Privileged Participation in the High Priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Introduction
The Sacred Liturgy is the highest and most perfect expression of the priest’s spousal union with Christ. Today, I am reflecting on the Divine Office which, together with the Holy Eucharist, is the sacred work to which the priest is first and foremost given.
Saint Paul, at the conclusion of his First Letter to the Thessalonians, putting all of life within the perspective of eternal life, urged the early Christians to live in Christ through the practice of the virtues. He concludes his exhortation with the words:
Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit, do not despise prophesying, but test everything; hold fast what is good, abstain from every form of evil.[1]
At the heart of our life in Christ is prayer. Prayer informs every hour of the life of the Christian. It keeps the Christian united to Christ, the source of all life and holiness, and strengthens the Christian to truly follow Him in all things. Saint Paul understood that what he was commanding is “the will of God in Christ Jesus for [us].”[2]
Our Lord Himself is the model of the constant prayer by which the Christian sanctifies time, sanctifies each day and each hour of each day. The Gospels tell us that Our Lord often retired to a quiet place, either the desert or the mountain, in order to pray.[3] At the same time, He urged His disciples, and, in a particular way, the Apostles, to pray always. The Gospel according to Saint Luke recounts the parable of the widow who insists with the unjust judge for a pronouncement in accord with justice. The Gospel introduces the parable with the words: “And he told them a parable, to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.”[4] At the conclusion of the parable, in which the unjust judge finally does what is just because of the insistence of the widow, Our Lord declares:
Hear what the unrighteous judge says. And will not God vindicate his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them? I tell you, he will vindicate them speedily. Nevertheless, when the Son of man comes, will he find faith on earth?[5]
In the midst of all the challenges, trials, injustices, sufferings, and persecutions which following Christ faithfully necessarily involves, faith leads to prayer, and prayer leads to trust that our prayer will not go unanswered. The question which Our Lord poses at the end of the parable reminds us that failure to pray constantly is the sign of the loss of faith.
The participation of the ordained priest in the Eternal High Priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ finds a particular reflection in the praying of the Divine Office. Blessed Dom Columba Marmion writes:
We do not cease to be priests when we come down from the altar. After the sacrifice of the Mass there remains another priestly activity which we must offer to God: we must offer praise to Him by the recitation of the divine Office. Was not the whole life of Jesus an act of priestly homage? From the time He came into the world, it was as a priest that the Word Incarnate presented Himself to the Father, and, during His whole life on earth the adoration and praise of Jesus are continuous.
Before the recitation of the Hours we allude to this constant sacerdotal prayer of the Saviour when we declare that we wish to recite these Hours in union with the divine intention which animated Him on earth in His praise of God.
By his daily recourse to the breviary; therefore, the priest intends to imitate Christ in His contemplation of the Father and in His perfect prayer. In this manner He gives to the Lord the glory which is His right.
From the time of his ordination to the sub-diaconate [currently the diaconate], the life of the minister of Christ is entirely devoted to the divine service. Worship is the first and principal purpose of his state. That is why the Church not merely urges him to be a man of prayer but prescribes the very form of his prayers. For the ordinary Catholic, apart from assistance at Mass and the reception of the sacraments, everything is left to his private devotion; but the supplication and praise of the priest are so important that the Church herself prescribes the order of them.
She imposes this prayer under grave obligation. Why is the obligation grave?
First of all, because the canonical Hours constitute an act of religious homage which the Church considers herself bound to offer to God by the mouth of her ministers. Secondly, because the priest, if he is to avoid moral mediocrity and to maintain his fervour, must have recourse to this great instrument of prayer constantly renewed.[6]
It will be helpful now to address some aspects of the Divine Office as a privileged way in which the ordained priest participates in the Eternal High Priesthood of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
It will be good, at the beginning, to address the question of terminology used to describe the public prayers by which the prayer of Christ is extended throughout the day by the Church. In the 1983 Code of Canon Law, these prayers are no longer called the “Breviary” or the “Divine Office” but are called the “Liturgy of the Hours,” a term used for the first time in 1959. Sacrosanctum Concilium uses the terminology of “Divine Office,” while referring to the “hours” which constitute it.
