Today is the feast of St Lawrence, a Roman deacon martyred under Valerian. He had extraordinary eucharistic piety, being strong enough to consume the Host after someone vomited very soon after their own reception. He was grilled to death, and it supposed to have been so strengthened by the Lord that he told his persecutors to turn him over, as he was done on that side.
In the EF, Matins contains no less than seven references to Lawrence as a Levite, references that have been excised from the OF of the Office. These references serve to underscore a hermeneutic of continuity between the Mosaic Covenant and the New and Everlasting Covenant: deacons are of the order of Levi, while priests are of the order of Melchizedek. Removing these references have had the effect of "suppressing the way in which the characters of ordination relate to the former dispensation, and to the Temple. These changes alone impair the way contemporary Catholics can understand their own relation to the one and eternal covenant with God, now made manifest in Christ, as the same covenant in both old and new dispensations." (Hemming, Worship as a Revelation, p. 131)
Just another reason to use the EF.
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