A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Angelic Vespers

Both of my readers will no doubt recall that these days I’m praying the Hours with the Monastic Diurnal. I’ve mentioned before that the rankings of the various feasts in the old Monastic calendar are relatively straightforward.

But on both Monday’s Vespers for Michaelmas and today’s for the Feast of the Holy Guardian Angels, there’s something odd.

Follow me, here.

In the book, today is given as a III-Class Feast with proper antiphons, which means that instead of praying the psalms of the day (Thursday in this case), you pray the Sunday psalms. So far so good.

(Michaelmas is a I-Class Feast with proper antiphons, so it follows those same rules for the psalms.)

Here is the rubric for Vespers:

Antiphons Angelis suis, etc. from Lauds, p. [291]. Psalms of the Sunday, p. 203, and in place of the last is said Psalm 137 as above, p. [289].

The reference to page 289 above refers to the Vespers of Michaelmas.

Isn’t that interesting? For the angelic feasts not only are we praying the Sunday psalms, we’re rather extraordinarily substituting in another psalm; an exception to the exception.

I suppose when you’ve got something in continuous use for twelve or thirteen hundred years you will get oddities, but this is the first time I’ve noticed anything quite like this.