The term, “Breviary” appeared in the 13th century to name the abbreviation of the ancient Divine Office. It contained those prayers which must be said each day by priests on mission or in travel. As one author suggests, perhaps it is no longer the most appropriate term to use in discussing the complex reality of the Divine Office.[7]
The same author is critical of the use of the term, Divine Office, because it is a generic term which could refer also to the exercise of every liturgical action, for example, the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.[8] I am not so convinced by his observation. While certainly every liturgical action is an exercise of the officium divinum, a fulfillment of the ius divinum written upon the human heart, so that man, by his nature, is required to worship God in the manner in which God has determined, there is a paradigmatic sense in which the officium divinum is exercised by means of the public prayer of the Church at the canonical hours.
The 1917 Code of Canon Law referred to the Liturgy of the Hours as the observance of the “canonical hours.” In a certain sense, the term, “canonical hours,” is quite appropriate, since it refers to the sanctification of time by public prayer offered at certain hours indicated by liturgical law.
The further question to be asked is whether the term, “Liturgy of the Hours,” expresses adequately the particular form of Divine Worship involved.[9] It is not the hours which are liturgical, but the action of the Sacred Liturgy takes place at certain hours as prescribed by the law. In that sense, it would probably be more accurate to use a term like “Sacred Liturgy at the Canonical Hours.”
In the end, it may be best to remain with the terminology which has been used traditionally to refer to the official prayer at the various canonical hours, “The Divine Office.” It is the divinely established work of Christians to sanctify the hours of the day by the praying of certain psalms, the reading of certain sacred texts, and the singing of ancient hymns.
Pope Saint John Paul II, in his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis sets forth the Church’s understanding of the central importance of the worship at the liturgical hours in the life of the priest. He writes:
It is above all in the celebration of the Sacraments and in the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours that the priest is called to live and witness to the deep unity between the exercise of his ministry and his spiritual life. The gift of grace offered to the Church becomes the principle of holiness and a call to sanctification.[10]
The sanctification of the priest and the sanctification of the hours of the day, which Christ accomplishes through the Liturgy of the Hours is the irreplaceable foundation of his sacred ministry carried out in the person of Christ, Head and Shepherd of the flock at every time and in every place.
I recall a conversation with an older priest, shortly after I had taken up my first priestly assignment. Having been invited to the rectory of his parish for a gathering of priests, I noticed that his book of the Liturgy of the Hours was sitting on an end table, as we say, “collecting dust.” I asked him about the importance of the Divine Office, to which he responded: “My work is my prayer.” From my priestly experience in those years, I observed that some priests had lost the sense of the irreplaceable spiritual foundation of their priestly ministry to be found in the Divine Office. The great danger in such an abstraction of the active priestly life from the contemplative spiritual life of the priest is priestly action undertaken, not as it should be “in persona Christi Capitis”[11], but as work of the priest himself. In other words, if the priest is not in communion with Our Lord through prayer, especially the praying of the Divine Office, he will not be able to bring Christ to others.
