What are the ends for which the Office is said? (a) To glorify God, (b) to help holy Church, and (c) to sanctify ourselves.

(a) “To glorify God,” that is, to adore His infinite majesty, to thank Him for his innumerable and constant blessings, to satisfy His justice in expiating the sins of the world and to beg His grace and mercy.  The ends for which the Office are said are the same as those for which Mass is offered, for the Office is the supplement of the Mass (Tronson).

(b) “To help holy Church.”  The Church militant has many and great needs.  It is her mission to extend the Kingdom of Christ, and to do this great work she needs freedom from hostile laws, strength and courage to withstand tyrants and persecution, unity and peace amongst her children and pastors, zeal in her ministers and recruits for her militant forces.  To obtain these results the Church relies very much on the devout recitation of the Office.  Doubtless, it is for these purposes that the Church has confided to the care of her chosen ministers this public official prayer and has laid no such obligation on the laity.  St. Alphonsus did not hesitate to say that if priests and religious said the Office as they should say it, the Church should not be in the deplorable state that it then was in.  This Doctor of the Church adds “that by devout saying of the Office many sinners could be drawn from the slavery of the devil and many souls would love God with more fervour.”  The wants of the Church are greater now than they were ever before.  Each devoutly-said Hour draws down God’s blessing on His Church.  What a vast number of blessings come from a life of daily recitation offered worthily, attentively and devoutly (digne, attente, ac devote).

(c) “The benefit of the person who recites the Hours.”  The third end for which the canonical Hours are offered is for the benefit of the person who recites them.  St. Alphonsus wrote, “If they said the Office as they ought, priests themselves should not be always the same, always imperfect, prone to anger, greedy, attached to self-interest and to vanities....  But if they recited the Office, not as they say it with distractions and irreverences, but with devotion and recollection, uniting the affections of the heart with so many petitions which they present to God, they should certainly not be so weak as they are, but would acquire fervour and strength to resist all temptations and to lead a life worthy of priests.”

Another blessing springs from the attentive recitation of the Breviary—­viz., the daily withdrawal from the world and its cares which must be banished from the soul which speaks with God.  For, as St. Alphonsus writes, the saying of the Hours devoutly, gives occasion to pious souls to elicit many acts of virtue, acts of faith, of hope, of charity, of humility, etc.  For one psalm, says the saint, moves all the powers of the soul and causes us to elicit a hundred acts.  And in the Breviary are found the most beautiful formulae of adoration and praise, the psalms above all other parts of the Office being wonderfully rich in magnificent praise of God’s attributes.  Where can such sublime forms of prayer and praise be found as in Psalms, 8, 9, 17, 18, 21, 23, 28, 29, 33, 45, 46, 49, 54—­to name but a few?