BENEDICTINE DAILY PRAYER: A SHORT BREVIARY

Edited by Maxwell E. Johnson and the monks of St. John's Abbey

Liturgical Press, 2005

2,304 pages, $49.95

To order: (800) 858-5450 or litpress.org

Don't be put off by the fact that this “short” breviary clocks in at well over 2,000 pages. It's an outstanding and ready-to-use resource for anyone seeking to fold the prayers of the Divine Office, wholly or in part, into their daily life.

Rather than an official breviary in a new wrapper, Benedictine Daily Prayer is an accessible alternative to the Church's four-volume Liturgy of the Hours and the often confusing, more commonly used 1976 abridged revision, Christian Prayer.

As a Benedictine oblate of St. John's Abbey, I have been using the latter for my daily offices since 1997. Although that book had its faults (pages of music and chant-tones that were useless to the uninitiated, for example, and a layout that demanded a guidebook for course-plotting), a new edition of the breviary seemed to me both unwarranted and suspect. That was until I began to use this one — and quickly fell in love.

Compiled by Maxwell Johnson, himself an oblate, and the monks of St. John's Abbey, Benedictine Daily Prayer brilliantly brings the user into the Divine Office in a way no other single-volume compilation has managed. Within this compact, comfortable-to-hold prayerbook you'll find hymns and prayers, antiphons and canticles, and the monastic offices of lauds, terce, sext, none, vespers and compline, as well as the hour of vigils, the “watch in the night.”

This component, which has been missing from previous adaptations, presents the user with Scriptural readings and instruction from saints, popes and notable Catholic writers. There's also a small treasury of Benedictine prayers.

Until I had a chance to pray vigils, I hadn't known what I was missing; the inclusion of these additional readings has greatly enriched my experience of the Divine Office. The opportunity to pray the office and read not only Augustine and St. John Chrysostom, but also Therese of Lisieux, Thomas Merton and Pope John Paul II has the effect of reminding me that God is truly outside of time. Our fellowship with so great a cloud of witnesses, forged through prayer, connects all Catholics throughout the ages.

The Divine Office is meant to sanctify the hours of the day and the night. With this breviary, the times of prayer have been arranged with such artful simplicity that the pray-er may move from hour to hour with a minimum of effort and a maximum of focus. Sanctifying the day and night has never been this easy or this uplifting.

One small quibble: While the editors have (thankfully) retained the Grail Psalms translations (mildly gender-inclusive, but undistractingly so), its new versions of the Benedictus, Magnificat, Nunc Dimittis and Te Deum have been stripped to a bare utilitarianism. They seem to lack warmth, color and poetry.

Also, potential buyers should know that this breviary has been compiled and edited specifically with Benedictine oblates in mind. That's not to say it's inaccessible to all but Benedictine oblates — far from it. But non-oblates may feel as though they're on the outside of something, looking in. This, of course, could be a good thing for those discerning a possible call to the Benedictine way of life.

One of this breviary's best features is that, thanks to the inclusion of the monastic calendar and a 25-year cycle calendar, it requires no daily guidebook for successful navigation. Its ease of use should make it appealing to those who are attracted to the Hours but discouraged by their seeming complexity.

The Divine Office has been called “the next best thing to Mass.” Benedictine Daily Prayer supports that claim, beautifully.

Elizabeth Thecla Mauro writes from Lake Grove, New York.