Likewise, in his Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Gregis, Pope Saint John Paul II underlines strongly the irreplaceable part of worship at the liturgical hours in the spiritual life of the Bishop. Having first treated the primacy of place of the Eucharistic Sacrifice and Communion in the Bishop’s spiritual life, he writes:
A second means (for the advancement of the Bishop’s spiritual life) mentioned by the Synod Fathers is prayer, especially the prayer raised to the Lord in the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, which remains the distinctive prayer of the Christian community, carried out in the name of Christ and under the guidance of the Spirit…
With regard to the Liturgy of the Hours, which is meant to consecrate and guide the course of the entire day through the praise of God, we cannot fail to recall the impressive statement of the Second Vatican Council: “When this wonderful song of praise is worthily rendered by priests and others who are deputed for this purpose by Church ordinance, or by the faithful praying together with the priest in an approved form, it is truly the voice of the Bride addressing her Bridegroom; it is the very prayer which Christ himself, together with his Body, addresses to the Father. Hence, all who perform this service are not only fulfilling a duty of the Church but also are sharing in the greatest honour accorded to Christ’s Spouse, for by offering these praises to God they are standing before God’s throne in the name of the Church, their Mother”. Writing on the prayer of the Divine Office, my predecessor of venerable memory Pope Paul VI, called it “the prayer of the local Church”, which expresses “the true nature of the praying Church”. The consecratio temporis, effected by the Liturgy of the Hours, brings about that laus perennis which is an anticipation and prefiguration of the heavenly liturgy and a bond of union with the angels and saints who glorify God’s name throughout eternity. The Bishop will become, and will appear, as a man of hope to the extent that he enters into the eschatological dynamism of praying the Psalter. The Psalms resound with the voice of the Bride (vox sponsae) as she calls upon her Bridegroom.[12]
The Bishop, as a true shepherd of the flock with solicitude not only for the particular portion of the flock entrusted to his care but for the universal Church, fulfills his pastoral office, in an essential way, through divine worship at the canonical hours. The public prayer of the universal Church for the salvation of souls, which is the Divine Office, is, first and foremost, the prayer of the Bishop.
Dom Marmion pays tribute to the excellence of the Divine Office. He teaches us:
In the adorable Trinity, God gives Himself a glory worthy of God, a praise which is perfect. We know this by revelation; it is the Word, the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity Who is the glory of the Father: splendor gloriae et figura substantiae eius [“He reflects the glory of God and bears the very stamp of his nature”] (Heb 1:3). In the bosom of the Father, He is, of His own right, the sublime eternal canticle: et Verbum erat apud Deum [“and the Word was with God” (Jn 1:1), the infinite hymn of glory chanted in sinu Patris [“in the bosom of the Father”]. We cannot form an adequate idea of this praise which the Son gives to the Father, as the subsisting Word, expressing all His perfection.
Moreover, being united with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Word has created all things: omnia per ipsum facta sunt [“all things were made through him”]. The Father has conceived this creation in His wisdom: “in that which was made was the life” and it redounded to the glory of the Father: quod factum est in ipso vita erat [“what was made in him was life”]. By the Incarnation the Son has not ceased to be the living Word, the Canticle which He was already; but, through the human nature which He assumed in His divine Person, He has praised the Father under a new form. And so, in the Word Incarnate, human praise acquired a new splendour. We can recognize in Christ, therefore, a divine paean of glorification – Which is of an order far above us and which we adore – and a human hymn of praise. As man, Jesus praised His Father and loved His Father in the joy of His participation in the eternal sonship. His soul contemplated, in the Word, the life of the Trinity.
But, furthermore, the whole of created nature took in Him a new impulse to bless the Father. Jesus was the mouth-piece of the whole of creation. This praise was still the praise of a God but it was expressed in human language in conformity with our nature, and varied in its expression.
What a subject for contemplation the prayer of Jesus during His life on earth affords us! Erat pernoctans in oratione Dei: “all night he continued in prayer to God” (Lk 6:12). And when Jesus sang in the synagogue or prayed in the temple with the Jewish community – as He did doubtless from the age of twelve – His prayer ascended to God like incense, like a sweet perfume, in odorem suavitatis. He knew the Psalms. All the religious attitudes evoked by these inspired canticles, took life in Him in a manner which was sublime: “All ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord”; “[Lord], sovereign Master, how admirable is Thy Name in the whole earth”: quam admirabile est nomen tuum (Ps 8:1).
Jesus rendered in a perfect manner that worship of prayer which man owes to God in all justice. He honoured the Father by adoration, love, praise, thanksgiving and petition. And as a consequence of the union of the humanity with the Word these acts attained in Him a perfection and a value which were infinite.
Before ascending to heaven, Christ bequeathed to His Spouse, the Church, all the riches of His merits, of His graces, of His teaching, and also the power to continue on earth the work of the glorification of the Trinity which had been inaugurated by Him.
