How to Make Liturgy of the Hours Your Prayer
Perhaps you have never heard of the Liturgy of the Hours. Or, if you have, you still may not be sure what it is or how to incorporate it into your prayer life. If this is the case, fear not! Though the Liturgy of the Hours may seem daunting, there are some simple ways you can make the public prayer of the Church your prayer, too.
Perhaps you have never heard of the Liturgy of the Hours. Or, if you have, you still may not be sure what it is or how to incorporate it into your prayer life. If this is the case, fear not! Though the Liturgy of the Hours may seem daunting, there are some simple ways you can make the public prayer of the Church your prayer, too.
The Liturgy of the Hours, also called the Divine Office, is the Church’s official daily prayer. Built almost entirely from the Psalms, it helps us mark out the hours of the day as means of consecrating the day to God. Paragraph 1174 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church describes the Liturgy of the Hours in these terms: “The mystery of Christ, his Incarnation and Passover, which we celebrate in the Eucharist, especially at the Sunday assembly, permeates and transfigures the time of each day, through the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, ‘the divine office.’”
The Church’s choice of the Psalms is deliberate. The Psalms contain all our humanity: the highs and lows, the victories and defeats, the struggle with sin, the rejoicing over God’s faithfulness, and the longing for the Lord to make Himself known, all expressed in relationship with Him. To pray with them is to bring our own humanity into that dialogue, and to step into a longing for fulfillment that runs through the whole of human history. Praying the Psalms consistently teaches us to bring the real content of our day into conversation with God.
For someone who wants to begin praying the Psalms and the Liturgy of the Hours more frequently, a few concrete habits can be helpful. First and foremost, you need to have easy access to the actual text. Apps such as iBreviary lay out the correct hour, day, and season automatically, removing the learning curve of ribbons and multiple books.
The full Office has several hours each day. Trying to pray all of them all at once can be difficult. Morning Prayer (Lauds) and Evening Prayer (Vespers) are the two primary hours and the best place to begin. Pick the one that fits naturally into your day, such as when you have your morning coffee or right before dinner.
Before beginning, reflect on what is going on in your life that day. Whether it be a worry, a hope, or a person who needs prayer, let those concrete desires accompany you as you pray the words of the Psalm. The Psalms were written with exactly this kind of raw material in mind. Praying them without it turns the practice into mere recitation rather than dialogue.
The Liturgy of the Hours is sometimes viewed as an obligation belonging primarily to clergy and religious, but the practice is not discipline for its own sake but the conviction that Our Lord is actually present, here and now. With these simple pointers, hopefully you, too, can begin making this great gift a part of your prayer life.
