Q: In the Liturgy of the Hours, on the days between January 1 and Epiphany, which are identified by the days of the week (e.g. “Wednesday–from January 2 to Epiphany”), there is this strange notation in the Office of Readings: “If this day occurs on Sunday, the Te Deum is said.” It is hard to imagine how a Wednesday could occur on a Sunday. Is this some sort of anomaly created by the moving of Epiphany to Sunday? I notice that in the Grey Book for the new Divine Office translation these days are identified simply by their date.
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A: Yeah, it looks as though the English translators at work on that week had dipped a little too often in the spiked eggnog.
In both Latin editions of the Liturgy of the Hours, those days are noted by their date, January 2-5, not by the day of the week, Monday through Thursday. I suspect that the translators were trying to align the Liturgy of the Hours with the Roman Missal, which puts the presidential prayers on those days in a section entitled “Weekdays of Christmas Time from January 2 to the Saturday before the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord,” and then separated them out by weekdays, rather than dates.
Nice idea, but it doesn’t work that way.
Yes, moving Epiphany to Sunday has something to do with that rubric. Wherever on the Catholic earth that Epiphany stays on January 6, it becomes a holyday of obligation. It often follows a Sunday in early January, which is then called the Second Sunday After the Nativity (Christmas), and which we do not observe in the US.
So, in the Liturgy of the Hours, the heading “from January 2 to Epiphany: Monday” should simply read “January 2.” And so on for the next three days. The rubric then makes sense. In the Office of Readings the Te Deum is used if January 2 (or 3 or 4 or 5) falls on a Sunday. But when that happens in the United States, you’ll be using the Office of Readings for the Epiphany, instead of the one for one of those weekdays. And Epiphany always includes the Te Deum.