'Et erant semper in templo': The Divine Office as Priestly Temple Service (original) (raw)

This paper seeks to show that the history of the Divine Office (the Church's daily "pensum servitutis" or "bounden duty"), is but the gradual unfolding of the image with which the Evangelist Luke closes his Gospel “They were continually in the Temple, praising and blessing God”, and which he immediately resumed in the Book of Acts, speaking of perseverance in apostolic teaching, eucharistic communion, and “the prayers” (tais proseuchais). This and other NT texts, when situated in their proper Jewish apocalyptic context, reveal a primitive community understanding itself to be the universal doxological community foretold by the Prophets, "a kingdom of priests" (Exod. 19:6, Apoc. 5:10) offering up unbloody, rational sacrifices upon earth, in a way mirroring the heavenly ministrations of Christ the High Priest and the Angels who serve him. Brief consideration is given to the problem of historicism in liturgical scholarship, which has tended to de-emphasise or deny altogether a sense of continuity with the "Temple idea" — even as, ironically, biblical scholarship more and more confirms the vital importance of Jewish temple mysticism in solving some of the most difficult puzzles regarding Christian origins. Far more important, however, than debates among contemporary scholars is the Church's living memory, witnessing to a divine reality which mere historical investigation cannot access. In order to show the pervasive nature of Temple concepts and imagery in traditional Catholic worship, the paper concludes with a brief mystagogy of the Office of Vespers according to the traditional Roman Breviary, celebrated in the solemn pontifical form. The paper was originally delivered at the Fota XI International Liturgical Conference, July 7-9, 2018. The proceedings have just been published by Smenos Publications.