Vespers is, perhaps unsurprisingly, a criminally underrated prayer both in its private form and, most especially, its public form, both of which have essentially disappeared from the life of most Catholics. The reasons for it being unsurprising are threefold. First, there was never a juridical obligation to assist at Vespers. Second, (and this exacerbates the first) those Religious communities that would have celebrated public Vespers daily (abbeys, priories, convents, etc.) have all but disappeared from American Catholicism. And Third, even if an enterprising pastor wished to start them, they often do not have the time. This absence of Vespers from the life of most lay Catholics has not always been the case; throughout the centuries of faith, even though in most areas it did not carry the same legal requirements as hearing Mass on days of precept, those faithful Catholics of yesteryear understood it as an obligation, less serious perhaps than Mass, to assist at Vespers on the days of precept.^[1] But that leads to the obvious question of why? Why did these faithful peasants walk to their parish again in the evening, after already having been there that morning to attend a liturgical action that has very little to offer in the way of active participation? A series of psalms, a sentence-long reading, a hymn, then the Magnificat; there is not much action, and in our age, so lacking in musicality, where everyone seems to refuse to sing, there would not even be the draw of song.^[2] What then drew these peasants and yet fails to draw us?

A simple answer to that question lies in the essence of what Vespers and the rest of the Office consists of, as Pius XII defined the Divine Office, “the prayer of the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, offered to God in the name and on behalf of all Christians, when recited by priests and other ministers of the Church and by religious who are deputed by the Church for this.”^[3] Vespers, along with the rest of the Divine Office, is the formally approved and promulgated way the Church corporately offers daily prayer to the Most Blessed Trinity. Through the Office, the Church follows the instruction of the Psalmist “Seven times a day a rise to praise Thee” and elsewhere “At night I rise to bless Thy name.” This alone demands that we ought to at least know of and appreciate the importance of the Office, for it is the Church engaging the cult of God and sanctifying each day, through its Hours, ensuring that a never-ending cloud of prayers is ascending before the Throne of God. Private prayers are excellent; the rosary and other devotions must hold a place in the hearts of all Catholics, yet the Church does not impose the rosary upon Her religious and Her clerics. What She does impose upon every man seeking the priesthood from his ordination to the subdiaconate until he dies, and upon those women entering religious life is the obligation to daily pray the Office.And while the Church in Her wisdom does not bind the laity to the recitation of the Office, being solicitous of the many obligations we as lay faithful must already fulfil, many have throughout the centuries voluntarily either bound themselves to the Office in its entirety, as King St. Louis IX, or to certain hours, most often those of Lauds, Prime, Vespers, or Compline.

More recently, the Church has shown Her concern for the celebration of the Office in public, when She spoke thus in Sacrosanctum Concilium, the Second Vatican Council’s constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, “Pastors of souls should see to it that the chief hours, especially Vespers, are celebrated in common in church on Sundays and the more solemn feasts. And the laity, too, are encouraged to recite the Divine Office, either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually.” ^[4] This clear endorsement not only of Vespers, but of the entirety of the Divine Office in the texts of the Council was in many ways a reaction to the trends that had emerged over the centuries after the Protestant Revolt, exacerbated by the secularisation of countries; no longer was the calendar of the Church the calendar of the state, now the state had its own feasts and fasts, raised up to rival those of Holy Church. Combined with the dissolution of the religious orders which once blanketed Europe with constant prayer through the Office, in England in 1536 under Henry VIII, in France in 1789, in the late 18th century in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, in 1814 in Germany, and the general secularization of society and individuals it fell more and more by the wayside. In this climate it is unsurprising that Vespers became something of an oddity, perhaps something sung at the Cathedral, but likely not in the provincial parish church. But the Church throughout these tumultuous periods never wavered in Her encouragement for the celebration of the Office solemnly and publicly; indeed, in the Eternal City, still happily under the rightful rule of the Pope, this celebration of public Vespers continued long after it had all but disappeared from the rest of Christendom. As Monsignor Xavier Barbier de Montault laid out in his work L’Année Liturgique à Rome, the practice of daily Vespers was still followed in many of the parishes of Rome, and even the smaller chapels (which Rome has in abundance) had at least Vespers on their patronal feast, and we may assume on other notable days— I cannot say for sure, as Msgr. de Montault’s aim with his work was to categorize all the major events, not give a daily schedule of every parish, oratory, chapel, or basilica in Rome.^[5] More recently, Pope St. John Paul II asked in his letter Dies Domini on the celebration of Sundays, “in lay life, when possible, why not make provision for special times of prayer — especially the solemn celebration of Vespers[?]”^[6] What can we answer our Holy Father? What have we to do every Sunday that is so much more important than giving praise to our God? We find time for sports and recreation, spending time with family and with friends, relaxation and recuperation for the week ahead, and while those are all certainly good things to do on Sundays, is it beyond our power to give to God, out of the gifts that He has given us, more than an hour and a half per week? It is as difficult, perhaps, or more now to assist at a public celebration of Vespers. In the United States and Cincinnati, what little approximation we may have had of the net of churches and chapels and monasteries of Catholic Europe has withered away. The Passionists are gone from the Mount; the many Sisters that once blanketed our valley have disappeared, yet there are still public Vespers to be found.

Perhaps you can only make it to a single Vespers, but one is better than none. So that we may follow the exhortation of the Venerable Pius XII, of happy memory, to “all try to learn those prayers which are recited at vespers and fill their souls with their meaning. When deeply penetrated by these prayers, they will experience what St. Augustine said about himself: “How much did I weep during hymns and verses, greatly moved at the sweet singing of thy Church. Their sound would penetrate my ears and their truth melt my heart, sentiments of piety would well up, tears would flow and that was good for me.”^[7]

1. Pius XII. “Mediator Dei.”(MD) Encyclical letter, November 20th, 1947. Paragraph 150
2. Blaise Ghering. “Sing a Round.” Journal of Cincinnati Thought, July 20, 2026
3. MD. Paragraph 142
4. Second Vatican Council. “Sacrosanctum Concilium.”(SC) Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, December 4th, 1963. Paragraph 100.
5. Barbier de Montault, Xavier, and Thomas Frederick Simmons. L’annee liturgique a Rome, ou renseignements sur les saints, Les Reliques, Les Fetes, Les Eglises, Les Devotions populaires et les traditions pieuses de la Ville Eternelle. Rome: Chez Joseph Spithoever; Leipsic, Imprimerie de B.G. Teubner, 1870.
6. John Paul II. “Dies Domini.” (DD) Apostolic Letter, May 31, 1998. Paragraph 52.
7. MD. Paragraph 150.