practicingcatholic

A canticle
a day
©Shutterstock/mmkarabella

Let the ancient words of Mary,

Zechariah, or Simeon leave their
mark on your heart.

O ne of the most valuable experiences from my boarding school days—and

one that has remained with me—is the habit of formal prayer. I remem-
ber praying the Nunc Dimittis at night prayer in the quiet of my high school
chapel: “Now you may dismiss your servant, Lord, according to your word,
in peace.” Just saying the words instilled a sense of peace.
Yes, I’ve done Zen meditation, Ignatian retreats,
and Benedictine lectio divina, but my time in the
high school chapel also taught me to value formal
prayer. When my 92-year-old mother fell down her
basement stairs and, following brain surgery, went
into physical and mental decline, I found myself
praying morning and night for help to sustain both
her and me. It was then that the Benedictus, the
Magnificat, and the Nunc Dimittis became sources
of consolation and strength.
I have now been praying all three canticles for
many years. They make a perfect end for each of the
“hours” they grace: the Benedictus in the morning
at lauds; the Magnificat in the evening at vespers;
the Nunc Dimittus or Canticle of Simeon as the last
hour of prayer at night, or compline. Their repetition
each day is like meeting an old friend; each recita-
tion is a confirmation of that friendship.
A canticle is, etymologically, a small song. Can-
ticles have a long tradition in Jewish worship. The
By Ed Block, emeritus professor of English at
Marquette University. He is a member of St.
Alphonsus Parish in Greendale, Wisconsin.
Benedictus, also known as the Canticle of Zecha-
riah, is a father’s thanks for the gift of his son, John
the Baptist. Some scholars say this canticle was
added to the liturgy of the hours by St. Benedict of
Nursia, who made the divine office a central part
of Benedictine spirituality. I had memorized the
Benedictus even before I realized it. There is some-
thing sonorous about the opening: “Blessed be the
Lord, the God of Israel, because he has visited and
wrought redemption for his people.” I like to imag-
ine the joy with which Zechariah utters those words,
after weeks when he could not speak.
The Magnificat is the Blessed Virgin’s
grateful acceptance, expressed on a visit to her
cousin Elizabeth, for the gift of Jesus. It, too, has
From the Benedictus
A nd you, child, will be called the prophet of the
Most High; for you will go before the Lord to
prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation to his people
by the forgiveness of their sins.
By the tender mercy of our God,
the dawn from on high will break upon us,
to give light to those who sit in darkness and
in the shadow of death,
to guide our feet into the way of peace.
Luke 1:76-79

April 2015  uscatholic.org  47

 practicingcatholic

a rhythm that can calm me at the close of day. “My
soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices
in God, my Savior.” For me it is easy to imagine
the young Jewish woman’s joyful but profound
response to her cousin’s greeting. And when Mary
The canticles says, “He has exalted the lowly, and the hungry
face the fact he has filled with good things, while the rich he
of misery, has sent empty away,” I try to see this message as
an anticipation of the Beatitudes. The Canticle of
poverty,
Simeon is a wise old man’s expression of gratitude
inequality, for having seen the coming of the Savior.
injustice,
and yet still Only recently has the relationship of these
three New Testament canticles to each other and to
express the early church become clear to me. I had known
gratitude. that they were from the infancy narrative in Luke’s
gospel. But what struck me, with the help of the late
scripture scholar Father Raymond E. Brown, was the
continuity that Luke suggests between the Old Testa-
ment and the New; between the Judaic tradition and
the developing prayer life of the early, mostly Jewish-
born, Christians.
CMF_thirdsq_0115.pdf
If we
1
pay close attention,
11/24/2014
we see that Luke has
8:24:05 AM
each of the New Testament characters meet a char-
C
acter who resembles a figure in the Old Testament.
Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth are an aged cou-
ple yearning for a child, like Abraham and Sarah in
Genesis. The angel Gabriel’s revelation to Zechariah
that Elizabeth will give birth to John, “the prophet
of the most high,” is like the angel’s promise to
Abraham. The Magnificat uses much the same
language as does the Song of Hannah in the book
of Samuel (1 Sam. 2:1-10).
Jesus being presented to Simeon in the temple
recalls the young Samuel being presented to Eli in
the temple. Simeon’s words herald the coming of the
kingdom. He and Anna represent the anawim, the
poor and pious ones of God. For Luke, Anna rep-
resents the holy women of the early church. Denise
Levertov’s lovely poem “Candlemas” helps me
understand Simeon’s joy. These lines are the poem’s
climax: “before the cross, the tomb / and the new
life, / he [Simeon] knew / new life.”
According to Brown, Luke’s canticles
are likely early Christian hymns, woven from
phrases and passages found in the Old Testament.
In the mouths of Zechariah, Mary, and Simeon,
these hymns express the gospel atti-
tudes that early Christians sought to
live out: gratitude, acceptance, joy—
the same dispositions that we today
should have when we pray. For Luke,
these episodes, with their echoes of
the Old Testament, provide a bridge for
the young Christian community raised
in Judaism.
In Thoughts in Solitude, Thomas

Merton speaks of gratitude as the abil-

ity to recognize God in everything. In
M

Y
a world that often seems to be coming
CM unglued, it is reassuring, and even helps
MY create a kind of inner order, to repeat a
CY
group of prayers that have been part
CMY
of the Catholic tradition for almost
NACIDOS PARA EVANGELIZAR 2,000 years.
Unlike other forms of coping that
K

CALL US to SHARE OUR MISSION. are more passive, reciting these prayers
LLÁMANOS PARA COMPARTIR NUESTRA MISIÓN.
is neither passive nor unrealistic. The
CLARETIAN MISSIONARIES canticles face the fact of misery, poverty,
CLARETIAN VOCATION OFFICE: inequality, injustice, and yet still express
WWW.CLARETIANVOCATION.ORG gratitude. They have been for me, in
VOCATION@CLARETIANVOCATION.ORG the words of the Nunc Dimittis, a “light
312-320-8870
of revelation” in a sometimes crazy
MISIONEROS CLARETIANOS world.  USC

48  U.S. Catholic  April 2015

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