· Alex George Shijan

What are the Liturgy of The Hours?

I recently found myself a copy of Andrew Younan’s The Book of Before & After, a translation of the Church of The East1 Liturgy of the Hours (Divine Praises). The following is an adaptation of pages vii-x including my own reflection and thoughts.

There are many elements that make up the life and constitution of a Church: its creed, sacraments, life of charity and mission, leadership, history, culture, and much more. But all of its various aspects point to its ultimate goal, which is the union with God we call prayer. There are, of course, many kinds of prayer and devotions, especially on the part of an individual member of a Church, but if one were to ask what is the prayer of any given apostolic Church taken collectively, the answer would in every case be its Divine Praises. Every evening, morning, and other times of the day, the Church officially and formally gathers and sings its praises to God in the tradition it has developed from its earliest beginnings. These are the Divine Praises: the Church’s heartbeat; the way it expresses its life from moment to moment.

These are, then, daily organisations of time, where the Church teaches us what we should sing to God, and indeed what we should feel, every day. Every single morning, the Church tells us to pray Psalm 100, glorifying God and thanking him for creating the world and (according to the antiphon added) especially for giving us light: “Lord, the giver of light, We render you praise.” Every single evening, the Church tells us to pray Psalm 140, and to ask God to accept our prayer like the incense offered every evening in the Temple, and Psalm 118, which reminds us that, despite the setting of the sun and the encroaching darkness, God’s word is a lamp for our feet and a light for our paths. These prayers, repeated (some would say ad nauseam) on a daily basis, are not meant to make us sick of them, but rather to form our souls. If we do not feel like thanking God for his creation in the morning or asking for his light in the evening, well, the Church says “too bad,” because doing so is good for us, and she is our mother who teaches us to feel what we should feel, by example and by practice.

In the Church of the East,1 the new liturgical day begins not at midnight or in the morning, but when the sun goes down in the evening2. This ancient way of thinking about time hearkens back to Genesis 1:5 “there was evening and there was morning, one day.”3 Evening is named first here, and evening is consequently the first part of the new day in the liturgy. There are still remnants of this understanding of the day in celebrations of Christmas Eve, and similar times. The first “hour” or “office” of the “liturgy of the hours” is therefore Ramsa or Evening Prayer. The other major “office” or “official prayer time” is Sapra or Morning Prayer.

Together with Lelya (Night)4, these form what’s called the “Cathedral” offices, which were designed for the life of everyday faithful to attend at their local parish church. As early as the first Synod of the Church of the East in 410AD5, there was a legislation requiring the faithful to attend these prayers. This is, in fact, one of the remarkable aspects of the liturgy of the hours of the Church of the East1 in particular, that to a great degree it is intended to be part of the life of all the members of the Church, not only clergy and monks.6

In Chapter IV of Pope Paul VI’s SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy), great emphasis is put on the return to our traditional Liturgy of the Hours or Divine Praises. It was a call for us to remember to sanctify each day to the Lord, so that as we “offer the praises of the hours with greater fervor the more vividly they realize that they must heed St. Paul’s exhortation: “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:11). For the work in which they labor will effect nothing and bring forth no fruit except by the power of the Lord who said: “Without me you can do nothing” (John 15: 5).”7 In doing so we start to transform our days themselves into prayers to God.

This is seen explicitly by delving into the theology of Lelya (Night), Qala d-Shahra (Vigil), and Sapra (Morning). Most of the hours start and end with the giving of peace and conclude with a sealing prayer called the Huttama. The following are exceptions to this: Lelya starts with the giving of peace but does not end with peace nor has a Huttama. Qala d-Shahra neither starts nor ends with peace nor has a Huttama. Sapra doesn’t start but does end with peace and has a Huttama. It is also customary to keep silence from Lelya until Sapra (excluding Qala d-Shahra if also said).

What we can take away from this is the idea that the prayer started in Lelya does not conclude with Lelya but forms a continuous prayer until the morning. With prayer being the last thing on our tongue before sleep and the first thing following our sleep, even our resting is transformed into a prayer to God. This is the ultimate goal we strive to achieve here on earth: to be in continuous union with God, “[this] union with God we call prayer.”

This idea of continuous prayer is only emphasised by the fact that around the world, different communities exist—while the vast majority live in India itself, the eparchies of Great Britain, Australia, the US, and Canada, and the Apostolic Visitation of Europe host thousands of Syro-Malabar faithful—who are joined together in these liturgical hours at local times.

The Divine Praises aren’t just a set of daily prayers—they are shaped by the seasons of the liturgical year. Each liturgical season introduces specific psalms, hymns, and readings tied to key moments in salvation history: the angel’s annunciation to Mary, the birth of Christ, his baptism, his battle with the devil in the desert, his passion, death, resurrection, and ascension, the descent of the Holy Spirit, the preaching of the Apostles, the repentance of the nations, the victory of the cross and the final crowning of the Church in heavenly glory. Year after year, the Church invites us to be absorbed not only into our own lives and concerns, but more and more into the life of Christ, so that we can live with eyes open to a larger world, where God’s salvation is the focus. These aren’t abstract commemorations. They are invitations to reorder your time, attention, and affections around the events that define the Christian faith.

The Divine Praises, tied to specific hours and to the rhythm of the liturgical calendar, hold that memory in place. It allows us to come together as a community, displaced as we are, to celebrate our day, give thanks to God and sanctify time itself. These Divine Praises allow us to transform our days into prayers to God.

This is why they are, and remain, the heartbeat of the Syro-Malabar Church.

Footnotes

  1. This is what we refer to as the Chaldean or “East-Syriac” heritage of the Syro-Malabar Church ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  2. Hence why we read the Gospel and Epistle, respectively, of the next day in Ramsa and Lelya. ↩

  3. Bible quote taken from RSV ↩

  4. The Second Session of the XXX Synod of the Syro-Malabar Church approved a text that added Lelya to this list of major hours on the Feast of Denaha in January 2023. This was followed by an exhortation via circular from the then Major Archbishop of the Syro Malabar Church, Cardinal George Allencherry, that “[The Divine Praises] should be recited at the cathedrals and in the churches every day especially on Sundays and on the days of obligation as per the directives of Canon Law (CCEO c.199 §2),” on February 5, 2023. ↩

  5. See Jean-Baptiste Chabot, Synodicon, 28-29 ↩

  6. See Robert Taft, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West, 225-226 ↩

  7. See POPE PAUL VI, SACROSANCTUM CONCILIUM, Paragraph 86, with acknowledgement of Paragraph 3 ↩

For Christ and His Church,
Alex George Shijan
(Almost) Seminarian, Eparchy of Great Britain
Syro-Malabar Catholic Church