First 9th Hour Office Posted!

So I've posted the first 9th hour (i.e. 3PM) office. I intend to write a prayerful reflection on something in the office, but for the first type of each office I'd also like to make some remarks.

Related to the ninth hour office I will say that it is the simplest of all the Maronite offices, in both length and composition. If one looks back at the post where I discuss office structure, I discuss variations of office composition and length. Well this office has the very least amount of prayers to be called an office. It's basically just the hoosoyo framed by a few other prayers - which makes it beneficial if one only has little time to pray.

Now, pertaining to the particular method of my formatting, one can see for some sections I aligned lines alternating to the right and left (click on the link below, it's helpful to have a visual as to what I'm talking about). I did this for ease of prayer: traditionally, the Maronite office is entirely chanted and some things are antiphonally chanted in an alternating style. To make it easy, the text aligned to the left is sung by one side, and the text aligned to the right is sung by the other. I would like to point out that the sedro, the second part of the hoosoyo, is a special type attributed to Mor Yaqoob (if you're having trouble following this post, it's helpful to click the post above on office structure that goes through all these terms). This type of sedro, called a sedro of Mor Yaqoob is sung antiphonally - that is not generally the case for a sedro. Generally a priest will chant everything (save the qolo) by himself.

Segue-ing into the qolo, this is the part of the hoosoyo that is sung by everyone (when it's longer antiphonally but the one in this particular office is just one verse). If you notice in the office there's squiggling writing in red under the title qolo. That squiggling writing is Syriac, and as I've said previously, everything is chanted and we have no traditional musical notation. In lieu of notation, it is traditional to write the name of the melody. Because of the liturgically difficult period of the Maronite Church at this moment, I did not set the text to the melody - primarily because we don't have a consensus on these matters. If one would like to chant the entire office, I encourage free-style chanting for things like the qole.

9th Hour of Sunday Office

Our Lord, accept our service, our prayers, come to our aid and have mercy on us!