Saint Ambrose Prayer Book Now Available

The Saint Ambrose Prayer Book, a Western Rite prayer book now available from Lancelot Andrewes Press
It's here: a handbook of private devotions specifically for Western Rite Orthodox Christians. Lancelot Andrewes Press has announced the release of The Saint Ambrose Prayer Book. The 450-page-long book contains prayers and devotional material for morning and evening prayer, confession, the Eucharist, prayers for the departed, and much more. A partial review of its contents includes:

• The Christian's Obligations and Spiritual Outlines. This includes such things as rules for fasting and worship, as well as the Ten Commandments, the nine Beatitudes, the seven deadly sins, the spiritual and corporal works of mercy, etc.;
  
• Common Prayers. The prayers every Orthodox Christian should memorize, including the Lord's Prayer; the Confiteor; and prayers for morning, evening, and midday;
• Occasional Prayers for various needs;
• Devotions for Holy Mass. In addition to prayers and offices of preparation for and thanksgiving after Holy Communion, this section includes the entire text of both the Liturgy of St. Gregory and the Liturgy of St. Tikhon, and counsels for communicants
• Confessional Devotions. This includes an examination of conscience, a form of Confession, and the seven penitential Psalms;
  
• Prayers for the Dead, including the Requiem Mass and prayers at graveside; and
  
• Various Devotions, including litanies to the saints, a Visit to the Christmas Creche, and short prayers.
  

This is merely an overview, not a comprehensive Table of Contents, nor a review. One can take heart that the volume has been edited by the Very Rev. Fr. John Winfrey, Archpriest, who compiled the beautiful Antiochian Archdiocese's Holy Week Service Book for the Eastern Rite.

The Saint Ambrose Prayer Book is now available for $30 from Lancelot Andrewes Press. A trade discount on bulk orders of 10 or more are available for churches and book stores.

New Blog Added

I've added a link to this site: Maria Lectrix. It features "public domain audiobooks six days a week," with an emphasis on patristic texts. Prepare to fill an entire hard drive. :)

Available Today: Monastic Breviary Matins

It's available today. Monastic Breviary Matins, once the rarest of treasures, is in print again. Lancelot Andrewes Press has made this invaluable volume available for $45, which includes shipping and handling. You can see the details here (PDF). You can order here, if you scroll down far enough.

It's worth noting, this is in no way a new translation or LAP's own compilation. This is the Divine Office according to the Breviarium Monasticum, the Divine Office according to the Rule of St. Benedict. Monastic Breviary Matins is the companion to the Monastic Diurnal and was originally published in 1961 by the Society of the Sacred Cross in Tymawr, Wales. It runs more than 1,200 pages.

While it has always been possible for those so interested to pray the full Divine Office in the ancient Benedictine tradition, these two volumes make the material far more accessible to English-speakers, laymen, and, may the Lord grant it, aspiring oblates and future vocations.

Our proverbial biretta is off to LAP for this.

From the Mailbag: Good Pre-Schism British Prayer Source?

Q: Ben, can you recommend a good source for the Orthodox prayers of Old England, something that contains pre-Schism British prayers (in coherent English, please) from a verifiable source? I am interested in learning about and praying with the pre-Schism British Church.

A: Certainly. By far the best collection of various prayers from pre-Schism England is a wonderful little volume entitled, Christ the Golden-Blossom: A Treasury of Anglo-Saxon Prayer by Douglas Dales. In addition to being a bona fide scholar (the kind with degrees) -- and the author of several other well-received titles on Orthodox England -- Dales is the Chaplain and Head of Religious Studies at Marlborough College. Christ the Golden-Blossom selects and translates fitting prayers from the pre-Schism era. Dales arranges the Orthodox prayers and readings from the saints, first according to the major feasts of the Temporale (the Church Year), then commemorates the major pre-Schism saints of the Anglo-Saxon Sanctorale -- again with a reading by or about the saint in question, a brief biography, and appropriate collect(s). The book is also a beauty to behold, with photographs, rare artwork, and what one might call early British iconography on nearly every page.

The reason I recommend this text is your (rightful) concern with a book's underlying sources and trustworthiness. Christ the Golden-Blossom draws all its prayers from three sources: the Nunnaminster Codex of the ninth century, the Canterbury Benedicitional, and the Portiforium of St. Wulfstan. Most helpful, Dales lists the original source underneath each prayer. It is also easily available, inexpensive, and somewhat comprehensive (as a personal prayer book and devotional). With appropriate searching, you can find it as low as $14.50 a copy, brand new, in a beautifully illustrated hardback with rare illuminations. Used, one can find it at $8.

The only drawback to mention is that Dales has translated these beautiful prayers into modern English. However, the rarity of the prayers, beauty of presentation, and devotional insight make that worth overlooking. One can easily "Elizabethify" the translation without much more than changing "You" to "Thee" and adding an "eth" or "est" where required. I've quoted at least one of its prayers on this blog (where I performed such a minor tweak).

If you are interested in the Hours as prayed in pre-Schism times, you should get a copy of the Monastic Diurnal and begin a fruitful oblature as an Orthodox Benedictine. If you are committed to using only Sarum prayers, a number of items are available from archive.org. You could contact our friend Fr. Michael of St. Petroc Monastery; his long-awaited Saint Colman Prayer Book (not St. Colman PB!) will include a small and adapted Breviary more than fitting for any dedicated non-Monastic.

Several other "Sarum Psalters," "Old Sarum Rite Missals," and "Old England" prayer books have been published over the years by various vagante and Pseudodox groups. These works, often described by the learned as "fanciful" (at the most charitable), are unverified individual works not authorized by the Orthodox Church, nor used within Her. One would be well-advised to put as much space as possible between oneself as such materials.

Ten Books Meme

Thanks to Huw for tagging me with this: What ten books would you want with you if you were shipwrecked on a desert island? They "spot" you a Bible (Douay-Rheims in my case), and you must name the remaining 10 volumes. My answer? Easy: I'd take my laptop and burn my library onto 10 disks...OK, seriously, this is harder than you think, but here's my list:

1. The Orthodox Missal
2. Monastic Diurnal
3. St. Dunstan's Plainsong Psalter
4. The Rule of St. Benedict
5. Forty Gospel Commentaries - Pope St. Gregory the Great
6. Commentary of on the Seven Catholic Epistles - The Venerable Bede
7. Explanation of the Epistles and Gospels for the Sundays and Holydays and Festivals throughout the Ecclesiastical Year - Fr. Leonard Goffine
8. The Philokalia (Vol. 1, if I'm limited)
9. The Mass - Fr. Adrian Fortescue
10. Seeds of Contemplation - Thomas Merton (NOT to be confused with the hideous revision of same, The NEW Seeds of Contemplation. For the record, I'm not an adorer of Merton, but the original Seeds can be read with limited caution.)

Honorable Mention: The Deification of Man: St Gregory Palamas and the Orthodox Tradition -- Georgios Mantzaridis. If I have to include a secular book, it would probably be Right Reason by William F. Buckley Jr., or another collection of his columns.

Four people I'm tagging:
1. Eric John.
2. Fr. John Fenton.
3. Michael Astley.
4. Inquisitor Generalis.

Incidentally, I started a similar thread on York Forum some time ago; this is a subject on which I enjoy getting feedback. My wallet hates it, though. What did I forget?