The Divine Office eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 261 pages of information about The Divine Office.

The Divine Office eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 261 pages of information about The Divine Office.
grants an indulgence for the practice. 12.  Where the custom of reciting the little Office, in choir, exists, it should be retained. 13.  The appointment of the time for the adoption of the Breviary is obligatory. 14.  Prohibition, under pain of excommunication, is made against those who print, distribute or receive copies of this Breviary without lawful authority. 15.  The authentic publication and obligation of the Bull.

The second document in the Pars Prima of the Roman Breviary is the Bull Divino Afflatu, issued by Pope Pius X, on 1st November, 1911.  It tells us:—­

1.  That the psalms were composed under divine inspiration, and that it is well known that from the beginning of the Church they were used not only to foster the piety of the faithful, who offered “the sacrifice of praise to God, that is to say, the fruit of lips confessing to His name” (Heb. xiii. 15), but—­that retaining the custom of the Old Law—­they held a conspicuous place in both the liturgy and Divine Office of the New Law.  He quotes St. Basil, who calls psalmody the voice of the infant Church, and Urban VIII., who calls psalmody the daughter of hymnody which is chanted before the throne of God in Heaven.  Two quotations from St. Athanasius and St. Augustine, in praise of psalmody, are added.

2.  In the Psalms there is a certain wonderful power which arouses in souls a zeal for all virtues.  Two quotations from St. Augustine are added.  One says that as it is written that all Scriptures both of the Old and the New Testaments are divinely inspired and useful for our instruction....  Nevertheless, the book of the Psalms is, as it were, a very Paradise containing in itself the fruits of all the other books and expressing them in hymns; and moreover it joins its own hymns to them and merges them in the general song of praise.  Two further quotations from St. Augustine, in similar strain, follow.  For who will be, asks the saint, unmoved by those frequent passages in the Psalms in which are proclaimed the immensity, the omnipotence, the infallible justice, the goodness, the clemency of God?  Or who is not moved by the prayers and thanksgivings for benefits received by the humble and trustful petitions, by the cries of souls sorrowing for sin, found in the Psalms?  Whom will the Psalmist not fill with admiration when he recounts the gifts of the Divine loving kindness towards the people of Israel and all mankind, and when he sets forth the truths of heavenly wisdom?  Who, finally, will not be inflamed with love by the carefully foreshadowed figure of Christ, our Redeemer, whose voice St. Augustine heard in the Psalms, either singing or sighing or rejoicing in Hope or mourning in present sorrow?

3.  In, former ages it was decreed by Popes and Councils and by monastic laws that the whole Psaltery should be recited weekly.  Pope St. Pius V., Pope Clement VIII., and Pope Urban VIII. in their revisions of the Breviary ordered this weekly recitation.  And even at the present time, such would be the recitation of the Psalter had not the condition of things changed.

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The Divine Office from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.