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Aaron Crofut

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Aaron is Currently Reading

Aaron Crofut is currently reading

The Canterbury Tales

by Geoffrey Chaucer

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Oct 03, 2026 05:07PM

Aaron Crofut is currently reading

Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns

by Ephrem the Syrian

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"Working my way through the Hymns on the Nativity. The first four are simply amazing. The fourth one in particular mediates upon the nature of the day itself, how it has this past (much longer now) and future, both of which far outstrip our own lives. Anyone who has a liturgical understanding of time will appreciate it. I mean to find my books of his hymns after this." — Jul 28, 2026 06:22PM

Jul 15, 2026 05:40PM

Aaron Crofut is currently reading

The Monastic Diurnal: the Day Hours of the Monastic Breviary in Latin and English

by Alcuin Deutsch

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Reading for the 4th time

read in November 2023

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Aaron Crofut said: " 2025: Still my favorite book. I've tried to incorporate more music into my own practice, even attempting to sing out loud when circumstances allow. I'm only beginning to see how the melodies connect different parts of the liturgy together in a way th 2025: Still my favorite book. I've tried to incorporate more music into my own practice, even attempting to sing out loud when circumstances allow. I'm only beginning to see how the melodies connect different parts of the liturgy together in a way that would be unnoticeable just reading the texts. This Breviary has brought me into constant contact with God, with Scripture, with the Saints, with our history, with our music; it has brought me a small piece of the monastic world and method.

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This is my desert island book. If I can keep one, and only one, book, this is the one I am taking.

The Divine Office (or the Breviary) is the official prayer of the Church and a compliment to the Mass. This book has immersed me within the liturgical year. I am a layman and not a priest, and so am not able to say Mass myself, nor do I have the benefit of a daily Mass anywhere near me. For the first few years after my conversion, Sunday Mass was about all the liturgy that I participated in. While beautiful, a great deal was being missed. If a major feast did not fall on a Sunday, it generally went by unnoticed, save for perhaps a glancing recognition at a calendar. The feast of St. Michael, my patron, kept by me maybe once or twice in a decade! And the feasts of many saints celebrated in a lower ranking, saints like Anthony of Padua and Teresa of Avila, would never receive a liturgical celebration at all. We could keep the day, and often did, but not as the Church does. This deficiency really went by unnoticed until I started to pray the Breviary; now I can’t imagine going back.

The Liturgical Year in its fullness is perhaps the most striking poem ever composed. Time is sanctified at nearly every level imaginable. There are seven prayers for each day, with an eighth for the night; each day belongs to a season and may commemorate the season or honor a particular saint or event in the lives of our Lord, our Lady, and the Church. It neither bores with a flat equality of days nor overwhelms by trying to make every day the pinnacle of exuberance, but carries along hour by hour, day by day, season by season with a rhythm honed to perfection over the centuries. For those deprived of the Tridentine Mass, or who have limited access to it (like me), this constant participation in the liturgy helps tie us to our faith and our tradition. I have found the Breviary helps prepare me for the Masses I can attend in a number of ways. For starters, it keeps the feast being celebrated before my mind both before and after Mass; the former helps me understand and mediate upon the themes of the day, the latter helps me carry that spirit after leaving the church. A constant meditation upon the Psalms also helps one better understand parts of the Mass, especially the Introit, Gradual, Alleluia/Tract, Offertory, and Communion, which are often taken from the Psalms. They are always fragments of a Psalm; understanding the context helps us better understand what the Church is trying to convey to us with the propers of the Mass.

A daily interaction with the liturgy also helps us better prepare and participate in the various seasons. Advent is coming up, one of the great mysteries of our faith that pulls even the hearts of the unreligious. The depths of this season is better conveyed by praying as the Church prays every day rather than on four or five days of a month. The aftermath of Christmas illustrates this even better; Christmas is an octave, an eight day celebration including some of the most beloved feasts of the year in ages past (St. Stephen the Protomartyr, St. John the Evangelist, the Holy Innocents), which might very well pass us by if we have limited access to the Mass and rely upon that alone to participate in the Church’s year. The entire season of Lent all but demands we listen to our Holy Church call us to repentance for forty days. Passiontide prayed constantly will move one to tears, the Triduum will break your heart, and nothing in any story created by man can match the triumph of Easter proclaiming absolute joy for over a month. It is poetry that has survived well over a millennia in many cases, the poetry of more saints than we can imagine.

One of the aspects of the hours that dawned upon me this year is the importance of the hymns. They all address our Lord, praying to the three divine Persons in the sacred Unity, but it is an important and almost hourly reminder that we are praying to someone, not spitting out magic or incantations. It is a relationship with another personality. A priest once mentioned in his homily that we will all stand before God, but some of us will go to Him as a complete stranger, while others will have spent the time to inculcate a friendship with Him. "Pray always" is perhaps the most difficult commandment given to us; having the structure of the Breviary helps make it a reality, and in my own experience, I have found it easier to recommend myself to God in personal prayer when I have recently spent time with Him in the Church’s official prayer.

This marks the close of my fourth year with the Breviary; I’ve tried to include the night office of Matins in a bit a more, but my real challenge is incorporating the musical aspect to the prayer. I would not say I have “musical talent or knowledge” at all, but I’m enjoying the challenge of learning the chants for the various parts of the office. Chanting a prayer is a very different experience from saying one.

St. Andrew’s Day is the anniversary of my beginning this prayer back in 2020; it was a fortuitous accident that it coincides with the end and the beginning of the liturgical year. For almost six months, we have been celebrating the long time after Pentecost, the Age of the Saints, and while it begins joyously enough, by Michaelmas one begins to start noticing the eschatological tones beginning to build up. That final Sunday after Pentecost (which we celebrated yesterday) puts the Parousia in full view, the return we so much hope for. It is only fitting that we begin the new year with Advent’s responsory

Aspíciens a longe, ecce vídeo Dei poténtiam veniéntem, et nébulam totam terram tegéntem. Ite óbviam ei, et dícite: Núntia nobis, si tu es ipse, Qui regnatúrus es in pópulo Israël. ...more "

Nov 29, 2025 04:12PM · see review

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Aaron’s Quotes

“In this statement, my Scipio, I build on your own admirable definition, that there can be no community, properly so called, unless it be regulated by a combination of rights. And by this definition it appears that a multitude of men may be just as tyrannical as a single despot and indeed this is the most odious of all tyrannies, since no monster can be more barbarous than the mob, which assumes the name and mask of the people.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

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“It is all true, or it ought to be; and more and better besides.”
― Winston S. Churchill

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“To believe you are magnificent. And gradually to discover that you are not magnificent. Enough labor for one human life.”
― Czesław Miłosz

tags: humility, learning, life, self-knowledge

251 likes

“In which, if any, of these constitutions do we find the art of ruling being practiced in the actual government of men? What art is more difficult to learn? But what art is more important to us?”
― Plato, The Statesman

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“The little sins are sometimes harder to confess than the big ones—but that's why it's so important to confess them.”
― G.K. Chesterton, The Wisdom Of Father Brown

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