The Divine Offices

This week Karen is in the Dominican Republic directing a film shoot for Medical Ambassadors International. She would appreciate your prayers as you read these blogs. Filming in another country, on a low budget and without knowing the language can be tricky indeed. Shoot crews are well aware of their need for God’s help. Thank you.

The Divine Offices: A Manual for Prayer by Phyllis Tickle includes four of the seven Daily Offices: Morning Prayer, Noontime Prayer, Evening Prayer and Compline.

I love reading the Morning Office early with my husband—but even so, there is rarely a week where we hit a perfect score—Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. So during this Lent, I had a bright idea: I could read the four daily offices by myself without my husband (what a thought!). It has been a rich journey so far. Today’s reading was for the “Wednesday Nearest to February 17” (I am writing these blogs mid-week, in order for them to be edited and sent to our dear friend Dean Wilson, who sets them up and posts them)—quite a system to devise a reading plan that takes people through the year, no matter what year.

The flap copy on the book says, “The Divine Hours is the first major literary and liturgical reworking of the sixth-century Benedictine Rule of fixed-hour prayer. This beautifully conceived and thoroughly modern three-volume guide will appeal to the theological novice as well as to the ecclesiastical sophisticate. … The third and final book in the set, Prayers for Springtime, provides prayers, psalms, and readings for this season associated with rebirth.”

The Midday Office for the Wednesday nearest to February 17 is Psalm 113:

“Hallelujah! Give praise, you servants of the Lord; praise the Name of the Lord.
Let the Name of the Lord be blessed, from this time forth for evermore.
From the rising of the sun to its going down let the Name of the Lord be praised.
The Lord is high above all nations, and his glory above the heavens.
Who is like the Lord our God, who sets enthroned on high but stoops to behold
          the heavens and the earth?
He takes up the weak out of the dust and lifts up the poor from the ashes.
He sets them with the princes, with the princes of his people.
He makes the woman of a childless house to be a joyful mother of children.”

This is becoming a rich Lenten feed. You are also welcome at the table.

I spy God!