The Crafty Oblate. A Benedictine Oblate blog.

[Revised Aug. 13, 2008 11:20 to reformat the material]

This blog is about a common practice among oblates — personalizing the books and materials we read for the Divine Office. This blog is about my recent project to replace card-stock section dividers I made for the book Benedictine Daily Prayer. See the footnotes for background information.

Anyone who is familiar with the book Benedictine Daily Prayer will tell you — often with a groan and a little smile — that if you use this book and similar books, there is a lot of flipping back and forth between sections. BDP does not have all the material needed for each day in one place. If it did, the book would be several volumes instead of one handy volume.

BDP comes with ribbons, but I found them difficult (I could never remember what section each color represented).

I eventually decided that ribbons did not work for me and I needed a better solution.

I tried some stick-on tabs, but while that helped find the various sections of the book, I still needed movable dividers.

About a year ago I made a set of 12 card-stock dividers with tabs. I typed particular Psalms or antiphons on some of the dividers. I loved the way it made finding things so much easier.

Through time, the card-stock tabs became worn and recently I replaced the 12 dividers I made a year ago and even added four new dividers for new texts or sections. The new-improved version of dividers still uses card stock, but now I use tabs from Tabbies. I use an ultra-thin Sharpe permanent colored marker to write the name of the section on the Tabbies. I use Tabbies all the time in my work, but originally thought Tabbies would be too big and bulky, but recently my wife suggested using plastic tabs. She was right.

So, the Benedictine Daily Prayer I use has been spiffed up with some new section dividers that will make it easier for me to have the text I read at hand with less flipping.

I felt downright monkish as I took card-stock, scissors, a ruler, pencil, and made the new hand-made dividers with often-read material. OK, I also used the computer to type the text. But if there were computers in the middle ages, I am sure every monk would have had one too.

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Footnote 1


Benedictine Daily Prayer is a breviary — a book of prayers for daily use. The prayers are primarily the Psalms and Hymns and Bible readings placed in a structure based on ancient monastic traditions.

Another book I use is the very user friendly (no flipping) "Benedictine Weekly Psalter," by Scott Knitter (who has a liturgy blog). Scott's book has the Psalms and canticles in daily order — it is wonderful companion to the BDP because BDP does not use all the Psalms.

Benedictine Daily Prayer is in the tradition of previous books published by monasteries (in this case St. John’s Abbey, Collegeville, Minnesota) “which sought to provide the English-speaking world an unofficial ...edition of the Divine Office for those who sought to pray with the Church in a more simplified manner.”

You can see the Table of Contents and some of Biblical readings in BDP at AmazonOnline Reader. Thank you Amazon.com

Here is an overview and example of a Divine Office. In Footnote 2 is a brief history of the Divine Office and why it is prayed. Its roots go back about 3,000 years.


Footnote 2:

“The custom of reciting prayers at certain hours of the day or night goes back to the Jews, from whom Christians have borrowed it. In the Psalms we find expressions like: "I will meditate on thee in the morning"; "I rose at midnight to give praise to thee"; "Evening and morning, and at noon I will speak and declare: and he shall hear my voice"; "Seven times a day I have given praise to thee"; etc. (Cf. "Jewish Encyclopedia", X, 164-171, s. v. [see article on "Prayer in the Jewish Encyclopedia" and the paragraph heading Number of Prayers in that article]). The Apostles observed the Jewish custom of praying at midnight, terce, sext, none (Acts 10:3, 9; 16:25; etc.). The Christian prayer of that time consisted of almost the same elements as the Jewish: recital or chanting of psalms, reading of the Old Testament, to which was soon added reading of the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, and at times canticles composed or improvised by the assistants.”

Above material is from the classic 1917 Catholic Encyclopedia in the article on the Divine Office.

Pope and the Psalms

Pope Benedict XVI said the following during a meeting with representatives of other religions at the "Rotunda" Hall of the Pope John Paul II Cultural Center of Washington when he was in the USA in April 2008. His full statement is here.

"There is a further point I wish to touch upon here. I have noticed a growing interest among governments to sponsor programs intended to promote interreligious and intercultural dialogue. These are praiseworthy initiatives. At the same time, religious freedom, interreligious dialogue and faith-based education aim at something more than a consensus regarding ways to implement practical strategies for advancing peace. The broader purpose of dialogue is to discover the truth. What is the origin and destiny of mankind? What are good and evil? What awaits us at the end of our earthly existence? Only by addressing these deeper questions can we build a solid basis for the peace and security of the human family, for "wherever and whenever men and women are enlightened by the splendor of truth, they naturally set out on the path of peace" (Message for the 2006 World Day of Peace, 3)."

"We are living in an age when these questions are too often marginalized. Yet they can never be erased from the human heart. Throughout history, men and women have striven to articulate their restlessness with this passing world. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Psalms are full of such expressions: "My spirit is overwhelmed within me" (Ps 143:4; cf. Ps 6:6; 31:10; 32:3; 38:8; 77:3); "why are you cast down, my soul, why groan within me?" (Ps 42:5). The response is always one of faith: "Hope in God, I will praise him still; my Savior and my God" (Ps 42:5, 11; cf. Ps 43:5; 62:5).

Spiritual leaders have a special duty, and we might say competence, to place the deeper questions at the forefront of human consciousness, to reawaken mankind to the mystery of human existence, and to make space in a frenetic world for reflection and prayer."

The Liturgy of the Hours (an example is here) is an ancient way to consecrate our time and pray from the Psalms.

3,000-year-old history - parts of the Divine Office

This IS one of my favorite topics — the Divine Office (or Liturgy of the Hours, or Opus Dei (Work of God)) in general and its ancient roots in particular.

The 2500-3000-year-old history of daily praying the Songs (Psalms) of God’s people is perhaps the world’s oldest, daily religious practice. I even chuckle a bit at thinking that we might have been given a hint in the fact that largest book in the Bible and the book that occupies the center of the Bible just happens to be Psalms.

Anyway, that last part was just my own rambling, how far back does the Liturgy of the Hours go? Here is the reference I like it because it points to the growing practice of praying the LOH among lay people, which I believe will be a key force, central to the renewal of the Church that is talked about by the Popes:

The following is a quote from the Abbey of the Genesee Cistercian monks in Piffard, New York.

“The official prayer of the Roman Catholic Church is known variously as Liturgy of the Hours, Divine Office, Opus Dei (Work of God). The roots of this prayer go all the way back to Jewish practices before the time of our Lord. This form of prayer was prayed by Jesus and his disciples. As such, it was carried over into the devotion of the early Christian Church and continues in an unbroken tradition down to our own day.

“In both the Jewish and Christian traditions, this work of God was the prayer of all the people, clergy and laity. Due to various circumstances however, in the Christian Church it soon became the particular prayer of clergy and monks for many centuries. One of the blessings flowing from the liturgical reforms of Vatican II is the resurgence of the Divine Office among the laity. For our purposes we will refer to this form of prayer as the Work of God since that is the traditional Benedictine term.”