The new edition of the Augustinian Liturgy of the hours has just appeared, presented by the Priors General of the three Orders: the Augustinians, the Augustinian Recollects and the Discalced Augustinians. The signatures on the document are dated 2nd February 2010.
Leaving the question of lay-out to the experts, the first impression is a good one, and the font size is adequate. The volume has 428 pages.
However what is interesting to highlight is how much richer the Augustinian Proper has become. This is due to an overhaul of the texts used up until now, together with the approved calendar of May 2002 as well as the choice of texts for the saints and blessed which have been introduced at a later date.
I believe that a big step has been in offering the possibility of choosing between two patristic readings offered for every celebration. It would be a good idea perhaps to read one every other year so that in a two year cycle all the readings would have been covered. At the back of the book, besides the biblical index there is also one for the patristic and ecclesiastical readings. Altogether there are 50 readings from St. Augustine (two are repeated) and the majority of the rest, from Augustinian authors, make up a total of 88 readings. Nor does it exclude some non-Augustinian sources that talk of our martyrs. To these we can add the abundant Augustinian quotations that are not always specified but appear in the responses. So we find ourselves in front of a true Augustinian “corpus” of great spiritual usefulness that ought to lead us to desire to deepen our knowledge of the works we only read fragments of.
Details
Even so we have found some mistakes or errors, that perhaps only the experts would notice. To be exact, right at the beginning of the presentation by the Priors General there is a huge mistake on page 4, paragraph 2 where there is a quote taken from the Sacred Congregation for Worship and the Instruction Calendaria particularia, published on 24th June 1974 when that was the name of the Congregation. From 1988 it is called the Congregation for the for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and the document that should be quoted is Varietates legitimae which is about the Roman Liturgy and inculturation, the Vl instruction about the proper application of the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy from the II Vatican Council (1994); the text is correct but not the name of the Congregation or the Instructio.
We should also note that a text refers to the 19th March when the faculty was granted to celebrate the Patron feast of St. Joseph, but not on the third Sunday of Easter (this way of counting wasn’t in use then, for the Sundays following Easter were first known as Sundays after Easter, etc); so it ought to say that it was permitted to celebrate the feast on the 3rd Sunday after Easter. Other small errors are merely typographical and of less importance and the attentive reader can rectify them.
The fact that texts from the common are not included could be seen as a difficulty but, again, the pages from the previous Augustinian office can be taken. Being very thin these pages can easily be introduced into the new one.
Regarding the Common of the memorials it can be useful to use no. 235 of the General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours: to take from the memorial what is proper to it (always the final prayer) and the rest from the current weekday: it’s more convenient and varied that repeating the Common all the time.
The latest Blessed introduced into the calendar are Thomas of St. Augustine who joins the martyrs of Japan on the 28th September, and Blessed Avelino Rodriguez Alonso, priest and companions, martyrs, on 6th November. On the same day the Calendar of Spain celebrates the memorial of the Spanish Martyrs of the XX century. Our Blessed belong to the same group. It’s an obligatory memorial for the Augustinian Order (OSA), yet optional for the other Orders. It coincides with the commemoration of the dead members of the Order: when we celebrate Blessed Avelino and companions we can always remember our dead on another free day.
I believe this brief note can give us an idea of the importance of the publication of our Liturgy of the Hours in which “Our Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, is the one who prays for us, prays in us, and is prayed to by us. Let us, then, recognise in Him our own voices and his voice in us” (St. Augustine : Commentary on the psalms 85, 1: CCL 39, 1176).