Thomas Merton on the Divine Office
I came across this moving testimony to the of the Liturgy of the Hours in Thomas Merton’s autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain:
Presently [my brother] said: “What’s that package you’ve got under your arm? Buy some books?”
“Yes.”
When he had unlocked the car, I ripped the paper off the package, and took out the cardboard box containing the set of four books, bound in black leather, marked in gold.
I handed him one of the volumes. It was sleek and smelled new. The pages were edged in gold. There were red and green markers.
“What are they?” said John Paul.
“Breviaries.”
I did not have any lofty theories about the vocation of a lay-contemplative. In fact, I no longer dignified what I was
trying to do by the name of a vocation. All I knew was that I wanted grace, and that I needed prayer, and that I was helpless without God, and that I wanted to do everything that people did to keep close to Him.
I did not even reflect how the Breviary, the Canonical Office, was the most powerful and effective prayer I could possibly have chosen, since it is the prayer of the whole Church, and concentrates in itself all the power of the Church’s impetration, centered around the infinitely mighty Sacrifice of the Mass–the jewel of which the rest of the Liturgy is the setting: the soul which is the life of the whole Liturgy and of all the Sacramentals. All this was beyond me, although I grasped it at least obscurely. All I knew was that I needed to say the Breviary, and say it every day.
Buying those books at Benziger’s that day was one of the best things I ever did in my life. The inspiration to do it was a very great grace. There are few things I can remember that give me more joy.
The first time I actually tried to say the Office was on the feast of the Curé of Ars, St. John Vianney. I was on the train, going back to Olean…
As soon as the train was well started on its journey, and was climbing into the hills towards Suffern, I opened up the book and began right away with Matins…
It was a happy experience, although its exultancy was subdued and lost under my hesitation and external confusion about how to find my way around in the jungle of the rubrics…
The Breviary was hard to learn, and every step was labor and confusion, not to mention the mistakes and perplexities I got myself into. However, Father Irenaeus helped to straighten me out, and told me how the various feasts worked together, and how to say first Vespers for the proper feast, and all the other things one needs to find out. Apart from him, however, I didn’t even speak of the Breviary to any other priest. I kept quiet about it, half fearing that someone would make fun of me, or think I was eccentric, or try to snatch my books from me on some pretext.
…and from the secret places of His essence, God began to fill my soul with grace in those days, grace that sprung from deep within me, I could not know how or where. But yet I would be able, after not so many months, to realize what was there, in the peace and the strength that were growing in me through my constant immersion in this tremendous, unending cycle of prayer, ever renewing its vitality, its inexhaustible, sweet energies, from hour to hour, from season to season in its returning round. And I, drawn into that atmosphere, into that deep, vast universal movement of vitalizing prayer, which is Christ praying in men to His Father, could not help but begin at last to live, and to know that I was alive. And my heart could not help but cry out within me: “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live: I will sing praise to my God while I have my being. Let my speech be acceptable to Him: but I will take delight in the Lord.”
For more on praying the Liturgy of the Hours, see the following resources:
