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With, it seems, increasing frequency I come across lay people who are daily praying The Liturgy of the Hours. That is required for priests and members of religious communities. The daily office, as it is called, varies according to the traditions of some religious orders and in most communities is prayed in common or, as it is said, in choir. It is an encouraging thing that lay people, and especially younger lay people, are taking up this spiritual discipline. And even more encouraging when they are able to pray the office with others, as in the family. I count it among the great blessings of my life that, in our little community on 19th Street, we pray at least Evening Prayer together every day.
Survey research regularly turns up the finding that Catholic clergy pray much more than Protestant clergy, and sometimes folks wonder why that should be the case. The answer is not hard to find: The daily office is required. When traveling around the country, I often ask priests and bishops how many priests do they think, based on their experience, pray the office daily. The usual answer is about two-thirds. Of course that is a completely unscientific estimate, but one does feel sorry for the estimated one third who don’t. Because they are failing in their obligation, of course, but, most important, they are denying themselves and the Church a disciplined life of prayer.
At the core of the office are the psalms. An older priest told me he had stopped saying the office many years ago because he couldn’t stomach the imprecatory psalms, sometimes called the violent psalms or psalms of animosity. That is obviously among the failures of his theological formation. The saints had no hesitation in asking the Lord to smite the evildoers hip and thigh–always in the hope of their repentance, of course, unless they have by their own free will precluded that possibility.
More commonly, one hears that the praying of the office has become routine, as in rote. This is usually from people who are affectively greedy, rummaging through what Yeats called the rag and bone shop of the heart to see how their praying is affecting their own sensibilities. Prayer is liturgy, meaning the work of the people of God. One does one’s duty when it is not pleasurable, in the hope that it will happen, as it does at times happen, that one’s duty becomes one’s delight.
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