Tabs & Guide to Using Benedictine Daily Prayer. A Benedictine oblate blog

[Click picture to enlarge]

I use "Benedictine Daily Prayer" (BDP) for praying the divine office.

Recently, I made a set of dividers using a new format for printing the text on the card-stock and that made it easier to add some additional notes on the dividers. Yesterday, I blogged about a simple guide for using Benedictine Daily Prayer and explained how I added text to the dividers. Divider tabs are good to help avoid flipping back and forth in the book and for using other translations for parts of the divine office when I prefer another translation.

There is a new section to the Oblate Spring web site (the companion site to this blog) showing the divider tabs, explaining how they are used, and listing the materials used to make the dividers:

● Benedictine Daily Prayer (BDP) — Tabs & Guide: How to use this popular book for praying the Benedictine divine office.

Materials for making tabs

Basic tabs and guide for using BDP

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Footnotes:

Earlier this year and last year I blogged here, here, and here about using card-stock divider tabs. These earlier blogs give the background of earlier tab versions.

Tabbed Guide Sheet For Benedictine Daily Prayer. A Benedictine oblate blog

Recently I made a set of tabbed card-stock dividers for another oblate who prays with the book "Benedictine Daily Prayer (BDP)." One of the dividers was a short page-by-page list of how to pray the divine office on a Sunday that is not a special day when you would also want to include texts from other sections in the back parts of BDP.

The picture at the top of this blog is of that basic guide for to how to use "Benedictine Daily Prayer."

Making this set of tabs was a good opportunity for me to improve the way I make the dividers. Here is how I make the dividers:

With all margins reduced to the minimum, I created three text boxes across the top part of page in my word processor. The two outer text boxes are 3.70" wide and 5.70" high. The middle box is .220" wide.

In the middle text box, faint orange lines (borders) were placed on the left and the right of that middle text box.

At 5.9" from the top edge of the sheet a faint orange horizontal line was added. Here is a PDF of a typical sheet used to make the dividers showing an example of the three text boxes and the faint orange lines.

To print the dividers, first I printed one side, then turned the printed sheet over and printed on the back side. Then I cut along the faint orange lines. This method makes two dividers (I only need one, but if you are making a set for a friend, you will have another set, and of course, if you are making them for other people, you can make two sets with one card-stock sheet.) The dividers are the same size as the pages in BDP and I put the dividers in BDP where they are most helpful. Some dividers stay at a particular page, others move with the day and hour to be prayed.

My oblate friend asked for the Litany(1) of Loreto(2) on a series of dividers to keep with BDP. This illustrates one of the best reasons for having the dividers (in addition to having an easy way to find the right place in BDP where you should be praying).

The dividers allow me to put the text I want on the dividers for easy reference while praying with BDP. If you prefer another translation to any part of BDP, the dividers allow you to have your favorite translation handy. For example, I prefer another translation to the Nunc Dimittis rather than the one used by BDP — see below.



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Footnotes:

(1) A litany is a form of responsive petition used in public liturgy and private devotions. A litany finds its model in Psalm 136 where a series of lines are each ended with the repeated phrase, “for His love endures for ever.” This is another example of how the Jewish Old Testament has influenced our liturgical practices today.

(2) The Litany of Loreto (good summary of its history and thematic structures) was spread throughout Europe in the 1500s AD by pilgrims who visited the Holy House of Loreto in Italy and returned home with this litany in their hearts.

Loreto is the home of Mary’s House that had been in Nazareth, in the Holy Land. The Holy House is one of the most hallowed shrines because of how it came to reside in Loreto. The House was miraculously transported by angels to Dalmatia, Croatia, in 1291, and then in 1294 the house was again moved by angelic flight to Loreto, Italy. It continues to be a sacred destination.

Keeping Tabs. A Benedictine oblate blog

I use the book Benedictine Daily Prayer (BDP) to pray the divine office.

But BDP requires a lot of flipping from one section to another during the day and even during any particular office depending on the season or feast day.

Homemade cardstock dividers, some with text that will be used in a divine office, help avoid the flipping problems.


Some time ago I blogged about when I replaced all of my old dividers with new ones, and today I did some minor revisions and updates.

Today I added a new divider for the short little final blessing:

“May the Lord bless us,
keep away all evil,
and lead us to eternal life, Amen.

“Let us bless the Lord
Thanks be to God.”

I also added the Lord’s prayer to one of the existing dividers.


But the major change I worked on today was to redo all of the tabs on the dividers so I could change the color of the tabs.


In the past I used different colors rather arbitrarily — thinking that I needed each tab to be as different as possible from its neighbors. But I did not like that and in fact it only confused me!

So, I now have a three-color scheme based on where the dividers/tabs are in the book.


White is the color of the tabs for the dividers in the front of the BDP book, for such things as the daily Readings, Compline, the Little Hours, and a different translation for Psalm 23 for Sunday Lauds than the Psalm 23 used in BDP.


Red is the color (the red looks orange in some pictures) of the tabs for the current divine office. These tabs move in a group in the middle of the BDP book.


Black is the color of the tabs for the saints, feasts and special days which are in the back of the book.

The cardstock dividers with tabs often move through the day or the year. I also have permanent tabs on some of the pages, for the various Common for Feasts and Proper of Seasons. But I still have cardstock dividers for the Commons and Propers that I keep in the very back of the book until I need them on a particular day.

The last divine office housekeeping I did today was to print out the liturgical calendar from Universalis. While there are many web sites that have liturgical calendars, Universalis is the only one I found that has the Psalm week listed right on the calendar. Very handy. I keep the printed Universalis calendar with my stack of books I use for reading and study.


The books shown above are the ones that I am reading for the divine office and monastic study:

Benedictine Daily Prayer This book has sold for $49.95 for several years but is now on sale:
Sale Price: $34.97. Wow.

The Rule of Saint Benedict translated by Leonard Doyle

Benedictine Monachism, Dom Cuthbert Butler, 1924. Classic work of Benedictine spirituality and monasticism from the Rule of St. Benedict. Butler traces modern practices back to their origins and explains the elements of Benedictine practices.

The Love of Learning and The Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture by Jean Leclercq. The book is a series of lectures given to monks at the Institute of Monastic Studies at Sant’ Anselmo in Rome, Italy, in 1955.

OK, now I am ready to start the new liturgical year that began back in November!