will tell of great things of you,
Because you delivered me and did not allow
The wicked to laugh, making little of me
2. Lord, I cried to you and you healed me;
My life, from the place where the dead reside,
Only you took me and set me free!
3. Sing, all you saints, give glory to the Lord!
His anger is a moment and soon it was over;
Goodness, all life long, his love endures!
4. Secure, I said: I will never tremble!
Favor, you have covered me with honor and power.
You hid your face and I was terrified…
5. Mercy to my God I am imploring…
Is there any advantage, by chance, in death?…
Will the dust of my bones praise you?!…
6. Lord, have mercy, come and help me!
You have turned my pain and my weeping into pleasure;
Your name forever I will bless!
The psalm is there, with lyrics in a popular version in perfect symbiosis with the melody. Everything in it points to the end of a day of work and struggle. It speaks of the sadness of the approaching night, but promises the light of a new day: The evening falls, the night comes, sadness, weeping, pain, in the morning the sun is reborn, new day, joy. By singing the stanzas, the person finds the expression of their gratitude for the day that has passed, for the struggles overcome, for the firmness despite the difficulties. The gratitude that is already in their heart, sometimes suffocated by fatigue, is awakened by the words of the psalm. The person identifies with the psalm as if they themselves had generated it (cf. CASSIAN, 2003, p.984).
By finding in the psalm the expression of one’s own thanksgiving, one unites with the thanksgiving of the Son, who made his whole life an offering of praise. How can one not hear the voice of Christ when singing: My life, from the place where the dead reside, Only you took me and set me free (stanza 2). There the voice of the one praying and the voice of Christ become a single voice. Therefore, “it is not I who do something with the word, but it is the word that does something with me” (GRÜN, 2019, p.32), the word that is Christ, changes the voice of the one psalmodizing into his own voice, the Spirit that renews all things transforms him into what he is praying.
4 A Final Word
In the current Church scene, in general, the Mass, proper to Sunday, which by tradition is the apex of all liturgical actions, seems to have become the only celebration of the Church: repeated every day, everywhere, and often in any way, when not instrumentalized for dubious purposes. Alongside the Mass, there is the rosary, devotion to the saints, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, not to mention the avalanche of practices of a conservative Catholicism that has nothing to do with popular piety. The celebration of the Word itself is not configured as an organic part of the Church’s liturgy, occupying at most a place of substitution (for lack of a priest). The Divine Office hardly even appears in the pastoral planning of Churches and parishes. And yet it could be an alternative for the celebration of the Christian community, the most immediate after the Mass. The Office of the Communities offers itself as a source on the way, rooted in the tradition of the fathers and mothers of the Church, with a very Brazilian way, and faithful to Latin American ecclesiology. It does not impose itself as an obligation, or as an exclusive form, but offers itself in gratuity for the communities that live the faith amidst the struggles of each day and long to nourish their spiritual life.
Penha Carpanedo, PDDM. Original Portuguese text. Posted in February 2020.
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