Liturgy of the Hours

Brief Introduction to the Liturgy of the Hours

Christ told us about our need “to pray always and not to lose heart” (Luke 18:1). In his goodness, our Savior modeled how we might do this. Following Jewish custom, Jesus offered prayer at various times of the day and night, would retire to the desert or to the hills to pray, or rise up very early or spend the night in prayer to God. The Gospels frequently show Jesus at prayer, especially when his saving mission is being revealed, as for example at his baptism, before he called the apostles, at his transfiguration, when he healed the sick and raised the dead, and above all at the events leading up to and during his Passion. Jesus’s earthly work was closely bound up with his prayer, and indeed flowed out from it (cf. GILH no. 4).

From the very beginning, Christians have likewise “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of the bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42; cf. also Acts 10:3,9, 16:25). The Church satisfies Christ’s precept “to pray always” in accordance with apostolic tradition by celebrating the Eucharist and the Liturgy of the Hours, or Divine Office. “The Liturgy of the Hours extends to the different hours of the day the praise and thanksgiving, the memorial of the mysteries of salvation, the petitions, and the foretaste of heavenly glory, that are present in the eucharistic mystery, ‘the center and high point of the whole life of the Christian community’” (GILH no. 12). Along with Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours constitutes the public prayer of the whole Church. It is the image of Christ’s own prayer to the Father, “for where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:20). Human time and activity is sanctified by the perpetual sacrifice of prayer.

The liturgical form of the Divine Office goes back to the Desert Fathers, who prayed the psalms at various times during the day and night. The Apostolic Constitutions (4th cen.) describe five daytime prayers and one nighttime prayer in its exhortation to “offer up your prayers in the morning, at the third hour, the sixth, the ninth, the evening, and at cock-crowing.” St. John Cassian, describing the prayer of the Egyptian hermits (5th cen.), named eight canonical hours—seven during the day and one during the night—which St. Benedict in his Rule (6th cen.) associates with Psalm 119:164, “Seven times a day I praise you,” and Psalm 119:62 “At midnight I rise to praise you.” Since the Second Vatican Council, the modern Liturgy of the Hours, decreed by Pope Paul VI, consists of seven canonical hours, divided into three major hours and four minor hours, as follows:

• Office of Readings – major hour (traditionally prayed during the night and called Matins; now prayed at any convenient time)
• Lauds or Morning Prayer – major hour (at rising)
• Terce or Midmorning Prayer – minor hour (before noon)
• Sext or Midday Prayer – minor hour (at about noon)
• None or Midafternoon Prayer – minor hour (at about 3pm)
• Vespers or Evening Prayer – major hour (at about sunset)
• Compline or Night Prayer – minor hour (just before retiring)

These hours order and sanctify monastic life; clergy and religious are generally obliged to pray all the canonical hours, even if they do not live in a monastery. (Monks and nuns in movies and literature are often depicted chanting together: the Liturgy of the Hours is what they are doing.) The laity too are encouraged to participate as often as possible in the Liturgy of the Hours, whether by joining with those who are obliged to pray the whole liturgy as part of their vocation, by publicly praying the appropriate hour to mark and sanctify significant occasions, or by praying some or all of the hours individually or within the family as a regular devotion.

The psalms, themselves frequently designated as morning or evening or night prayers, are the backbone of the Liturgy of the Hours. There are psalms of praise and thanksgiving; psalms in times of trial and despair; in times of joy and victory; psalms of trust, contrition, forgiveness, and judgment; for springtime, for harvest, for feast days, for weddings; in the time of sickness, old age, and death; psalms for entry into the sanctuary and for the coming of the Lord. Most every human feeling, thought, hope, or life event has its psalm, and the use of the psalms in the Liturgy of the Hours is the Church’s way of entrusting the human heart to God. The tradition of including the Trinitarian doxology as the last verse of every psalm, canticle, or hymn, during which all may bow, goes back to the Church Fathers.

Not every psalm will reflect what each individual is thinking or feeling, but those who pray a psalm in the liturgy do so on behalf of all, in part as an act of compassionate intercession for those whose cares are expressed in the psalm. At the same time, the psalms take root in the hearts of those who pray them, reshaping what they think and feel, unveiling their innermost being, revealing to them the Word. “O Lord, you search me and you know me”; “Even before a word is on my tongue, O Lord, you known it completely” (Ps. 139:1,4). “The unfolding of your words gives light: it imparts wisdom to the simple” (Ps. 119:130).

Lauds (Morning Prayer) and Vespers (Evening Prayer) are the two hinges on which the daily office turns; Lauds is the office of praise and Vespers that of thanksgiving. Lauds sanctifies the morning: St. Basil the Great (4th cen.) says Lauds “is said in the morning [so] that the first stirrings of our mind and will may be consecrated to God and that we may take nothing in hand until we have been gladdened by the thought of God.” Celebrated as the light of the a new day is dawning, Lauds also recalls the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, “the true light enlightening all people” (John 1:9) and the “sun of righteousness” (Malachi 4:2). For “God is light and in him there is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).

The four-volume Liturgy of the Hours contains the English texts of all the canonical hours throughout liturgical year. These books are thick and expensive, and using them can be complex. This Matitunale contains the texts of Lauds for the Fridays of the Lenten and Easter seasons (including the Friday after Ash Wednesday), the Sacred Triduum, Easter, and the Ascension, as well those solemnities and feasts whose fixed date may from year to year fall on a Friday during Lent or Easter. It is intended to facilitate a weekly devotional meeting during the Lenten and Easter seasons, and to provide an easily accessible and attractive introduction to the Liturgy of the Hours. Abridged forms of the liturgy are available in print as Christian Prayer and Shorter Christian Prayer. Increasingly, clergy, religious, and laity alike are using a variety of free, easy-to-use websites and mobile apps to pray the Liturgy of the Hours, including iBreviary (ibreviary.org) and Universalis (universalis.com).