…
The sacrifice of the Mass is the sacrificium laudis [“sacrifice of praise”] par excellence, but the whole day long this sacrifice is prolonged by the divine Office of which the Hours constitute, as it were, a constant radiance of the sacred immolation. Our special mission as priests is to be the delegates to carry out these functions. On his ordination as deacon the priest received the privilege to speak to God in the name of all: totius Ecclesiae sit quasi os [that is, “the mouth of the whole Church”] [St. Bernardinus of Siena: Opera omnia, Venetiis, apud Juntas, 1951. (I Sermo 20, p. 132)]. He prays for sinners and also for the souls united to Christ by charity. When he says his Office, he acts as an ambassador, as an accredited mediator, because he praises and intercedes for all in the name of the Church. This official prayer is always acceptable: Sonet vox tua in auribus meis [“May your voice sound in my ears”] (Song 2:14 – “your voice is sweet”). At every moment the priest has free entry to audience with the divinity. Even if his own personal dispositions do not correspond to his mission, his delegation by the Church makes up in a sovereign manner for his deficiencies. That is why a missioner in the depths of the bush does not say Orem [Let me pray] but Oremus (Let us pray). It is the name of the whole of Christendom that he sends up his prayer to God.
This priestly work of praise and intercession is in the highest degree efficacious for the salvation of the world. “May the evening prayer ascend to you, O Lord, and may your mercy descend upon us.” The Lord could certainly sanctify souls without our help but, in His goodness, He wills to use our collaboration. The divine Office plays a great part in the order of Providence. Certainly the recitation of the Office is a great exercise of faith; we do not see the results of our efforts or of our prayers. God knows them and allots the merit due. We can understand, then, the value attached to the canonical Hours which St. Benedict calls by the splendid name Opus Dei [the Work of God] and of which St. Alphonsus says that a hundred private prayers have not the value of a single prayer said in the divine Office [Oeuvres Complètes II, p. 209, translated by Dujardin (Tournai: Casterman, 1882)]. It is a magnificent work which is entrusted to us. What does God expect of His priests? The generosity to spend themselves for the salvation of souls certainly; but this giving of self must be made fruitful by the recitation of the breviary. You must be convinced of this.[13]
I conclude with the account of the salvific action of the Liturgy of the Hours in the life of a priest working in a mission far from his home during the Second World War. I speak of Father James Hennessy, a priest of the Archdiocese of Boston, who died during the Second World War, while serving in the missions of the South Pacific.[14]
Father James “Jim” Gerard Hennessy was born on September 24, 1905. Having heard the call to the Holy Priesthood, he was sent by the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston to undertake seminary studies at the Pontifical North American College in Rome. As he was completing those studies, he was ordained to the priesthood for the Archdiocese of Boston at the Basilica of Saint John Lateran on December 20, 1930.
He was described as a promising young priest in his first two priestly assignments, the second of which was assistant priest at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross, where he came to know the then Father Richard J. Cushing, Rector of the Cathedral and Director of the Office of the Propagation of the Faith. Many missionaries would visit with Father Cushing at the Cathedral Rectory. Their visits inspired in Father Hennessy the desire to the serve the missions. With the help of Father Cushing, he volunteered his services to Bishop Thomas Wade, O.M.I., a native of Rhode Island, who oversaw the missions on the Solomon Islands. Cardinal William O’Connell, Archbishop of Boston, refused Father Hennessy’s request two times, but, at the third request and with a certain exasperation, he granted the request, a temporary leave of absence, on June 3, 1936. Father Hennessy was the first priest of the Archdiocese to serve in the foreign missions.
While serving in the missions on the Solomon Islands, Father Hennessy helped establish a school for children and trained native catechists, while overcoming many challenges in doing so. He was also known for having fostered a number of vocations to the priesthood. He became most beloved to the local population.
He completed his five years of service in 1941 but agreed to stay until a replacement was available to take his place. Unfortunately, following the outbreak of World War II, the Japanese arrived to occupy the Solomon Islands, and, despite warnings, Father Hennessy stayed at his post and was captured by the occupying troops on Saint Patrick’s Day in 1942.
For years his fate remained a mystery. During the intervening time, his mentor, now Cardinal Richard J. Cushing, established the Father Jim Hennessy Club in his honor, with the intention of learning about and supporting missions and missionaries around the world. One of Father Hennessy’s brothers, Frank, also volunteered to serve as Bishop Wade’s secretary so that he could continue his brother’s work and try to solve the mystery surrounding his brother’s disappearance.
