LENT WEEK 4 TUESDAY MORNING PRAYER

 



SAINT GABRIEL HOURS

The Good News:

Praying with Christ Every Day. 

Anytime. Anywhere. With Anyone. 


TUESDAY MORNING PRAYER

FOURTH WEEK OF LENT




APRIL 1

PSALTER WEEK IV

_______________________________________________________

DIVINE OFFICE / LITURGY OF THE HOURS

is the Prayer of Christ and the Church

"Christ Jesus, high priest of the new and eternal covenant, taking human nature, introduced into this earthly exile that hymn which is sung throughout all ages in the halls of heaven. He joins the entire community of mankind to Himself, associating it with His own singing of this canticle of divine praise."  (Vatican II Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, #86)

"For he continues His priestly work through the agency of His Church, which is ceaselessly engaged in praising the Lord and interceding for the salvation of the whole world. She does this, not only by celebrating the Eucharist, but also in other ways, especially by praying the Divine Office."  (Vatican II Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, #86)

"Lauds as Morning Prayer and Vespers as Evening Prayer are the two hinges on which the daily office turns; hence they are to be considered as the chief hours and are to be celebrated as such." (Vatican II Constitution on Sacred Liturgy, #89) 


_______________________________________________________

VIRTUAL RESOURCES

Virtual resources provide more than the dry bones of the liturgical text. They celebrate the Hours with sounds and images. Most importantly they provide community, both community with those who produced the sounds and images, and community among those who celebrate the Hours with the same sounds and images at various times and places.  

This website contains two posts each day. one for Morning Prayer and one for Evening Prayer. Morning Prayer begins with a HYMN, followed by a PSALM, an Old Testament Canticle, another PSALM, a READING, Responsory, GOSPEL CANTICLE, Litany, LORD'S PRAYER, and concludes with a Collect.  

The post for each hour contains the complete official text in two forms:  a link (DivineOffice.org) with the complete visual and audio text of the Hour recited by a small group, and a link (SingtheHours.org) with the complete sung text of the Hour, mostly by a single cantor.  By clinking on either of these two links you can celebrate the Hour without making any other choices.   You do not need any other book or booklet or any other virtual resources including the ones in this post. Praying Morning Prayer is that simple, one click. 

However, you can customize your experience by using the additional virtual resources below including 3 HYMNS, 2 PSALMS, LONGER READINGS, GOSPEL CANTICLE, LORD'S PRAYER.

_______________________________________________________


FULL ROMAN RITE SERVICES

Three Models/Options for Morning Prayer (Lauds):

The Instruction for the Liturgy of the Hours promotes both recitation in common as well as singing the Hours. 

RECITATION IN COMMON MODEL

DIVINE OFFICE.ORG OPTION

Excellent model of small (household size) community reciting the office with sung hymn at the beginning. Experience the Hours as community prayer even when praying alone.  




INVITATORY: PSALM 95
Hymn: "Eternal Maker of the Light" 
Translation by Saint Cecilia's Abbey of "Aeterne Lucis Conditor"
 *******************************************************

COMPLETELY SUNG MODEL

SING THE HOURS OPTION

Excellent model of totally sung office, mostly by one very talented young person. His father is an excellent translator of Latin hymns. Although they use some Latin, there is always an English translation. 



 INVITATORY: PSALM 95
Hymn: "Martine, pro apostolis," 
 English translation by St. Cecilia's Abbey, Ryde, UK,
English Gospel Canticle & Lord's Prayer
*******************************************************


PERSONAL MEDITATION MODEL

WORD ON FIRE OPTION

Bishop Barron's organization produces a monthly booklet that contains Morning, and Evening Prayer for each day. It reads straight through like a book except for the beginning hymns for each hour which are all in the back of the booklet. Try using a prayer card instead of a ribbon or any of the hymns on this website.  


_______________________________________________________

BEGINNING HYMN OPTIONS

 WORD ON FIRE BOOKLET:  APRIL 2025, pages 230-239

Last year's Word of Fire Selection 

Lord, It Belongs Not To My Care

11K views  7 years ago
Schola Cantorum Of St. Peter's In The Loop, Chicago - Topic


HYMN SELECTED FROM MY PERSONAL FAVORITES

This fourth hymn option is strongly influenced by the blog author's liturgical music collection (first vinyl discs, then cassettes, finally CDs). For decades this musical collection has supported the celebration of the Hours.  Now with YouTube videos, anyone can start a blog like this to link to their favorite hymns for the celebration of the Hours.  

Psalm 95 (Come Worship The Lord)
JohnMichaelTalbot



211,105 views / Jan 27, 2015




_______________________________________________________

THE FOUR WEEK PSALTER 

The psalms were the prayers of Jesus and his disciples. Under the influence of monasticism, praying the whole 150 psalms each week became the norm in both Eastern and Western Christianity. The liturgical reform of Vatican II spread the psalms over four weeks.

