The monks of Saint John’s Abbey have just completed a two-week trial run of a revised Liturgy of the Hours. As reforms go, it’s pretty far-reaching: slightly longer morning office with sung invitatory antiphon, all the psalms sung at Vespers, Compline added to the horarium, among other things. Monks positively inhabit the Office, so this experiment felt something like a family moving into a new house in another town.
I’m on sabbatical, and my project is to lay out the entire revised office in 7 binders and also blog about it. Today I’m starting a series of posts, “O Lord, Open My Lips.” In this first post I give some of my thoughts about reforming the liturgical work of previous generations. At St. John’s the reformed Liturgy of the Hours came out in 1971, and this was reformed in 1989. So 2025 is a reform of the reform of the reform.
My way into our topic is the opening verse of the first office of the day, “Lord, open my lips.” This part of the liturgy has undergone a fascinating history in our community:
- It was omitted entirely in the earliest post-conciliar reforms. At the bell, simply stand up and sing the opening hymn. Who needs unnecessary accretions?
- That didn’t last long. Soon, the monks began reciting each day the venerable opening verse, “Lord, open my lips. And my mouth will proclaim your praise. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit…” Unlike the rest of the church, which adds “Alleluia” to this verse every day except in Lent, the abbey decided not to add “Alleluia” except in Easter season.
- Then the monks began singing this verse on Sundays and feasts, while still reciting it most days.
- In 2021 we had a first shot at a two-week trial run of a revised Office. For this, we began chanting the opening verse every day – simple tone for ferial days, solemn tone for Sundays. And not only that: a certain Anthony Ruff got everyone to sing it three times, as the Rule of Benedict has it.
- That three-fold pattern did not go over well. Many liked it, but many more by far did not. It felt like one of the useless repetitions Vatican II spoke of.
- For this current trial run we’re chanting it every day, with an improved ferial tone plus a solemn tone for Sundays, but only once, not three times. And we’re changing the wording so as to align with what the U.S. bishops will have in the forthcoming new translation – “O Lord, open…”, plus the old wording Catholics know from the rosary: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.”
- Now, as for the 2021 trial run, we’re doing it with an “Alleluia” year-round like everyone else does.
How should we think about all this? What is the proper attitude to have when you’re changing, even undoing, the work of earlier generations?
This isn’t just about liturgy, certainly not just about the externals of the liturgy such as texts and liturgical structures and musical forms. (Any undue focus on the externals of liturgy always runs the risk of idolatry – that ancient and pervasive vice to which all of us, including me, are much more prone than we typically realize.)
Any liturgical reform is, above all, a spiritual process. It is about being the Body of Christ, in communion with one’s brother monks both living and dead. It is about relationships. It is about hearing and respecting all voices. It is about all the spiritual virtues such as humility and compassion and openness to the promptings of the Spirit.
I’m toying with the wording I would use for Ruff’s First Law of Liturgical Reform, which would run something like this: “You can’t change the work of earlier generations until you have a respectful understanding of their mindset.” An attitude such as this is more likely to bear fruit for God’s kingdom.
In any Reform of the Reform, it is tempting to judge our forebears, to think that we are better than they. Such comparisons are invidious.
One must strive to say at every turn, without being patronizing, “They did what they thought was right,” and “I would probably have done the same if I were there,” and “I don’t fully appreciate the historical context that led them there,” and “What they did was right for the time,” and “We couldn’t have gotten where we are without them opening up paths for us.”
And this: “Maybe they got it right and we shouldn’t have tried to ‘improve’ it.”
We must also strive to say, “Our reform is not perfect,” and “Our work is not eternal,” and “Future generations will surely change what we did.”
It would be tempting to mock, for example, the short-lived initial stage in the 1960s of entirely omitting the opening verse of the office. What were they thinking?? Did they have no respect for tradition or the Rule of Benedict? See the preceding three paragraphs.
It would be tempting to see the gradual increase in solemnity in the opening verse at Saint John’s, laid out in the bullet points above, only as positive growth or even some sort of recovery from error. See those three preceding paragraphs again.
Some will say, “But the reformers in the 1960s didn’t respect their forebears!” Such whataboutism is not the right way to think about this. Let’s focus on what we ourselves need to do.
It is helpful to realize that the liturgical reform called for by Vatican II was a once-only, never-again-to-be-repeated thing that had to happen because of accumulated problems unaddressed for centuries. It is the Great Exception to any otherwise applicable laws of “organic development” or “reform in continuity” or whatever. I don’t see any other way to make sense of Sacrosanctum Concilium.
And to our topic, it is best to look appreciatively at the work of my confreres who took up such a monumental task right after the Council – especially when one sets out to revise their work, as seems appropriate for one’s own time.
And now that the trial is completed, we are collecting input forms from the community. It remains to be seen what will happen next. Say a pray for the monks of Saint John’s Abbey.
Coming in this series: “Why it’s not called a breviary anymore.” “In praise of the reformed Roman Office.” “Many and varied thoughts on non-gendered God language.” And much more!
awr
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