BeforeItsNews only exists through ads. We ask all patriots who appreciate the evil we expose and want to
help us savage the NWO with more Truth to disable your ad-blocker on our site only so we can grow and expose more evil! Funding
gives us more weapons! Thank you patriots! Oh and If you disable the Ad-blocker - on your deathbed you will receive total
consciousness. So you got that going for you...which is nice!
% of readers think this story is Fact. Add your two cents.
On the Gregorian calendar, Monday was the first day of Great Lent in the Byzantine Rite; here is an interesting thing about the Byzantine Divine Office and its use of the Psalms in this season. (On the Julian calendar, the first day of Lent will be on the Gregorian date March 15, and Easter on May 2.) As with everything in the Byzantine Rite, exceptions abound, and this is not a comprehensive account of all the possible variations and substitutions.
The Hours of the Byzantine Office all have one or more Psalms as part of their permanent and mostly invariable structure, analogous to the Roman Rite’s daily use of Psalm 94 as the invitatory or the invariable Psalms of Terce-None and Compline (before the reform of 1911). So for example, Psalm 103 is said every day as part of the introductory rites of Vespers; the same three Psalms (5-89-100) are said at Prime 355 days of the year, etc.
However, the entire Psalter, including the Psalms that are also used elsewhere as structural elements, is also divided into 20 sections called “kathismata.” Each kathisma is subdivided into three “staseis”, each of which concludes with the doxology, then three repetitions of “Alleluja, alleluja, alleluja; glory to Thee, o God”, “Lord, have mercy” three times, and the doxology again. Normally, one kathisma is said at Vespers, except on Sunday evening, and two at Orthros. The whole Psalter is therefore read over the course of a week.
This first table shows how the Psalms are distributed through the kathismata; the number of psalms per stasis is irregular to account for their varying length.
This second table shows how the kathismata are normally distributed through the week. Two pairs of them are said out of order on Friday (19 and 20) and Saturday (16 and 17), since the 17th is said on weekdays at the Hour known as the Midnight Office, which I have described in a previous article. (This is one of the very few places where the Byzantine Rite makes a formal accomodation to the idea of keeping the Office from getting too long or too repetitive.)
In Lent, however, the Psalter is done TWICE in a week. On weekdays, three kathismata are done at Orthros instead of two, and one is added to the Hours from Prime-None, with three exceptions (Prime of Monday, and Prime and None of Friday.) In this Lenten system, the same kathisma, the 18th, which consists of the 15 Gradual Psalms, is said at Vespers on all the weekdays. This coincides with the custom by which the Divine Liturgy is not offered on the weekdays of Lent, and so more time can be dedicated to the Office.
(Hours with no kathisma are left blank in this table, which accounts for the first four weeks and the sixth week of Lent. During the fifth week, there is an adjustment to the order to accomodate a special and spectacularly lengthy service held on Thursday of that week, which is too complicated to explain here.)
In the first round (from Sunday Vespers to Orthros of Wednesday), the 17th kathisma is omitted, again, because it said at the Midnight Office. On the other hand, there are three occasions (Terce of Monday, Prime of Tuesday, and None of Thursday) in which the same Psalm is said as one of the regular daily Psalms of those Hours, and then repeated almost immediately in the kathisma. On the last of these occasions, Psalm 85 is said twice back-to-back, once as the third of the daily Psalms of None (83-84-85), and immediately again as the first Psalm of the 12th kathisma.
It should be kept in mind that this system is generally only used in full in monasteries; in practice, other churches, especially parishes, will either abbreviate the kathismata or omit them altogether. For example, in Slavic practice, the first kathisma at Vespers on Saturday evening, Psalms 1-8, is often abbreviated into this very nice piece of music, which only includes a few select verses of these Psalms.
It should also be borne in mind that the kathismata are basically done as readings by a single reader in a recitative tone. There is nothing analogous to Roman antiphons, and there is no melody to them analogous to a Roman psalm-tone. The recitation of the Psalms therefore does not take anywhere near as long as it would if they were being done according to the normal manner in which Psalms are sung in the Roman Rite.
Last but not least, the kathisma system is dropped completely from Orthros of the morning of Holy Thursday until None of the Saturday of Bright Week (the Byzantine term for the Easter octave), and then resumed at Vespers of St Thomas Sunday; so basically, the monks give themselves a break from the Psalter for ten days, the first three of which are nevertheless among the lengthiest of the entire year.
