The Divine Worship: Daily Office Is Coming & Here's What We Know So Far

Since Divine Worship: The Missal was published, Ordinariate members have eagerly anticipated the arrival of what we now know to be Divine Worship: Daily Office, an office book that formalizes the role of Mattins and Evensong in the Ordinariate. According to the ACS’s sources, Divine Worship: Daily Office (North America Edition - Newman House Press) is expected to be available for the Ordinariate in North America by Advent 2020, and Divine Worship: Daily Office (Commonwealth Edition - Catholic Truth Society) could be ready for the Ordinariates in the UK, Australia and Pacific Rim countries by early 2021. 

Various steps have been taken since the 2003 Book of Divine Worship, which included an initial order for Mattins & Evensong (in Rite I & II), Noonday Prayer, and Compline, with a "traditional" and "contemporary" psalter. The 2012 Customary of Our Lady of Walsingham, made for the UK Ordinariate, provided a further provisional step forward, adding Sext, Terce, and None, a different version of various services, a substantially more complicated Office lectionary, and an impressive cycle of non-scriptural lessons drawn from Catholic and Protestant sources. In Advent 2016, the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter (POCSP) began publishing its Ordo online for the faithful, eventually making the Advent 2018 Ordo the first available for purchase. This included an order of lessons and alternate psalms for Mattins and Evensong, which have slowly been corrected and modified over the past 4 years. As a stop-gap, John Covert’s Walsingham Publishing made available a simplified 1928 prayer book that could be used with this Ordo, published on Jan. 27 2016. Around the same time, he also began prayer.covert.org, which provided this Office online. He also started a regular conference call to pray the two major hours in common. Finally, around December 2018, the Australia-based Ordinariate of Our Lady of the Southern Cross published through lulu.com both their Ordo and draft Office, giving an insight (to whoever snatched up a copy!) of the work going on behind the scenes.  

As many are aware, the official POCSP Office has existed throughout this process, being periodically updated and modified. Over the last 5 years, it has become more common for priests in the Ordinariate to fulfill their obligation through this Office, rather than through the Liturgy of the Hours of St. Paul VI. Priests have periodically used it to celebrate Evensong, which in some places has become a weekly event. POCSP Bishop Steven Lopes last year expressed the desire that the Office eventually play a role in the spirituality of the many Ordinariate schools, academies, and co-ops. Of course, the public recitation of the Office has naturally gravitated around the Cathedral, where it was permitted that portions of the Office be available for public use since at least Sept. 2017, and the Cathedral clergy have, day in and day out, provided both major hours of the Office every weekday. 

In mid-September, the UK Ordinariate announced through their first Bulletin on Divine Worship that the official Divine Worship: Daily Office (Commonwealth Edition) would be published by Advent 2021 by the Catholic Truth Society. CTS has previously published most other official Ordinariate texts since the Customary. This announcement came with some big surprises. The Pacific and UK Ordinariates would have the same “Commonwealth” Office, though Canada would not. As with the Customary, it would include Office Hymns. It would also take a step beyond the Customary, adding Prime to the minor hours: “It is particularly hoped that Prime and Compline will form an important part of the spiritual lives of our laity”. While Prime was suppressed by the Second Vatican Council, the CDF had previously opened the possibility of its revival within the Ordinariate, given the role it had played in Anglo-Catholic spirituality. This principle is taken from Anglicanorum Coetibus, drawing from Lumen Gentium 8: “elements of sanctification and of truth…found outside of its visible structure…are forces impelling toward Catholic unity”. This is all the more true of things from within the Catholic tradition, which, adopted by other communions, have helped lead towards unity. 

Unlike its predecessors, Divine Worship: Daily Office (Commonwealth Edition) will also include the complete text of the lectionary. It will still, however, allow for the use of a separate Bible, according to the custom for much of the Prayer Book’s history. It will reproduce a lightly modified version of the “1961 Table of Lessons” which, while highly regarded by many (including the UK Ordinariate’s own Fr. Hunwicke), has lapsed as an official lectionary within the Anglican Communion. It has appeared in the POCSP Ordo since that was first made public in 2016, and will very likely appear in the final POCSP office book, Divine Worship: Daily Office (North America Edition).  

The use of this lectionary in both versions of Divine Worship: Daily Office is a significant decision. In 1549, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, troubled by Sarum’s elimination of the apparent historic practice of reading straight through books of the Bible, created a table of lessons that, like his monthly psalter, prioritized the amount of scripture presented over its historic Catholic order. This system read through the New Testament three times and most of the Old Testament and Deutero-canon once a year, with a lesson for every morning and evening, Jan. 1 to Dec. 31, Genesis through Baruch to Isaiah. Only Isaiah kept its historic place in December. This lectionary was an incredible achievement, leaving out only some genealogies, Song of Songs, and much of Leviticus, Ezekiel, and Revelation—this was, of course, done purposefully. He severely limited proper lessons to major feasts, and even fewer feasts had a full collection of 4 proper offices and psalms. This was, however, supplemented in 1559, after his execution, with proper Sunday Old Testament lessons. This system ensured that most, but not all, of the “civil calendar” lectionary was read each year. This engrained Scripture deeply within English society, and made its way into the American Book of Common Prayer as well.  

This system remained basically untouched until 1871, when reformers uncomfortable with the Deutero-canon’s place of prominence cut back substantially the length of lessons and the books covered. Though there was much good lost through this, Cranmer’s lectionary had some problematic features. In his loyalty to presenting all of Scripture, for instance, his lectionary included even the most difficult passages: the Rape of Dinah, the Levite’s concubine in Judges. It must have been a shock when, on a Friday evening early in January 1549, the story of Lot and his Daughters was read from pulpits around England! Of course, the opposition to the Deutero-canon was unconscionable from a Catholic perspective, and the hasty 1871 lectionary reform, which fully replaced Cranmer’s lectionary, had many defects that were noticed after its release. 

In 1922, when the Anglo-Catholic movement was at its peak, and there was much talk of the hoped-for 1928 Prayer Book revision, an alternative to the 1871 table was released. It reintroduced much of the Deutero-canon, though it left out 2 Maccabees and Tobit, particular sources of controversy. It also order the lessons, for the first time, on the Church Year. The Lectionary would be read in full each year, on the immemorial Catholic Cycle: Lamentations in Holy Week, Genesis in Septuagesima, 1 Samuel after Easter, Job in the Fall. The lessons were lengthened, though not to their extent in the 1549, and difficult passages remained absent.  

This was renewed in a 1961 lectionary, which was granted provisional approval. It modified some lessons, and tends to be considered a further move in a Catholic direction (for one thing, it includes all of Revelation, as well as a brief presentation of 2 Maccabees and Tobit). In total, this lectionary presents 99.46% of the New Testament, and 52.44% of the Old Testament, excluding the Psalms (far outpacing even the Missal and Office of St. Paul VI). A fuller examination on these numbers is forthcoming.  

This wide presentation of Scripture, renewed on the Catholic cycle of Old Testament books, will continue to be used in the Ordinariates. It takes some of the best instincts of the Reformers, especially the wide presentation of Scripture to the congregation, and adjusts it in fidelity to the Roman tradition—first, by the instincts of the Anglo-Catholics, and now under the authority of Rome.  

Picture: Fr. Lee Kenyon prays Choral Mattins at the Anglicanorum Coetibus Society's 2019 Toronto Conference.