Finally, a 1947 letter from the U.S. Navy Department to Frank Hennessy and Cardinal Cushing revealed that Father Hennessy had been on the Japanese prisoner ship, the Montevideo Maru, when it was sunk by a U.S. submarine on July 1, 1942. The following account is taken from a booklet published by Saint John’s Seminary in Boston, which references a pamphlet, “War Comes to Buka,” by Father Joseph Lamarre, S.M.[15]:
On that fateful Sunday, March 17th, 1942, Father Hennessy was put aboard a Japanese warship and taken from his now-beloved island. Little is known what happened to him except what Father Lamarre has recorded for us. Other prisoners reported that Father Hennessy was court-martialed, condemned and later pardoned.
After six weeks on the warship, he was again imprisoned in Kavieng on New Ireland. Here he was compelled to work in a stone quarry which was especially difficult because of the tropical heat. True to his indomitable spirit Father Hennessy bore up admirably under the strain, for Father V. S. Turner who was with him later at Rabaul writes in a letter to Archbishop Cushing, “I remember Father Hennessy saying later how much the Psalms of the breviary helped him during that period, how much more he got hold of their meaning.” Missionaries who were later imprisoned in the same jail, saw written on the wall: “In Te, Domine speravi, non confundar in aeternum. [In You, O Lord, I have hoped; I will not be put shame for ever.] – James Hennessy.”
From the quarry, he was moved to Rabaul, on the Island of New Britain, and then was being moved again when his transport was torpedoed by a United States Navy vessel.[16]
Another account states that the Montevideo Maru was ordered to return to port and upon its return, the prisoners were executed. Father Hennessy’s remains have never been found but his chalice and paten, burse, ciborium and pyx for bringing Holy Communion to the homebound, which he had carefully hidden, when the danger of capture by the Japanese became real, were eventually returned to the Archdiocese of Boston by a missionary priest who came into the possession of the hidden sacred objects.[17]
The story of Father James Hennessy is a testimony to the divine grace communicated through the Divine Office. The testimony which Father Hennessy left behind centered upon the understanding and strength which the praying of the Divine Office provided to him, especially in the trials of a missionary during time of war. During his imprisonment and hard labor, he declared that he “got hold of the meaning” of the Psalms of the canonical hours. Inscribed upon the wall of his prison cell were the concluding words of the Te Deum: “In You, O Lord, I have hoped; I will not be put to shame for ever.”
In praying the Divine Office, may we more and more “get hold of the meaning” of the Word of God, the expression of our deepest being, the gift of God Who is the origin and final destiny of our life.
Today, let us consider the great gift of our communion with Jesus Christ Eternal High Priest through the praying of the Divine Office. In a particular way let us renew our appreciation of the Divine Office as a privileged way of the priest to give glory to God and to win salvation for souls.
Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke
[1] 1 Thes 5, 16-20.
[2] 1 Thes 5, 18.
[3] Cf., for example, Mt 14, 23; Mk 1, 35; Mk 6, 46; and Lk 6, 12.
[4] Lk 18, 1.
[5] Lk 18, 6-8.
[6] Dom Marmion, Christ: The Ideal of the Priest, tr. Dom Matthew Dillon (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2005), pp. 255-256. [Hereafter, Dom Marmion].
[7] Cf. Constant Van de Wiel, “La Liturgie des Heures d’après le droit canonique,” Questions liturgiques 74 (1993), 221. [Hereafter, Van de Wiel].
[8] Cf. Van de Wiel, 221.
[9] Cf. Vincenzo Raffa, La liturgia delle ore. Presentazione storica, teologica e pastorale, 3ª ed. riveduta e ampliata (Roma: CLV-Edizioni Liturgiche, 1990), pp. 21-23. [Hereafter, Vincenzo Raffa].
