Description
PRAY THE BENEDICTINE OFFICE AT HOME
Our Monastic Diurnal is an English translation of the Day Hours of the Benedictine Office from the Breviarium Monasticum published at Bruges in 1925 after extensive revision and restoration by its Benedictine editors.
The Monastic Office was first set forth in all of its essential features and in much of its detail about the year 535 A.D. in the Holy Rule of St. Benedict, the father of Western monasticism. It was the first complete and enduring order of daily praise and prayer in European Christendom.
For fourteen hundred years it has voiced the worship of an ever-increasing circle of devout men and women. It came to England with St. Augustine, the first Archbishop of Canterbury, and it was the Prayer Book of those who more than any other group of Religious formed and influenced the Church of England – men such as St. Wilfrid, St. Benedict Biscop, the Venerable Bede, St. Dunstan, St. Anselm. For centuries the Archbishops of Canterbury wore the Benedictine habit, and many of the greater English cathedrals resounded with Benedictine praise.
The Monastic Office was planned from the first for busy men, working at both mental and manual labour. Its recitation was called by St. Benedict the Work of God, ‘Opus Dei’; the primary spiritual labour ‘to which nothing is to be preferred’. – From the Preface.
- The Benedictine Office of the Monastic Diurnal is a liturgical and devotional classic, prayed by generations of English-speaking clergy, religious and lay folk.
- We offer a high quality, exact reprint of the 1963 Oxford University Press edition, including all texts necessary for the daily recitation of the traditional Benedictine Hours of Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers and Compline
- 880 total pages
- Size, 4” by 6”
- Printed on “Bible paper” with gilt edges
- Two color text (rubrics in red)
- Smith-sewn binding
- Semi-hard black leatherette cover, with title stamped in gold-foil
- Includes six ribbons for easy recitation
- All texts correspond to the Gregorian chant settings in The Monastic Diurnal Noted.
Luis –
This is how Sts. Benedict and Aethelwold divided the hours of prayer according to the King: seven times a day and at midnight I get up to praise God. This translation to English is readable and beautiful. My soul is edified by praying the monastic diurnal and I recommend it to anyone interested. Thanks be to God.
Henry (verified owner) –
The most beautiful breviary I’ve come across – it’s truly faithful to a version you’d see in a Benedictine monastery tracing right back to the time of St. Benedict. I appreciate that it’s only English as well, I just don’t need the extra bulkiness of a book that includes Latin given that I would basically never use the Latin. And it’s a great, traditional translation. Orthodox, Anglicans, and Catholics can all use this book without any conflict with their faith (It’s an Orthodox reprint of an Anglican translation, but I pray it as a Catholic and it has nothing contradictory to our beliefs). And it’s incredibly portable. Everything you could want, props to LAP for republishing this and making the english monastic office accessible.