Living the Little Office
BZ$28.13
Little Offices of the Passion
By St. Bonaventure and St. Francis
177 pp. paperback
The saints of the Church have often produced aids for those desiring to grow in devotion to Our Lord, especially to his Passion; and while the saints have employed many different genres to inform devotion to Christ, there is perhaps none greater than the devotion offered in a liturgical Office.
This little book, which presents two of these Offices by two of the great saints of the Church, is what men and women of the medieval period would have called a Book of Hours.
It is these types of shorter daily Offices which are customarily found in Books of Hours designed for lay devotional use. The most popular of these “Little Offices” was that of the Blessed Virgin Mary, but other offices were often included alongside it the Office of the Dead, the Office of the Cross, the Office of the Holy Ghost, or an Office of the Passion as we have here. St. Francis is known to have said the Church’s Office and his own Office of the Passion every day.
Offices dedicated to the Passion commemorate Christ’s suffering by connecting specific hours of prayer to the moments of His Passion: the Crucifixion, for example, was always remembered at the hour of Sext. St. Bonaventure and St. Francis of Assisi were particularly suited to produce rich texts for devotional prayer on the Passion. To the initial texts of his Office, St. Francis added more and more pieces over the course of his life, until the Office of the Passion assumed the shape it now.
In 1257, St. Bonaventure was elected Minister General of the Franciscan order. He served in this capacity into the 1270s, when he was made a Cardinal Bishop. The Franciscans at Paris had developed close ties with the royal court of St. Louis IX. St. Bonaventure preached before the royal family on many occasions. It is traditionally believed that St. Bonaventure composed the Office of the Passion at the request of St. Louis IX for the royal saint’s own use.
The two Offices presented here begin the narrative of the Passion in slightly different places: St. Bonaventure’s begins at Matins and Lauds, remembering Christ imprisoned in the early hours of the morning, while St. Francis’s Office begins at Compline the night prior by commemorating the Agony in the Garden.
These Offices invite us to enter more deeply into the memory of the Lord’s Passion, and more deeply into the devotional lives of St. Francis, St. Bonaventure, and even St. Louis IX. In St. Bonaventure’s Office we are taken by a more conventional route into the Passion of Christ. In St. Francis’s Office of the Passion, we find a more unique Office composed of texts that invite us into St. Francis’s own prayers. The Seraphic Father not only presses us to become more devoted to Christ’s suffering; he teaches us to praise God through the created world, to grow in devotion to Our Lady, and to more clearly recognize God as the source of all the goods we have, those of nature gifted to us through creation and those of grace gifted to us by God’s redeeming acts, especially Christ’s sacrifice on the Cross. Here is how we can better know these saints and, with them, take on the mind of Christ, their Lord and Master: by taking up their prayers daily.
Soft cover, Gilded pages and cover lettering. Three ribbons.
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