an intermediary solution between Vetus Ordo and Novus Ordo

Despite my preference to the traditional breviaries because I find them much richer and more inspiring than the Novus Ordo ones, but I find it extremely difficult to pray every day the traditional long Matins at night and all the small hours of Prime,Terce, Sext, and None with all the tasks that our modern life imposes on us. I think that this problem applies not only to lay people but also to religious communities living away from the world and secluded in remote monasteries.

Adore v/s worship

From the very beginning I had a problem with some Antiphons of the Novus Ordo where GOD is no more the center of all, but rather man ( like the Tabernacles on the Altar…)  For example, a sentence like “Come let us adore the LORD  in the Splendor of His Holiness” would be replaced by “let us worship the LORD Who created us” or “for all the good HE has done for us”. Such wordings suggest that we should worship the LORD for what HE has done for us, and not because HE is GOD, worthy of adoration and worship, and was such before man existed and will ever be.

I have therefore kept the Invitatory with Psalm 95 in Latin for one reason: the expression “venite adoremus” of the traditional Latin version of the Antiphon and been replaced by “Come let us worship the LORD”. For me, worship is not exactly adoration.

And those dreadful changes do not stop here. An Antiphon goes further and says that GOD + should even bow down…. (Antiphon of Monday Morning Prayer of the second week of the psalter):

May be “bent down” or “look down from Heaven” would have sounded better as we find it in a version of Psalm 102 (:20).

I would like to add one more example to show what we can find in the contemporary material as it is shown in this screenshot of the hymn “GOD of Mercy and Compassion” from a commonly used catholic hymnal:

As we can see “hell” is spelled with a capital letter whilst “Heaven” is written with a small letter… I have changed  it before using the hymn in the Office of Divine Mercy to look like that:

Also found in a prayer in a breviary: “You came to be the head of Your Church.” You notice that “head” who represents CHRIST starts with a small letter and the Body, the Church, with a capital letter!!! One doesn’t need to have studied psychology to understand how this kind of assertion reflects nowadays the mind of “the Church” and how the “Body”, in its mind, has dethroned the HEAD!!!

This last thing might look of little importance but it really disturbs me, especially while praying. What about you?

An intermediate solution

Many are such examples but this is not my purpose here to digress on the subject but just to justify why I have mixed features from the traditional breviaries with the Novus Ordo ones.

a) I used mainly the Novus Ordo offices for the four weeks Psalter, with their 3 psalms for the Office of Readings, 2 psalms and Canticle for Morning and Evening Prayers. The Antiphons are borrowed to the Roman Psalter as well as to the Dominican Breviaries.

- The ‘small hours’ : I have taken the “Daytime Prayer” in most of the cases but kept in some few places, on some solemnities or feasts  the traditional  scheme of Terce, Sext and None (no Prime).

b) I used  a more traditional way (not totally Vetus Ordo)for solemnities and major feasts: Matins with 9 sections, Lauds and Vespers with 5 sections  including a Canticle (from Novus Ordo)   which replaces one of  the 5 psalms of the traditional offices.

Here  I had recourse to the website of diviniumofficium.com which is an excellent reference for  the latin texts but with questionable english translations.

c) In few cases I propose two versions of the same office,  one in a traditional way and a second one as a "lighter" way according to the Novus Ordo.