[10] “Maxime autem vocatur sacerdos ad testificandam profundam unitatem quae viget inter exercitium sui ministerii et vitam spiritualem, in celebrandis Sacramentis et in celebratione Liturgiae Horarum: donum gratiae, quod Ecclesiae offertur, vitae et sanctitatis principium et vocatio ad sanctificationem est.” Ioannis Pauli PP. II, Adhortatio Apostolica Postsynodalis Pastores dabo vobis, “de Sacerdotum formatione in aetatis nostrae rerum condicione,” 25 Martii 1992, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 84 (1992) 698-699, n. 26. English translation: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Dabo Vobis (Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1992), p. 68, no. 26.
[11] Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1548.
[12] “Alterum a synodalibus Patribus significatum instrumentum est precatio, potissimum ea quae ad Dominum elevatur per Horarum Liturgiae celebrationem, quae praecipua et perennis est christianae communitatis precatio, Christi nomine ac Spiritu Sancto duce peracta…
Quod autem ad Liturgiam Horarum attinet, quae ad consecrandum et ordinandum totum diei cursum per Dei laudem destinatur, quidni insignes commemoremus Concilii Vaticani II sententias? «Cum vero mirabile illud laudis canticum rite peragunt sacerdotes aliique ad hanc rem Ecclesiae instituto deputati vel christifideles una cum sacerdote forma probata orantes, tunc vere vox est ipsius Sponsae, quae Sponsum alloquitur, immo etiam oratio Christi cum ipsius Corpore ad Patrem. Omnes proinde qui haec precatio, tum Ecclesiae officium explent, tum summum Sponsae Christi honorem participant, quia laudes Deo persolventes stant ante thronum Dei nomine Matris Ecclesiae». Cum Divini de Officii oratione scriberet Decessor Noster, recolendae memoriae, Paulus VI asseveravit ipsam esse «Ecclesiae localis precationem», quae «veram Ecclesiae orantis naturam exprimit». In consecratione temporis, quam Liturgia Horarum efficit, illa laus perennis perficitur, quae praevertit et caelestem Liturgiam praefigurat, unitatis vinculum cum angelis sanctisque qui in aeternum Dei nomen clarificant. Tantum igitur Episcopus se spei virum ostendit et efficit, quantum in eschatologicam vim motionemque se insinuat Psalterii orationis. In Psalmis Vox sponsae personat, quae Sponsum invocat.” Ioannes Paulus PP. II, Adhortatio Apostolica Post-Synodalis Pastores gregis, “de Episcopo ministro Evangelii Iesu Christi pro mundi spe,” 16 Octobris 2003, Acta Apostolicae Sedis 96 (2004) 848-849, n. 17. English translation: Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Pastores Gregis(Vatican City: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2003), pp. 48-50, no. 17.
[13] Dom Marmion, pp. 256-260.
[14] His Excellency, Bishop Walter James Edyvean, Auxiliary Bishop of Boston, first told me the story of Father Hennessy, during the time when we were serving together in the Roman Curia in the 1990s, he in the Congregation for Catholic Education and I at the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura. When I was doing the research for this presentation and sought details of the life and death of Father Hennessy, Bishop Edyvean put me in contact with Dr. Thomas P. Lester, Archivist and Records Manager of the Archdiocese of Boston. Dr. Lester was prompt and most helpful in his response to me, providing for me copies of the documents which I cite herein. I express my deepest gratitude to Bishop Edyvean and to Dr. Lester.
[15] Dr. Thomas P. Lester, Archivist and Records Manager of the Archdiocese of Boston, informed me that the Archives of the Archdiocese of Boston has thus far been unsuccessful in obtaining a copy of the pamphlet in question. I inquired with the Archdiocese of Honiara, the Diocese of Bouganville, and the Generalate of the Society of Mary (Marists), none of which had a copy of the pamphlet.
[16] Mission Academia of St. John’s Seminary, Fr. Jim Hennessy 1905 †1942, pamphlet printed for private circulation in connection with an exhibit in memory of Father James Hennessy, March 12th to 19th 1950, pp. 9-10.
[17] Cf. Archive of the Archdiocese of Boston, Father Jim Hennessy: Missionary and Martyr, Exhibit – Fall/Winter 2016.