Wednesday, January 27, 2010

*Sigh*

I wonder how it is that priests and religious can say compline from memory. I can't do it. I know, you're going to say "But they use an invariable compline!" Well, thanks to the Consilium, so do I. I only use the compline from Sunday after II vespers, just like the pre-Pius X breviaries had. But even still, I remember everything but the psalm 'Qui habitat in audiutorio Altissimi' and the short reading. I guess that's okay, but I'm missing the most important part.

3 comments:

Bb said...

Keep on at it.

I stopped using Benedictine Compline for a while as I started using Byzantine offices privately. That didn't work out quite so well for me so I went back to the Benedictine hours. I started Compline and realised that, actually, I only very seldom needed to refer to the text after months of not having looked at it.

You're a musical sort. Do you say or sing the office? If you say it, that may be one reason why you don't recall it as easily.

Just a thought.

J.Samuel Ross. said...

I sing compline on Sundays and after feasts. And the parts I remember are the parts I started singing first.

Eh, maybe it has more to do with the fact that for the first four years I was saying the office, I used different psalms daily and never tried to remember it.

Bb said...

Possibly. Keep at it and keep singing. It will come.