Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary

Benedictine Daily Prayer is designed for Benedictine Oblates, Benedictine monastics, and men and women everywhere. It’s small enough to fit in a briefcase for travel. Scripture readings are from the NRSV.

Benedictine Daily Prayer includes "Introduction," "An Aid to Praying Benedictine Daily Prayer," "Monastic Calendar," "Sunday and Weekday Readings," "The Ordinary of the Liturgy of the Hours," "The Weekly Psalter," "Supplemental Psalms and Canticles for Vigils and Lauds," "Festival Psalter," "Common for Feasts of the Blessed Virgin Mary," "Common for Feasts of Apostles," "Common for Feasts of Martyrs," "Common for Feasts of Holy Men and Women," "Office for the Dead," "Proper of the Season (Advent, Christmas, Lent, Triduum, Easter, Pentecost)," "Proper of the Saints," and "Appendix: A Selection of Benedictine Prayers."

---

All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Monastic tradition of prayer, 2008-07-15
Benedictine Daily Prayer .......As I start writing this review I have to acknowledge the reviewer above, the one from Kansas, whose perceptive and insightful comments got him a whole big bunch of positive helpful votes which he richly deserves. I would like to do more or less the same kind of comparison review zeroing in on some other features of the book in question that he may have overlooked or that did not seem important to him. Surely I will also overlook a few also. Let me start out by going over, briefly, the history of my relationship with formal, official prayer over a few decades.

Since I am a layperson I have no "canonical" obligation to use any particular prayer format but I have been using the Liturgy of the Hours for daily prayer since about 1980 when I came upon the one-volume edition published by the Daughters of Saint Paul (Paulines). Even though I have no special love for that group of reactionary church ladies, I must admit that they do produce very good books. And besides, as they worked on this one, they had the excellent liturgical and theological advice of the late Archbishop of Hartford, Connecticut, John F. Wealon. The book is called Christian Prayer and the copy I have is leather bound. I don't know if it is real leather or imitation. It doesn't much matter.

This book is by no means beautiful but it is consummately useful. ... or maybe just functional, which is all I really want. As you open it randomly you think the type (fonts?) would be more appropriate for a quarterly report from a large corporation ... maybe one that manufactures clothes hangers. It is not at all attractive and doesn't look even remotely religious. But prayer books don't have to be "pretty," do they? In any case, when you begin to use it on a daily basis you start to not care at all about how the printing looks. It is set up in such a way that only an idiot would have trouble using it. The psalms are done in bold print, easy to see and easy to read and before each one, besides the antiphon, there is a short sentence in very small type, either scriptural or patristic, that points up the Christological dimension of the psalm's meaning. The hymns are in larger print and not in bold, but very easy to make out.

After each psalm there is a psalm-prayer, which I have discovered is a peculiarity of the American-English editions. The editions I use in French and Spanish do not have this feature, and my Australian friends who pray the Divine Office are amazed that our editions contain such a feature. But this is not an American invention. You find it described in The General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours. It is just that publishers in other countries have had the sense to ignore it.


Also, during Ordinary Time you don't have to do any page-turning when you get to the Benedictus in the morning or the Magnificat in the evening. They are both printed out as part of the hour in very small print presumably because the publishers think you have seen and said it so many times you know it by heart so you don't have to run your eyes over every syllable every day.

For the Invitatory before the first office of the day you have to go to the Ordinary and select one of the psalms given there along with seasonal antiphons. In Benedictine Daily Prayer (=BDP) you don't have a choice ... you have to be content with just Ps. 95 which is called Ps. 94 because the book uses the "other" numbering system, and you select the antiphon according to the day of the week. The wording of the psalm is also different from (and not nearly as beautiful as) what they offer in the Pauline edition.

In fact there are several places where the language in this book seems to be excessively experimental. Let's compare the two publications on Ps. 95.

The Pauline edition says:

Come let us sing to the Lord
and shout with joy to the Rock who saves us.
Let us approach him with praise and thanksgiving
and sing joyful songs to the Lord.

And here is how BDP renders the same four lines:

Come ring out our joy to the Lord;
hail the rock who saves us.
Let us come before him, giving thanks,
with songs let us hail the Lord.

The BDP rendering is flat and seems to ignore the genius of English poetic rhythms. Its diction appears also to be un-English. But in these two regards the Gospel canticles (Benedictus and Magnificat) are even worse. They are so poorly done that I pasted a photocopy from the Pauline edition over each of them.

Instead of the psalms arranged in the four-week cycle as prescribe by Vatican II documents BDP still uses a one-week cycle. For the midday hours it uses sections of Ps.119 on Sunday and Monday, and the gradual psalms the rest of the week. This is kinda hard to get used to.


Allowance must be made for the fact that we are dealing with two separate liturgical traditions. BDP comes from the monastic tradition in which no attempt is made to group psalms around a common theme that is often reflected also in the reading. The "cathedral" (Roman) tradition does offer the kind of thematic arrangement. The monastic office starts with the early psalms and reads them (or sings them) straight through up to Psalm 150 without regard to what the psalm says.

In favor of BDP I have to say that it is very good to have all the daily readings for the predawn office (vigils or office of readings) for the entire liturgical year between two covers, something you don't get in the Pauline edition (but there is a nicely done companion volume that does contain the entire hour). But, here again, one has to wonder why these particular readings were selected for BDP. Maybe I am just too accustomed to the arrangement of one biblical reading followed by a non-biblical selection.