As noted in the General Instruction, there is an ancient tradition of personal meditation and prayer at the end of each psalm. There are many videos on the internet with psalms sung in a variety of ways, using different languages and translations, and drawing from different musical and spiritual traditions. Some presentations have beautiful slides or videos that enhance and interpret the psalm.

VIDEOS FOR TODAY'S PSALMS


PSALM 101

 

* PSALM 144 * 


_______________________________________________________


LONGER READINGS

FROM TODAY'S MASS

TUESDAY OF THE FOURTH WEEK OF LENT

 EZEKIEL, 47:1-9, 12

The angel brought me, Ezekiel,
back to the entrance of the temple of the LORD,
and I saw water flowing out
from beneath the threshold of the temple toward the east,
for the façade of the temple was toward the east;
the water flowed down from the right side of the temple,
south of the altar.

  JOHN 5:1-16
 Now there is in Jerusalem at the Sheep Gate
a pool called in Hebrew Bethesda, with five porticoes.

In these lay a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crie.




THE GOSPEL CANTICLE 


SELECTION FOR WEEKDAYS: PSALTER WEEK III

OCP Session Choir 




_______________________________________________________

  THE LORD'S PRAYER


Citizen Way - The Lord's Prayer (Official Lyric Video)
_______________________________________________________

PURPOSE OF THIS WEBSITE

The advent of virtual resources for the celebration of the Hours means that we can celebrate the Hours anytime, anywhere with anyone. The Hours bring the prayer of Christ and the Church into our lives and the lives of others. This is Good News indeed!

The website is called Saint Gabriel Hours because Gabriel announced the Good News that Christ has come to be with us, especially with we say Amen to his presence in the Hours. He is also patron saint of media and messengers.

The hours have taken many different forms and shapes in the history of the Church. Among monks in the deserts of Egypt, it took the form of listening to twelve psalms and scripture readings in the morning and evening while they wove baskets to support themselves. At the same time in newly built cathedrals of the Empire, incense, lights accompanied chants and prayers. These were later joined together in the Benedictine monasteries. The mendicants invented the Breviary so they would not be confined to choir stalls and monasteries. The Jesuits abolished choir so that they would have even more pastoral freedom. Now we have the opportunity to liberate the Hours from the breviaries of priests and the choir stalls of monks into the lives of the People of God.  Each person or group needs to discern what works best for them.

The website promotes using FIFTEEN MINUTES a day to discern the place of the Hours in our lives. QUALITY time in prayer is more important than quantity. Praying one Hour a day well is better than attempting to do both Hours.  Praying a portion of an Hour such as the psalms well is better than rushing through the Hour. Use small amounts of time, some even less than fifteen minutes, to decide where, when and how to best to pray the Hours. 

Anywhere emphasizes integrating the Hours into the places of our life: in the car on the way to or from work, when using the treadmill, when walking outdoors, before and after meals and meetings, during work breaks, and while doing routine tasks that don't require much attention. (The early Egyptian monks did basket weaving while a cantor recited psalms).

Anytime spreads Morning and Evening Prayer across the day. We can share the opening hymn with family at breakfast, pray the psalms while commuting to work, mediate upon the daily scripture readings during a work break and then share the Gospel Canticle with companions at lunch. Processing from place to place is a common liturgical practice. Finding right places, times, and amounts of time is the key to good choreography.

With Anyone emphasizes sharing specific celebrations of the Hours with others either personally or virtually anytime anywhere. Virtual resources provide more than the dry bones of the liturgical text. They celebrate the Hours with sounds and images. Most importantly they provide community, both community with those who produced the sounds and images, and community with those who celebrate the Hours with the same sounds and images at various times and places. Sharing specific celebrations is the key to creating friendship, household, small group, ministry, organizational, and parish communities.

_______________________________________________________

BASIC DISCERNMENT QUESTIONS

_______________________________________________________

Time, Television and the Hours

Do we have time to pray the Hours?

Screens, beginning with television, have consumed our time. In the period from 1965 to 1995, while total leisure increased, television screens not only absorbed all the time freed up from paid and unpaid work they reduced the number of hours spent socializing, reading, and listening to music. In those three decades TV time rose by 5.7 hours from 9.3 hours per week to 15.0 hours per week for women. It rose by 5.4 hours from 11.9 to 17.3 hours for men.  How and why did television come to absorb so much of our time? 

Television is inexpensive and easily available in comparison to alternatives. Increased free time has become available in small amounts spread over the week rather than increased weeks of vacation, or less workdays per week. When people go on vacation they don’t watch much television. People report television is less satisfying than alternatives such as socializing, hobbies, sports, etc. However, these more satisfying alternatives generally need larger chunks of time and more advanced planning. When asked what they would do if they needed more time, people say they would give up television. Read my March 2011article at the PrayTell liturgy blog:

_______________________________________________________

Begin with Fifteen Minutes

How much time should we spend in formal prayer each day?

