The Liturgy of the Hours is the official prayer of the Catholic Church. As its name suggests it is the concrete expression of the Church’s desire to fulfill St Paul’s injunction to “pray without ceasing.” (1 Thess. 5:17) It is composed mostly of Psalms and other “songs” from the Old Testament and readings from both. It is often referred to as “The Breviary.” The word is derived from “breviarium” which means brief summary. We may not find it all that brief but it does put together the Church’s prayer in one place and is remarkably easy to master.
All Priests and Deacons are required to say the Liturgy of the Hours every day, but it must not be seen as an exclusively clerical exercise. It is the prayer of the whole Church and all the Faithful are invited to participate. As wonderful as the opportunity to remotely observe the Mass either from our parish Mass through Zoom or one on TV, it is still a rather passive activity. In celebrating the Liturgy of the Hours, we come together as the parish family of St Charles Borromeo and actively join the universal Church in its worship of our God.
We recommend iBreviary an app that can be installed on your iPhone, iPad, or Android device and makes the process much simpler than the print breviaries. You can install the iBreviary app by searching for iBreviary in the Apple App Store (or in the Google Play Store). More information about the iBreviary app can be found at https://www.ibreviary.org/en/.
You can say the Liturgy of the Hours alone, with your family, or others. We also wanted to gauge interest if we offered a Zoom streaming / dial-in session where we could pray the Liturgy of the Hours together for either the morning, midday, or evening prayer. If you are, please fill out the survey below to let us know what times would interest you. The survey will be open until 5 PM on Wednesday, March 18. The Parish Pastoral Council will review the results and try to set a remote session if there is sufficient interest.