Customer Reviews

The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West

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As a liturgist, I have deeply studied the Liturgy of the Hours for many years. As a presbyter, I have offered the Liturgy of the Hours for seven years. As a Christian, I have been fascinated with the Liturgy of the Hours for nearly fifteen years. Robert Taft's masterful work has given to me, and to all of his readers, a deeper love for the Office, fuller information to use in revising the Office in various jurisdictions and denominations, and - without intending to do so - has given inspiration to many to offer prayer with the Church, through his witness to the purpose of the Office.

I highly recommend this book to all who are seeking both a scholarly and spiritually moving work on the topic of the full history, Oriential, Byzantine, and Latin, of the Liturgy of the Hours.

The Prayer Offices of the Church often get side-stepped with the LCMS-thankfully there are a few brave souls who are trying to revive these offices. In my own parish I now offer Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer several times a month and it has been well received thus far. Taft's work is a great overview of the history of the Hours and reading it you can't help but wonder why such a magnificent use of the liturgy has gone by the wayside on the contemporary Christian front. What I love about the Prayer Offices is the tendency that they have to `slow' one down, stop the mind from racing, gently allowing one to bring Christ into focus through its liturgy and Psalms.

Taft is one of the world's leading liturgical experts, and here he demonstrates his mastery of how the Church "redeemed the time". I really appreciate not only his style of writing, but the way he integrates primary sources into the text without feeling disjointed.

While highly technical, and not something that could be used for devotional material per se (see the excellent duo For the Life of the World: Sacraments and Orthodoxy or Hymn of Entry: Liturgy and Life in the Orthodox Church (Contemporary Greek Theologians Series , No 1) for that), Taft does cover every historical detail in an organized manner, beginning with the Jewish background to prayer as practiced in the New Testament moving chronologically forward. Both Eastern (Byzantine, Coptic, African, Armenian etc) and Western theologies and practices (Roman and Reformed) are covered in detail.

His concluding chapters on the value of the office as the Church's school of prayer shows his own love of the Church and God based upon his decades of living these offices on a daily basis. So I suppose I was wrong about there being no devotional application from this text. :)

Other books of interest, aside from Taft's other works, would include: Shape of the Liturgy, New Edition, The Sacramental Life: Gregory Dix and his Writings (Canterbury Studies in Spiritual Theology), The Urban Character of Christian Worship: The Origins, Development, and Meaning of Stational Liturgy, Great High Priest: The Temple Roots of Christian Liturgy, Temple Themes in Christian Worship, Bible and the Liturgy, Wedding Feast of the Lamb and The Feasts of the Lord.

Enjoy!

Anyone wanting a grasp of the history of the divine office's development will find this book valuable. Most illuminating is the discussion of the disintegration of the divine office in the Roman church; the paeans reserved for the Byzantine office show where Fr Robert's heart really lies.