Let me oint out that while the intercessions in the Pauline edition are very good (used by most of the English-speaking world), those in the BDP are a lot better. I am puzzled by the comments of one reviewer who said they are too psychological and individualistic. Not at all. They are frequently beautiful as they search for the roots of many of today's social ills.

In any case, after using the BDP for six months I went back to the Pauline edition and have stayed with it ever since. Maybe I'm not monastic enough.








0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:

a useful spiritual aid for those interested in the Benedictine way, 2008-06-25
Compact, easy to use: this is a great breviary for the lay person interested in following St. Benedict's example of Opus Dei. Printed on quality paper, well bound and modestly priced, I have found it a wonderful addition to my prayer life.


1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

It is what you want it to be, 2008-05-14
Good: It's for Benedictine Monastaries. Even those under RCC oversight now have no "official" LTOH. Through consultation with the Confederation, abbies more or less adapt a LTOH to their special needs, locations and ministries. For monks in an abbey, this can be seen as a great and good thing (if the abbot is strong and maintains true Christian teachings) and this volume supports a modicum of flexibility.

Good: It's simpler to use. That means oblates and pious individuals can eventually use it without having to be in choir for "follow the leader".

Good: The Propers of the Saints (calendar) is really full. I'm always in favor of holding up real examples of real people who loved the Lord.

Bad: The gender-neutral Psalms are a distraction. Seriously, OK? The contortions necessary to avoid writing "Him, His, He, Father, Son" and so on are painfully obvious and it really does cause a moment's distraction during the reading. Instead of having our mind on God, it's yanked back to a thought of political correctness. What WERE they thinking?

Bad: You want rubrics? Want to know when to stand or sit? Want to know how to spot an abbreviation that isn't obvious? Want to know how to resolve Occurrences and Concurrences and how to do a Commemoration? Well, I suspect everyone who bought this book wants the same, too. You see, it's all missing. If you have another breviary, or the popular Monastic Diurnal, or are lucky enough to be near a place where you can actually join in choir, then you can really make use of this volume. Otherwise, you just sort of make it up. Do what seems right, yeah? Read a little here, a little there. Sure, you can get the day of the week right. You can get the hour right. But is it a ferial or festal? Is there a Proper of the saint if tomorrow's Sunday and it's the beginning of an octave? Do you Commemorate instead? Etc. It just ain't in here, folks, and this is one seriously, glowing ommission. The introduction says to scan the common Weekly Pslater and somehow you'll just catch on. Right. I have some ocean-front propery in Dustbowl, OK, to sell to the editor who wrote that one!

All-in-all I think it's a great attempt to simplify, but sadly the gender-neutral Psalms and complete lack of rubrics were serious mistakes. Beginners will have to choose: make up your own rubrics, or, seek help from an abbey or one of the other LTOH books, such as the Anglican Breviary or Monastic Diurnal.


2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Excellent breviary for Oblates, 2007-10-23
Bottom line: This breviary is worth it!

Many of the reviews posted about "Benedictine Daily Prayer" have outlined many of its strong and weak points. This reviewer would rather take things from a personal standpoint.

Those who are familiar with the official Liturgy of the Hours will find some slight differences, such as structure and translation. Those familiar with the Benedictine world will not be surprised by such a variance: every monastery is just a bit different from another; this breviary is in that line of thinking.

The 1-week psalter scheme, including the Supplementary Psalter for Vigils and Lauds, follows the Rule of St. Benedict rather closely. This yields insight into the genius of Benedict himself. The 1-week cycle (even when using the Supplementary Psalter) gives a rhythm to the week, outlined in Sr. Joan Chittister's commentary on the Rule of St. Benedict. Once one gets into that rhythm, the Psalms suddenly become a companion during the week: something to look forward to for solace, or sometimes to dread for their stark challenge to our limited, yet-to-be-converted views of our daily life. Monotony gives way to depth, where God is truly found; this is the foundation of the Benedictine Way.

The readings for Vigils can be used in the context of Vigils, or, as the editor points out, can be used instead of the Short Readings at Lauds and Vespers, in the tradition of "lectio continua", or a continuous reading of biblical books. The non-biblical readings for Vigils are excellent. They give one abundant material for reflection, both from ancient and modern authors, very much in line with the intent of St. Benedict in his Rule.

Although the translations of the Canticle of Zechariah and the Canticle of Mary (and Canticle of Simeon) are from ICEL, with a certain bullet-like brevity to the text, it somehow just seems to fit the rest of the breviary. One could easily substitute them with the ICET translations from the official Liturgy of the Hours.

This breviary is excellent. It is very user-friendly. Oblates will find it helpful incorporating it in their daily lives without much burden. Although the variety in the Psalm schema is limited, one is invited to a greater depth of the psalms themselves. After all, what good is using the entire psalter for a non-monastic for the sake of variety, when one could use a limited psalter that plunges one into the depths of God?


2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Best Portable All In One Breviary, 2007-07-04
This breviary is not perfect and I can understand some of the objections of previous reviewers (Gospel Canticle translations,inclusive language, etc, etc.) however for lay people (like me) it is the best portable breviary to take to work and use during the day. I have an older breviary from the 60's at home that more than makes up for any shortcomings Benedictine Daily Prayer: A Short Breviary may have.

Price is accurate as of the date/time indicated. Prices and product availability are subject to change. Any price displayed on the Amazon website at the time of purchase will govern the sale of this product.