The Rhythm of the Canticles

We have many mechanisms for telling time. Who’d have guessed that perhaps the most common means for checking the time or setting an alarm would be via our telephones?

We also have many mechanisms for markingtime. Again, many people these days (myself included) keep their calendar for appointments, birthdays, and special events on their cell phone.

In the church world, we have other means of telling and marking time. The liturgical calendar helps frame the biblical narrative for us, so that one way of telling time is through the stories of our faith. When we start hearing the stories of John the Baptist, we know it must be Advent/December, and we know that the story of the birth of Jesus is approaching. How disorienting would it be to hear these stories in the middle of the summer?

One way that the Church marks time on an hourly basis is through praying the Daily Office (the pattern of Morning, Noonday, and Evening Prayer and Compline). When we hear/say the opening refrain for Morning Prayer - “Lord, open our Lips…And our mouth shall proclaim your praise” - we know that it is morning time. And when we hear/say the antiphon for Compline - “Guide us waking O Lord, and guard us sleeping, that awake we may watch with Christ and asleep we may rest in peace” –  we know that the day is done and it is time for bed. We tell time through the prayers of the Church. 

 We can even come to learn what day of the week it is by reciting the Canticles for Morning Prayer. If you are praying the Morning Prayer service and after the first reading, you stand and say “Arise, shine, for your light has come…” (from Canticle 11 – The Third Song of Isaiah), you will come to know that it must be Wednesday! And the more your pray the Office, the more you will fall in to the rhythm of these particular Canticles marking the specific days of the week. On Saturday (the final day of creation), we recite Canticle 12 – A Song of Creation, which makes perfect sense. 

We will always need our secular clocks and calendars to mark time, events, and seasons. But the Church gives us other ways to tell and mark time, throughout the days, weeks, months, and year. I encourage us all to develop the rhythm and pattern of telling and marking time through the Daily Office. After all, Mondays don’t have to be a drag. What if Mondays came to be known not as the first day of a long work week, but the day when we stand up and say, “Surely, it is God who saves me; I will trust in him and not be afraid.” (Canticle 9 – The First Song of Isaiah).