{"id":52982,"date":"2020-08-20T06:00:24","date_gmt":"2020-08-20T11:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/?p=52982"},"modified":"2020-08-28T12:18:41","modified_gmt":"2020-08-28T17:18:41","slug":"how-we-celebrate-the-sixth-hour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praytellblog.com\/index.php\/2020\/08\/20\/how-we-celebrate-the-sixth-hour\/","title":{"rendered":"How We Celebrate the Sixth Hour"},"content":{"rendered":"

In fall 2012 two students asked me for assistance. These both young women used to pray large portions of the Office, following the official German Stundenbuch<\/em>. Sometimes \u2013 at least once a week \u2013 they met in the crypt of the Innsbruck Jesuit Church (which is right beside our School of Catholic Theology) and recited the Sixth Hour together. Both had experience with chanting psalms in the traditional monastic manner, but since the Stundenbuch<\/em> offers no melodies, they improvised the melodies somehow.<\/p>\n

Their questions were: Where could they find established melodies for the psalms, and would it be possible to transfer their experience into a regularly celebrated and publicly announced Sixth Hour? We decided that a weekly celebration on Mondays would be most practicable for us. Services at noon are not very common here, so we hoped that the Sixth Hour as a unique feature of the Jesuit Church among the inner-city churches in Innsbruck could raise some interest.<\/p>\n

Now my part began: Would the Jesuit in charge be willing to include the Sixth Hour in the public worship schedule and keep the church free from other activities for our weekly fixed date? Yes, he would. (It helps when an assistant professor of Liturgical Studies asks.)<\/p>\n

How strictly should and could we follow the official order of the Sixth Hour? I tended to be sceptical: The structure and meaning of the Office is not evident to people who are not familiar with it. But I respected the students’ wish to follow the official order instead of creating some new type of noon prayer. Eventually we agreed to this guideline: As Roman as possible, as simple as necessary. We could not provide enough copies of the Stundenbuch<\/em>, nor could we find a practicable way to follow all rules and options for readings, antiphons, versicles, concluding prayers etc. for all times of the year, all feast days, saints\u2019 days etc., if we really wanted to sing the Office with established melodies from trustworthy sources. We could not sing from the Stundenbuch <\/em>(no melodies at all) nor could we provide specific leaflets for every week and every occasion for the forthcoming months.<\/p>\n

Since all three of us were fans of the Benediktinisches Antiphonale<\/em> which is used in German Benedictine monasteries, we decided to choose antiphons, melodies, and German psalm translations from there, at the same time following the Roman Four-Week-Psalter.<\/p>\n

Under those premises the rest was quite easy:<\/p>\n