Today’s Chapter: Our Lady in the Night Office

Chapter 18: In what order the Psalms are to be said (vv. 20-25)

The order of psalmody for the Day-Hours being now arranged, let all the remaining 25 Psalms be equally distributed among the seven Night- Offices, dividing the longer Psalms among them, and assigning twelve to each night. Above all, we recommend that if this arrangement of the Psalms be displeasing to anyone, he should, if he think fit, order it otherwise; taking care in any case that the whole Psalter of a hundred and fifty Psalms be recited every week, and always begun afresh at the Night-Office on Sunday. For those monks would shew themselves very slothful in the divine service who said in the course of a week less than the entire Psalter, with the usual canticles; since we read that our holy fathers resolutely performed in a single day what I pray we tepid monks may achieve in a whole week.

Saint Benedict concludes today the practical details of the Divine Office by providing for the arrangement of the psalms at the Night Office: Vigils, or Matins as it has traditionally come to be known. He does not identify the specific psalms to be said, but by process of elimination one can deduce which ones they are, and by keeping to the principle of twelve psalms each night—inspired by the story of the angel recounted by Cassian—one can deduce how many of the psalms need to be divided in order to have the correct number.

Basically, since Psalms 1 through 19 have been assigned to Prime, and Psalms 109 through the end assigned to Vespers—with Psalms 118-127 assigned to the Little Hours, and certain other Psalms specifically assigned to special hours—the Matins Psalmody for Saint Benedict will essentially consist of Psalms 20 through 108, skipping over the occasional Psalms assigned to Lauds or Compline. While there is a wide variety of themes and sentiments contained in these Psalms, which comprise the majority of the Psalter, nonetheless it can be said that in general, compared to the Vespers Psalmody which tends to have a character of thanksgiving, the Matins Psalmody includes a great number of psalms of lament and of struggle. It is appropriate to an hour when we join Our Lord both in His Agony in the Garden before His Passion, and in the tomb on the night of Holy Saturday awaiting the dawn of His Resurrection. It is perhaps not entirely by chance, then, that Saint Benedict’s Matins cycle begins on Sunday morning with Psalm 20, Domine in virtute tua laetabitur rex (O Lord, in Thy strength shall the King be glad), which describes the Messianic King going into battle against His foes, and ends on Saturday with Psalm 108, Deus laudem meam ne tacueris (O God, do not be silent in my praise), an imprecatory psalm which describes more than any other the struggle to the death waged by the forces of evil against Christ and His Mystical Body. In addition to expressing the struggle with evil, a great portion of the quantity of psalmody at Matins comes from the ‘historical psalms’, such as Psalms 77, 104, 105, and 106, which recall at great length the works of God in the history of His people.

As we pray these psalms at Matins, while the world is still in darkness, often fighting off weariness and distraction, we should be aware that they have been sung and meditated before us by Our Lady, who shared in her Son’s struggle against evil throughout His life—beginning in His persecution by Herod as a Infant, continuing all the way to Calvary—and who also meditated constantly on God’s deeds of salvation both in Israel’s history and in her own life, as she sought to penetrate more deeply the mystery of what He was doing in her Son’s life. Madre Cànopi comments about Our Lady’s own chant, the Magnificat:

In this chant of praise and thanksgiving, in this vibrant and joyous hymn, Mary expresses the marvels of grace which the Lord has worked in her, but at the same time she sums up also the epic of the people of Israel and already anticipates the chant of the Church. And while she prophetically contemplates before her the entire design of salvation, with a profound penetration she meditates on it and prepares to live it in faith, as the monk should do, celebrating the Divine Office as his principal service. (Anna Maria Cànopi, Nel ‘Sì’ di Maria, translation by a Benedictine monk, pp. 53-54)

So as we pray the psalms of Matins which will always constitute the most demanding part of our servitutis pensum (weight/measure of service), may the presence of the Mother of God help us to experience the sweetness of Our Lord’s yoke which she bore with Him as she prayed these psalms on behalf of His whole Body.