Liturgy of the Hours
How to Pray the Liturgy of the Hours
Liturgy of the Hours · 8 steps
Morning, Evening and Night Prayer with a breviary or an approved app: what the Hours are, how the four-week psalter works, and the order of each Hour.
8 steps · About 20 minutes
The Liturgy of the Hours, also called the Divine Office, is the public prayer of the Church that sanctifies the whole course of the day and night with psalms, Scripture and intercession. Bishops, priests, deacons and religious are bound to it, but the Second Vatican Council warmly encouraged the laity to pray it too, alone or with others, and above all Morning and Evening Prayer, the two 'hinges' of the day. When you pray it you are not saying private prayers: you are joining the prayer that the whole Church, with Christ its Head, offers to the Father at every hour.
What you need
- A breviary — the four-volume Liturgy of the Hours, or the one-volume Christian Prayer, which contains Morning, Evening and Night Prayer — or an approved app or website that lays out the day's texts
- A guide (ordo) or the app's calendar to tell you today's week of the psalter and any feast
- About fifteen minutes for Morning or Evening Prayer, five for Night Prayer
- If praying with others, one person to lead and a way to alternate the psalm verses
When to pray it
Morning Prayer soon after rising, Evening Prayer at the end of the working day, Night Prayer just before sleep. If you can pray only one Hour, choose Morning or Evening Prayer; the Council names them the principal Hours.
Steps
Step 1: Know the Hours and what each is for
The full Office has five parts. Morning Prayer (Lauds) consecrates the day as it begins and recalls the Resurrection; Evening Prayer (Vespers) gives thanks for the day and recalls the evening sacrifice; these two are the hinges, and lay people who pray the Office usually pray these. The Office of Readings, with its longer Scripture and Church Fathers, may be prayed at any hour. Daytime Prayer (mid-morning, midday or mid-afternoon) is brief, and Night Prayer (Compline) is the short prayer before sleep. Each Hour is built from a hymn, psalms with antiphons, a reading, a responsory, a Gospel canticle at the major Hours, intercessions and a concluding prayer.
Tips
- An app removes the ribbons and the page-flipping. Begin there, and take up a printed breviary when you know the shape of the Hours by heart.
- Pray the psalms slowly and pause between them. The Church asks that the psalmody be prayed with the mind attentive to the words, and gives an antiphon to each psalm to show how the Church reads it in Christ.
- Make the Sign of the Cross at the opening words of the Benedictus, the Magnificat and the Nunc Dimittis, as the rubrics direct, and stand for these Gospel canticles.
- Many parishes sing Evening Prayer on Sundays and during Advent and Lent; Sacrosanctum Concilium specifically asked for this. Join them if you can.