My parish will do the chanted Office of Readings combined with Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. Does anyone have this Psalmody (and accompanying antiphons) already set and the files available digitally? When we did something similar for All Souls Day, I was overjoyed to find all that on Fr. Weber's website. Having trouble finding this one, though. Any help would be appreciated, and soon, please!
Claire H -- Thank you for celebrating the Office of the Readings. So many do a concert or Lessons and Carols before Midnight Mass. Without denigrating the other choices, the Church particularly commends the Office of the Readings before Midnight Mass. I do wish more would follow it. I would be interested in seeing your order of worship or list of what you are going to present.
@Chaswjd The Church commended the singing of Matins before midnight Mass, and provided the music in many publications (E.F.)... of course the Lessons and Carols are the Anglican version of Matins and very nice it is too but not a patch on Matins!
If the Church wanted us to sing the Office of Readings perhaps they would have provided easy to use books from which to sing / follow. They did this pre-1965 why not now?
(RANT mode) They would also not have endless options / translations, never mind the mindless changing of things for the sake of change, every few years. (end RANT mode).
I had what you're looking for on my old computer, but it crashed and I've never been able to retrieve any of those files. Maybe I'll finally take it to get fixed.
I have it, partially. My parish used to do this but in trilingual format (English/Spanish/Latin). I can send what I have though! Let me know your e-mail.
@tomjaw -- I fully understand the rant. It would be nice if Mother Church would get around to completing the two year cycle of readings for English speaking countries as well. That said, I do wish that Catholic parishes who celebrate Lessons and Carols (which does include my parish) would consider using the Office of the Readings instead.
We use a setting from Conception Abbey, see page 4a,b,c of the file below. And page 3 for the invitatory: that's from Gethsemani. I can provide organ accompaniments and individual graphics files if desired. If it is the kind of music you're looking for.
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