For the person who is finding God in all things, Saint Ignatius suggests that fifteen minutes of quality prayer is more important than spending several hours.  Social science research says we spend an average of fifteen minutes a day with the five people who are most important in our lives.  Research has found that faculty members who daily spend small amounts of time, e.g. fifteen minutes, writing articles and preparing lectures are more productive researchers and teachers.  Read More Here

_______________________________________________________

Contemplative Activity Principles

How do we pray the Hours?

These principles are adapted from Robert Boice, Advice to New Faculty Members on preparing lecture notes, writing journal articles and developing better relationship with colleagues.  Faculty who used small amounts of time on a daily basis for preparing lecture notes and writing articles had better teaching evaluations and more publications than those who used larger but less frequent chunks of time. Faculty were particularly productive if they regularly talked about their work with colleagues.
 
Principles: wait expectantly; begin before you are fully ready; pause often; take time to develop insights; make notes; stop early; share with others. These contemplative principles, mindfulness in Boice's terminology, can be applied to spiritual reading, planning projects, improving relationships, evaluating areas of one's life, bible study, and praying the Hours. Boice recommends no more than three projects at one time.

_______________________________________________________

BEGINNING PRACTICES

A Brief Tour of Using the Virtual Resources on this Site
Seven days, Fifteen Minutes a Day

(page under construction)
_______________________________________________________

BASIC PRACTICES

Iconography 

"EVERY MOMENT AND EVERY EVENT of everyone's life on earth plants something in our souls. For just as the wind carries thousands of invisible and visible winged seeds, so the stream of time brings with it germs of spiritual vitality that come to rest imperceptibly in our minds and wills."
adapted from Thomas Merton, Seeds of Contemplation

In Orthodox Churches, the Icon of the Day is an image of the saint or mystery which is being celebrated. Placed prominently on a stand in the middle of the nave, it is the first icon venerated by entering worshipers.  The Icon of the Hour on this post is a photograph (written with light) which functions like iconography (written with images).  The image is of the spiritual vitality present in the stream of time (morning or evening) at specific places on specific dates which allows us to celebrate the Hours anytime anywhere with anyone. 

_________________________________________

Invitatory Psalm 

"Lord, open my lips. And my mouth will proclaim your praise"
Psalm 95. or psalm 100, psalm 67 or psalm 24 may be used. 

It is always said before the Office of Readings when it begins the liturgical day. However, it is optional if Morning Prayer begins the liturgical day. For beginners it is a good way to begin the liturgical day if one does not have the time to pray a complete Hour. Read More

___________________________________

Celebrating the Gospel Canticles

Praise and Thanksgiving; Gospel Canticle.
 Conversion and Petition; the Lord’s Prayer

The last portion of Morning Prayer (Reading, Responsory, Gospel Canticle, Intercessions, the Lord's Prayer and Concluding Prayer) are modeled on way Evening Prayer was celebrated in the Cathedrals of Early Christianity. They also included a hymn.
___________________________________

Celebrating the Psalms

The Prayers of Jesus and His disciples

The Monastic Office in Early Christianity consisted mainly of the 150 psalms which were prayed consecutively over the course of the week. The psalms took their place before the Cathedral Office because monks, virgins and widows often assembled before the rest of the community. 

___________________________________

Celebrating with Hymns

Songs of the People of God

___________________________________

Option of Longer Readings

Lectionary, Office of Readings, Continuous Reading

___________________________________

Silence

Listening to Creation, our Hearts, and Hearts of Others

_______________________________________________________

ADVANCED PRACTICES

___________________________________

Keeping a Journal of the Hours

Underlining text, Word documents, a Blog

___________________________________

A Thirty Day Retreat

Discerning the Place of the Hours in My life?

___________________________________

Bible Study

Integrating personal and group bible study with the Hours

___________________________________

Office of the Dead

For Funerals and Votive Offices

___________________________________

Centering the Hours on the Eucharist

Combining the Hours with Mass

___________________________________

History of the Liturgy of the Hours

What the History Should Mean for Using Virtual Resources

In his course on the Liturgy of the Hours during the summer at Notre Dame, Father Robert Taft, S.J. challenged us to read as much as we could about the history of the Hours, and the scholarly opinion on that history. Without understanding history, we were likely to make poor pastoral decisions about the Hours. On the other hand, Taft felt he could not give answers to our pastoral questions. He saw his job in the course was to tells us what he thought the history and the scholarship meant for him as a scholar. This website is essentially my opinion of what the history means for the contemporary pastoral situation of celebration of the Hours personally, in households, and in small groups using virtual resources.

_______________________________________________________

SPIRITUALITY 

by Jack Rakosky