Does anyone pray Liturgy of the Hrs as a family?

[graceandglory]

I want to begin Liturgy of the Hours as a family devotion with my teenagers and six yr old. I would like to do a family prayer time after dinner.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I really want to take baby steps on this. And I really want to get it up and running during Lent. Evening Prayer seems appropriate to do after dinner, but I really like Night Prayer. Night Prayer is shorter. Only Night Prayer, really seems like saying “Good Night.”

If you do LOTH with your family, can you share how and when you do it? I would like to hear from anyone who is doing it, or has done it in the past.

And, any suggestions are more than welcome.

I’m open to it all!

 

[Joannm]

That sounds like a really great idea. The only problem that I can think of is purchasing books for the whole family. If you have a large family that could get costly. I would suggest Shorter Christian Prayer. It doesn’t contain all the hours, just the basics of Morining and Evening Prayer and maybe an version of Compline. You can pray the psalms antiphonally, which is the proper way to pray them in a group.

 

[JimR-OCDS]

I want to begin Liturgy of the Hours as a family devotion with my teenagers and six yr old. I would like to do a family prayer time after dinner.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I really want to take baby steps on this. And I really want to get it up and running during Lent. Evening Prayer seems appropriate to do after dinner, but I really like Night Prayer. Night Prayer is shorter. Only Night Prayer, really seems like saying “Good Night.”

If you do LOTH with your family, can you share how and when you do it? I would like to hear from anyone who is doing it, or has done it in the past.

And, any suggestions are more than welcome.

I’m open to it all!

First off, with teen agers, don’t force it. If they’re open to learning the LOTH and doing it with you, then fine, but forced religion generally has negative effects over the long run.

My wife and myself prayer the LOTH together and we introduced it to my daughter, years ago when she still lived with us. She found it interesting, but that was about it. My son, never wanted anything to do with it, and we didn’t force it. Today, both are married and go to Church, but my son really hasn’t reached a level of faith, that draws him toward praying the LOTH.

Jim

 

[kaygee]

In my family, dh rises early and reads OOR and MP before his shower. Teenage DD usually does a morning offering (she says) in the car while driving to school – sometimes listens to EWTN’s morning devotions on the radio. After DD & DH are off to school/work, I attend a Mass that begins with MP at a local parish, then do OOR over coffee when I get home, before my live-in elderly Mom awakes. DH says Day Prayer with some folks at work, I pray it at home at lunch time with Mom. DD says they do a short version of DP at her Catholic school. After the supper dishes are cleared away, all four of us do Evening Prayer together, often followed by a rosary. DH and I pray Night Prayer together, just before we go to sleep.

In short, we all pray Litugy of the Hours as our schedules allow, but we make time for Evening Prayer as a family and Night prayer as a couple.

We started with dh and me doing Liturgy of the Hours individually as schedules worked out, and with dd as a grade schooler reading morning prayer aloud as her dad drove her to school. DH & I would read EP together while we were cooking supper. We did a rosary as a family after dinner. It all started, I guess, by DH and me deciding that this was what the two of us were going to do and evolved into a family thing. The after dinner rosary was a baby step toward the whole family doing EP together after supper.

 

[MoreThan1Hat]

I want to begin Liturgy of the Hours as a family devotion with my teenagers and six yr old. I would like to do a family prayer time after dinner.

Does anyone have any suggestions? I really want to take baby steps on this. And I really want to get it up and running during Lent. Evening Prayer seems appropriate to do after dinner, but I really like Night Prayer. Night Prayer is shorter. Only Night Prayer, really seems like saying “Good Night.”

If you do LOTH with your family, can you share how and when you do it? I would like to hear from anyone who is doing it, or has done it in the past.

And, any suggestions are more than welcome.

I’m open to it all!

Hi graceandglory! My children and I have prayed the LOTH together (Morning Prayer, Evening Prayer and Night Prayer) for about 2 years now, and my youngest is 7. I’m a pledged member of the Confraternity of Penitents, and the LOTH is part of my Rule of Prayer. We started by my just reading the whole thing to them. Then after a while I got older son his own breviary (1-volume; I use the 4-volume) and we prayed the Hours together and the younger two listened. Now daughter has her own breviary and shares with younger son so we can divide up the Psalms into 4 parts, and I assign one of them the reading, one does the intercessions, and one the closing prayer.

We are now learning to pray the Byzantine Hours as a family.

My approach was “we have always prayed as a family, and this is how our family prayer time is going to be structured, just like some families pray a Rosary together.” I also explained that the LOTH is a Liturgical prayer, just like Mass/Divine Liturgy is Liturgical prayer.

Now whenever they hear a Psalm or Scripture from the Hours at Mass or Divine Liturgy, they look at me and smile, like “I’ve heard that before, we have prayed that!”

Hope this helps.