Dear Friends,
Yes, I'm very biased in favour of the Byzantine form!
I have the Latin Office of St Pius X - and it is extremely complicated!
It's probably the fact that they're on the new calendar that is throwing me all off . . .
If one would like a simpler, even though long, Eastern office, there is the Coptic Agpeya:
www.agpeya.org [
agpeya.org]
One can shorten the psalms or divide them in half as each service has twelve, according to the rule of Pachomius, with Psalm 50. Prime has seven extra psalms and the Midnight Hour has three sets of twelve psalms . . .
The Alexandrian tradition (I love the sound of that name!
) also allows one to recite the entire psalter in a day - one cancels the psalms for Prime and Midnight and does thirty psalms each for the intervening five hours - according to Fr. Taft.
The Assyrian Office used to have three out of the 21 portions of their psalm-division at each of the seven monastic hours to allow for the entire Psalter to be read in the day.
Then there is the old Celtic Breviary at:
www.celticchristianity.org [
celticchristianity.org]
The old monastic office of Pachomius had monks pray twelve psalms at the turn of each hour, including the night hours.
The Ethiopian monks still pray this way and Ethiopian laity are obliged to pray seven times daily.
Alex
