§ 1. The Canonical Hours were instituted in the Church so that the divine praises might be sung or recited in a definite order by God’s ministers. For after sustenance was appointed for Christian Priests, definite tasks of divine praises and prayers were also defined. In ancient times, although they were not contained within a definite number of Psalms, prayers, or readings, they were greater than in ours.
Thus the singing and recitation of the Canonical Hours in the Church is a most ancient thing. Indeed, their beginnings are in the Church of the Jews. Tertullian, Against the Psychics, chapter 10:
Moreover, since in the same commentary on Luke both the third hour is shown as an hour of prayer—at which those initiated by the Holy Spirit were regarded as drunk—and the sixth, at which Peter ascended to the upper part of the house, and the ninth, at which they entered the temple, why should we not understand, while plainly preserving the indifference that one must pray always and everywhere and at every time, that these three hours nevertheless, as the more distinguished in human affairs—which distribute the day, distinguish business, and sound publicly—were thus also the more solemn in divine prayers? Daniel’s example, too, praying three times a day, also recommends this, certainly by the selection of certain hours, and of none other than the third, sixth, and ninth, which thereafter became the more distinguished Apostolic hours.
Tertullian therefore recognizes three hours customary among Christians and the more distinguished or solemn hours of prayer. Cyprian proves the same in the same way in his book On the Lord’s Prayer. I intend to adduce the words of the most holy martyr and prelate, so that the Christian Clergy may recognize with what zeal it ought to perform the sacred offices commended to us by such venerable antiquity, and so that heretics who mock our prayers may understand that they fight against antiquity and all the saints. Cyprian therefore speaks thus in the book cited:
In the celebration of prayers we find that Daniel and the three youths—strong in faith and victorious in captivity—observed the third, sixth, and ninth hour, evidently in the sacrament of the Trinity which was to be manifested in the last times. For the first hour, advancing to the third, shows the consummated number of the Trinity. Likewise the fourth, proceeding to the sixth, declares another Trinity. And when the ninth is completed from the seventh, the perfect Trinity is numbered through three hours at a time. Long ago, the worshipers of God, spiritually determining these spaces of hours, served at established and lawful times for prayer; and afterwards it was manifested that these had formerly been sacraments, because just persons had previously prayed thus.
For at the third hour the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples and fulfilled the grace of the Lord’s promise. Likewise Peter, ascending to the housetop at the sixth hour, was instructed by both a sign and the admonishing voice of God to admit all to the grace of salvation, although he had previously doubted concerning the cleansing of the gentiles. And the Lord, crucified at the sixth hour, washed away our sins with his blood at the ninth and, so that he might redeem and give us life, then perfected his victory by his Passion.
But for us, dearest brothers, in addition to the hours observed from antiquity, both the periods and the sacraments of prayer have increased. For one must pray also in the morning, so that the Lord’s resurrection may be celebrated by morning prayer, which the Holy Spirit formerly signified in the Psalms, saying: “My King and my God, because to you I shall pray, O Lord; in the morning you will hear my voice; in the morning I shall stand before you and contemplate you.” And again the Lord speaks through the Prophet: “At dawn they will keep watch for me, saying: Let us go and return to the Lord our God.”
Likewise, when the sun withdraws and the day ceases, it is necessary to pray again. For because Christ is the true Sun and the true day, when the sun and day of the world withdraw and we pray and ask that light may come upon us anew, we entreat the advent of Christ, who will furnish the grace of eternal light. But the Holy Spirit declares in the Psalms that Christ is called the day: “The stone,” he says, “which the builders rejected, this has been made the head of the corner. This was done by the Lord and is wonderful in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord has made; let us walk and rejoice in it.” Likewise the Prophet Malachi testifies that he is called the Sun, saying: “But for you who fear the name of the Lord, the Sun of justice will arise, and healing is in his wings.”
Therefore, if in the holy Scriptures Christ is the true Sun and the true day, no hour is excepted by Christians from the requirement that God should be worshiped frequently and always; so that we who are in Christ—that is, in the true Sun and day—may persist in prayers throughout the whole day and pray. And when, by the law of the world, night revolves and follows in alternating succession, no harm can come from nocturnal darkness to those who pray, because for the sons of light it is day even in the nights. For when is he without light who has light in his heart? Or when is the Sun and day absent from him to whom Christ is Sun and day? Therefore, we who are always in Christ—that is, in the light—must not cease from prayer even during the nights.
