Postscripts From The Catholic Spitfire Grill

Several people recently have asked me about getting started with praying the Divine Office or the Liturgy of the Hours and what better day to blog about it than New Year's Day?

If you have no idea what I am talking about, you might want to start with these posts: Liturgy of the Hours, I Stopped Saying the Breviary and Started Reading the Bible, The Themes of the Liturgy of the Hours, Invitatory Psalm.

If you are looking to get started praying the Divine Office, here are some resources for you.

The entire Divine Office is available on-line for free at Universalis. It is very user friendly. I just have a difficult time becoming propery meditative whilst reading on the internet. I am certain however, that it might be a good solution for some.

The resource I recommend most often and the one my husband is using as he begins praying the Liturgy of the Hours this year, is a subscription to Magnificat. Very user-friendly, it contains texts for Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer for every day, and a Night prayer form for each month. The Magnificat is also a missal with all of the parts of the Mass included (many with the Latin translation as well). Each month has a reproduction of an important work of religious art with commentary. There is a brief reading for each day's Mass readings and other editorial content. It is small and compact. Although I own the four-volume breviary, I use the Magnificat with my children because it is so easy to use, attractive, and well laid out. This is the resource I use with my children for our prayer together. I save the big breviary for non school days, times when I am travelling, and will probably use it preferentially when my children eventually leave home.

Buying a breviary. If you'd prefer to leave out the editiorial content of the Magnificant, or buy something just once, or if you'd like to pray the the unabridged version then you'll want to buy a breviary. You have some options.

There is the full four volume set in paperback or leatherbound. Your original purchase of a new set should include a copy of the Liturgy of the Hours Guide for the current year, but if you buy a used copy or borrow someone else's you might need to buy one. The Liturgy of the Hours Guide is not instructional. It only breaks down which readings belong on which day for that year. If you've never prayed the Divine Office and you don't have someone in real life who will be teaching you how to do it, then you MUST purchase this book as well: The Divine Office for Dodos. (If you do not want to wait for the publication date of the newest edition in March 2008, there are used copies available on Amazon.com and probably on Abebooks.com as well.) This book is instructional and covers things like the precedance of Feasts, Memorials, Solemnities, and what the heck is a "proper" etc. It is am extremely helpful book that allows you to learn the Divine Office is small steps. If you are interested in the historical development of the Divine Office, the spiritual significance of the various offices, etc. then this is not the book you want to buy, or at the very least you will need to seek out some resources in addition to that one. In addition to the four volume set, you might also want to consider purchasing a breviary cover to hold your guide and any other devotional materials you might want to be using all together in one place.

I don't have any single book that I can recommend that just "sings" for me with respect to the historical development and the spiritual aspects of the Liturgy of the Hours. I have several on my shelf but nothing that I would really suggest you part with your money for. The best book I have ever read about the historical development of meditative prayer that includes a fair amount of material on the Divine Office is Rosary: Mysteries, Meditations, and the Telling of the Beads. I can't recommend that book highly enough; however, its primary focus is obviously not the Divine Office.

Wanting something a little shorter? There are two other options

Book of Christian Prayer: Liturgy of the Hours If you want to pray just the Morning, Evening, and Night offices, this is the book you'll want. It contains everything you need for those plus many of the important readings and prayers for major Feasts etc. You will probably also still want a copy of Divine Office for Dodos and a current copy of St. Joseph Guide for Christian Prayer. As a note of caution, there are many books of "Christian Prayer" out there, many of them are adaptions of the Divine Office. There's nothing wrong with that, but if you are looking for the "official" prayer of the Church be sure to look carefully.

The absolutely stripped down version is called Shorter Christian Prayer and is primarily for travelling. It has Morning, Evening, and Night prayers but very little for Feasts, Solemnities, Memorials, etc.

Not Catholic, not interested in being Catholic, but still intrigued by this Liturgy of the Hours thing? Speaking as someone who has been both Protestant (of the vehemently anti-Catholic variety) and Catholic, I can confidently say, that there is very little in the Liturgy of the Hours that would be objectionable to vast majority of Protestants. The Divine Office (click on the link for a sample day's worth) is scripture and quite a lot of it too. The Office of the Readings does have content from the Early Church Fathers which you may or may not find worth reading and occasionally, you will find readings from the deuterocanonical books (Sirach, etc.) but you may find those to be worth thinking on, even if you are not ready to accord them scriptural status. Remember that until the 1800's most Protestant Bibles included the deuterocanonical books in some form or another.

ETA (02/18/2008): The Rosary Shop also has an on-line tutorial for praying the Liturgy of the Hours.