Of Time Made Holy Prologue

Following the Vatican II call for renewal, many Benedictine communities were experimenting with new forms of the Liturgy of the Hours. There was a concern among the prioresses to develop principles to guide the experimentation. The Confederation of Benedictine Abbots had just prepared a directory on the Liturgy of the Hours, providing principles and guidelines. (1) American Benedictine women recognized the need for a directory that addressed liturgical reforms from the feminine monastic perspective. Some prioresses were also hoping that a new common breviary could be developed that all communities might use.

The CONFERENCE CALL (Newsletter of the CABP) of June 1976 noted the completion of the previous Upon This Tradition document and introduced plans for a liturgy document:

Now, we are attempting to establish a liturgy committee on the same model to review realistically the prayer life of active Benedictines and to clarify principles of implementation. This committee, like the last one, will be composed of two representatives from each Federation [and congregation] and the presidents of each.

The February 1978 issue of the CONFERENCE CALL announced the presentation of a workshop for the prioresses on liturgy in the monastic community. It also reported on the progress of the new document. The inter-federation/congrega-tion committee had been working for over a year on the preliminary papers. The newsletter reported that the purpose of the document is to guide the development of the liturgical prayer of our communities in line both with tradition, present circumstance, and recent documents of the church.

The liturgical concerns of the prioresses in the late 1970s included more than the Liturgy of the Hours. Women's communities were beginning to experience a shortage of priests available to celebrate Mass in their chapels. Some monasteries were unable to have daily Eucharist, a deprivation particularly painful for those sisters whose spirituality had been formed on the necessity of daily Mass. At the same time, Benedictine historians were acknowledging the fact that Eucharist was not celebrated daily nor considered essential to the early monastics.

As one of the original authors of the document, Sister Joan Chittister commented that the writers addressed the priest-presider problems in communities of women and claimed the Office as another dimension of Eucharist in the breaking of the word. The document shifts emphasis from the canonical controls over the Eucharist to the preaching and spiritual direction of women in their own communities.(2)

In the Rule of Benedict, the Liturgy of the Hours is referred to as the Work of God and is presented as the essential act of daily worship in the monastery. With many sisters no longer having access to daily Eucharist in their monasteries, it was important to clarify this aspect of their monastic spirituality. Sister Cecilia Dwyer, another author, commented on the prophetic nature of this document:

The end result was not a breviary for all communities to use but principles upon which communities could work to develop their own office books. It preserved the autonomy of each community and acknowledged that we did not all have to be praying out of the same book. The office was a very important part of being Benedictine, so this autonomy was a major step in realizing that praying the Liturgy of the Hours was essential, but all using the same book was not. Also the development of the relationship between Eucharist as central and the Liturgy of the Hours as daily was a relatively prophetic insight at the time.(3)

(1) Anne Field, ed.., Directory for the Celebration of the Work of God: Guidelines for the Monastic Liturgy of the Hours Approved for the Benedictine Confederation, (Riverdale, Md.: Exordium Books, 1981). This is an English translation of the Directory which was first promulgated by the Benedictine Confederation in 1977 as a preface to the Thesaurus Liturgiae Horarum Monasticae.

(3) Cecilia Dwyer, OSB (St. Benedict Monastery, Bristow, Virginia), response to editor's questionnaire of June 10, 2000.

Upon This Tradition II: Of Time Made Holy: A Statement on the Liturgy of the Hours in the Lives of American Benedictine Sisters

Prologue

Upon This Tradition II:
Of Time Made Holy:
A Statement on the Liturgy of the Hours
in the Lives of American Benedictine Sisters