Cyprian therefore adds the morning, evening, and nocturnal hours to the Tertullian hours.
Jerome, in his letters to Demetrias and Laeta, also shows that this was the custom of his own time. Therefore this institution is not Damasus’s, Jerome’s, or Ambrose’s, except insofar as all things were reduced more fully to order by their counsel and command. Sigebert in the Chronicles and Radulf of Tongeren must be understood in this way when they name these fathers as institutors of the hours.
Athanasius, On Virginity, teaches that the system of the hours was more ancient:
Let the rising Sun see the book in your hands. After the third hour you will perform the Synaxes, because at that hour the wood of the cross was affixed. At the sixth hour you will complete supplications with Psalms, weeping, and entreaties, because at this hour the Son of God hung upon the cross. At the ninth hour you will again be engaged in hymns and glorifications; with tears and confession of your sins you will supplicate God, because at this hour the Lord, hanging upon the cross, gave up his spirit. And after the Synaxis of the ninth hour eat your bread.
And after several things:
If you enter the temple at the twelfth hour, you will perform a greater and longer Synaxis with virgins in agreement with you; but if you have no one in agreement, you will complete the Synaxis alone, with God present and hearing. It is good, however, to pour out tears before the Lord and to be mindful of the twelfth hour, because at that hour the Lord descended to those below.
Farther down he adds these things:
At midnight you will arise and celebrate the Lord your God with hymns, for at that hour the Lord your God rose from the dead and celebrated his Father with hymns; and for this reason he enjoined us to sing hymns to God at the same hour. As soon as you arise, recite this verse: “At midnight I arose to confess to you, on account of the judgments of your justice”; and pray, and begin to recite Psalm 50 until you complete it.
The author of The Shorter Rules, question 37, Jerome to Eustochium, on Daniel chapter 7, and letters 7 and 37 also treat of these matters.
§ 2. Moreover, the holy Councils teach with what spirit they acted even in our own age, including the Council celebrated at Trier under the most reverend and illustrious John in the year 1549:
Let all who are deputed to discharge the Canonical Hours take care that, with their minds recollected insofar as can be done, they complete the task due, and let them not conduct themselves in such a way that, while they sing psalms with their voice, they seem in their mind to think of anything rather than God. Let them always beware lest they hear that prophetic saying: “Indeed, they honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” But what is it to sing psalms with the voice while in the mind going around the house or marketplace, except to deceive human beings and mock God? Very grave is what Scripture says: “Cursed is he who performs the work of God negligently.”
We therefore establish that the divine praises shall be discharged at each hour, not rapidly and hastily, but deliberately, with becoming intervals observed and account taken of distinguishing feast-days from intervening ferial days, reverently and cheerfully, with the voice in no way raised to a shout, lest they seem rather to be insane or to be capering from wantonness of soul than to exult through fervor of spirit, always turning over in the mind the verse so often sung.
§ 3. Clerics initiated into the major orders, professed religious who have a choir, and beneficed clergy are bound to the Hours. Thus the canon A Presbyter, concerning the celebration of Masses, and the canon If Any Presbyter, Distinction 92; likewise Grieving, concerning the celebration of Masses.
§ 4. A great injury is inflicted upon the divine name and the Church by omission of the Canonical Hours. This can be amended as follows:
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If most benefices are converted into daily distributions for those present and singing.
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If benefices are not so easily conferred upon boys; or certainly, while they devote themselves to letters, if they are taught to read and read accurately. For now experience teaches that those who are burdened with benefices as youths become either the best or the worst. For if day by day they discharge their task of prayers with attention and devotion, they make great progress in piety and letters. But if they enjoy the revenues of priestly offices and neglect prayers, since they bind themselves every day by grave sin, it is no wonder that, abandoned by divine grace, they become the worst. For they are, as it were, embezzlers of the ecclesiastical treasury, living as though from plunder of ecclesiastical goods, while they entirely evade the office on account of which those goods are given.
But concerning the Hours the Canonists have written more, as has my colleague Father Gisbertus Sceuickhavius in his most useful book On the Ecclesiastical State. Those who occupy the places and functions of the holy Fathers ought deservedly to hear him speaking with the mouth of the holy Fathers.