The Fixed Psalmody of the Hours and Typika

The lesser services carry their own fixed psalms. Each of the Four Hours has three appointed psalms chosen for the hour it sanctifies; Small and Great Compline and the Midnight Office have their own psalmody centred on repentance and vigilance; and the Typika, the “reader’s service” that stands in for the Liturgy, is built on Psalms 102 and 145 with the Beatitudes. This file sets out each, verified against the Horologion.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox

The Four Hours

The Hours (Greek Horai, Slavonic Chasy) are four short services — the First, Third, Sixth, and Ninth — that sanctify the daylight hours, each recalling an event of the Passion or of salvation history at the hour it fell (see Matins, the Hours, and the Liturgical Day). Each Hour has the same skeleton: three fixed psalms, a troparion and kontakion of the day, the Trisagion prayers, and a concluding prayer proper to the Hour. The three psalms of each are fixed and never change (outside the special “Royal Hours” of Holy Week and the eves of Nativity and Theophany, and the Lenten additions):

Hour Approx. time Fixed psalms (LXX) Commemoration
First Hour c. 6 a.m. (dawn) Ps 5, 89 (90), 100 (101) Christ led before Pilate
Third Hour c. 9 a.m. Ps 16 (17), 24 (25), 50 (51) The descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost
Sixth Hour c. noon Ps 53 (54), 54 (55), 90 (91) The Crucifixion
Ninth Hour c. 3 p.m. Ps 83 (84), 84 (85), 85 (86) The death of Christ on the Cross

(The Hours and their psalms as printed in the Horologion; the commemorations as in the hub, Orthodoxy: The Daily Cycle.) The choices fit the hours. The First Hour, attached to the end of Matins, prays at daybreak, “In the morning shalt thou hear my voice” (Ps 5:3), and asks that the risen light of Christ be sealed upon the day. The Third Hour, recalling Pentecost at the third hour (Acts 2:15), includes Psalm 50 with its “take not thy Holy Spirit from me” (Ps 50:11) and is traditionally the point at which the Spirit is invoked. The Sixth Hour, at noon, prays Psalm 90, “He that dwelleth in the help of the Most High,” against the “noonday demon” and the darkness that covered the earth at the Crucifixion. The Ninth Hour, at the hour of Christ’s death, prays “How lovely are thy dwellings” (Ps 83) with the soul that longs to depart and be with God. In parish practice the Third and Sixth Hours are read before the Divine Liturgy, and the Ninth before Vespers (hub, Orthodoxy: The Daily Cycle).

During Great Lent the Hours are greatly expanded: a kathisma of the Psalter is added to each, together with the special Lenten troparia of the Hour (sung with prostrations), the prayer of St. Ephrem the Syrian, and, at the Sixth Hour, a reading from the prophecy of Isaiah (Lenten Triodion; see Abbreviation, the Vigil, and the Old Rite).

Compline

Compline (Greek Apodeipnon, “after supper,” Slavonic Povecheriye) is the Church’s prayer before sleep, and it exists in two forms.

Small Compline is the ordinary form, used through most of the year. Its psalmody is Psalms 50 (51), 69 (70), and 142 (143) — repentance, the cry for help “make haste, O God, to deliver me,” and the evening plea “cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning” — followed by the Doxology, the Creed, the Canon to the Theotokos, “It is truly meet,” and the prayers before sleep, including the beautiful prayer of St. John of Damascus, “O Master, Lover of mankind, is this bed to be my coffin?” (Horologion, Small Compline; hub, Orthodoxy: The Daily Cycle).

Great Compline (Slavonic Velikoye Povecheriye) is a longer, penitential service used on the weekday evenings of Great Lent, on the eves of Nativity and Theophany, and on a few other occasions. It is built in three parts, each with its own psalms:

  • Part I: Psalms 4, 6, 12 (13), 24 (25), 30 (31):1–6, and 90 (91), leading into the great chant “God is with us” (S nami Bog), drawn from Isaiah 8–9, “for God is with us.”
  • Part II: Psalms 50 (51) and 101 (102), followed by the Prayer of Manasseh.
  • Part III: Psalms 69 (70) and 142 (143), leading into the Great Doxology (read), the Canon, and the closing prayers.

(Great Compline as in the Horologion and the Lenten Triodion.) On the first four evenings of Great Lent the Great Canon of St. Andrew of Crete is read at Great Compline, dividing its penitential poetry across the week (Lenten Triodion; the Great Canon is treated as hymnography in The Akathist & Orthodox Hymnography).

The Midnight Office

The Midnight Office (Greek Mesonyktikon, Slavonic Polunoshchnitsa) is the monastic night-prayer, keeping watch for the Bridegroom who comes at midnight (Matthew 25:1–13). Its psalmody varies by day:

  • On weekdays, after the introductory prayers and Psalm 50, the whole seventeenth kathisma — Psalm 118 (119), “Blessed are the blameless in the way” — is read, the long meditation on the law of God suited to the watches of the night.
  • On Saturdays, the ninth kathisma (Psalms 64–69) replaces it.
  • On Sundays, the psalmody gives way to a Canon to the Holy Trinity in the tone of the week (from the Octoechos), fitting the day of the Resurrection.

(Midnight Office as in the Horologion; hub, Orthodoxy: The Daily Cycle.) The weekday office concludes with the moving commemoration of the departed and the prayer of St. Mardarius. On the night of Pascha the Midnight Office is served over the shrouded epitaphios as the hinge between the tomb and the resurrection procession (see The Evening and Night Services).

The Typika

The Typika (Greek Typika, “the substitutes”; Slavonic Obednitsa) is a short “reader’s service” that stands in the place of the Divine Liturgy on days when no Liturgy is served — in monasteries, on aliturgical weekdays of Great Lent, and where no priest is present. Its psalmodic core is the two Typika Antiphons: Psalm 102 (103), “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name,” and Psalm 145 (146), “Praise the Lord, O my soul… put not your trust in princes” — followed by the hymn “Only-begotten Son and Word of God” and then the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3–12) with their refrain “Remember us, O Lord, when thou comest in thy kingdom” (Horologion, the Typika; Schmemann, Introduction to Liturgical Theology, 1966). These same two psalms and the Beatitudes are the First, Second, and Third Antiphons of the Divine Liturgy on many days, so that the Typika preserves, in a service of psalms alone, the shape of the Liturgy’s own opening — a psalmodic memory of the Eucharist for the days it is absent. (The Divine Liturgy itself is treated in the companion collection, The Divine Liturgy; this collection defers the Eucharist there.)

The Whole Picture

Between the Four Hours, Compline, the Midnight Office, and the Typika, the fixed psalmody reaches into every corner of the day and night. The morning and the third, sixth, and ninth hours each receive their three psalms; the descent into sleep is guarded by the repentance of Small Compline and, in Lent, by the long vigil of Great Compline; the midnight watch is kept over Psalm 118; and the Liturgy’s absence is filled by the psalms of the Typika. The whole of time is thus psalmodically claimed — which is precisely the office’s purpose, to leave no hour without the psalms and no psalm without its hour.

See Also

References

  • The Horologion (Book of Hours). Jordanville, NY: Holy Trinity Monastery; and the Greek Horologion to Mega.
  • The Psalter According to the Seventy. Boston: Holy Transfiguration Monastery, 1974; rev. ed.
  • The Lenten Triodion. Trans. Mother Mary and Kallistos Ware. London: Faber & Faber, 1978.
  • Schmemann, Alexander. Introduction to Liturgical Theology. Trans. Asheleigh E. Moorhouse. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1966.