Ancient Antiphons for a New Year
Speaking about God and speaking with God must always go together.
The liturgy is not a secondary theme next to the preaching about the living God,
but the realization of our relationship with God’ (p. Benedict XVI)
The different times in the year- ordinary time, Advent, Christmas, Lent and Ester- should feel different, different melodies, different colours, as different as the spring is from the summer, and summer from the autumn. Often the modern liturgy does not communicate this.
In our 2019 Calendar we share with you some images of a beautifully illuminated antiphonary from our archives, which was used for Vespers of the Major Feasts through the year, until the liturgy changed after Vatican II. The work of illustration was accomplished by the sisters over many years and completed in 1910.
Liturgical celebration is a constant thread running through our days so that we might be woven in our ‘consecration to the truth, which is the Word’.
The liturgical celebration of the Hours, repeated several times a day in community, must be a time when the Word of God, and not ourselves, comes to be our centre. It is when we allow the Word to seize us, to take hold of our desire to give our life and enable this desire to do far more that we could ever do ourselves. This celebration repeated each day and in each liturgical Hour gives us the courage to expose ourselves to the Word; to listen to the words of Scripture and the prayers of the tradition; to become accustomed to the familiarity that the Word wants to have with us; to discern through the words of Scripture the face of the Son that is revealed and who is the […]