How many hours do priest have to read a day

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utunumsint

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Hi,

Just a few quick questions. Does any know if priests are bound to read the LOTH every day? If yes, how many hours are they bound to read? All of them?

God bless,
Ut
 
From my knowledge, a priest must read all hours, from the Office of Readings, (Matins) all the way to Night Prayer. (Compline)
 
Priests are required to pray the Liturgy of the Hours daily. At minimum they are bound to say Office of Readings, Morning Prayer, one hour of Daytime Prayer, Evening Prayer, and Night Prayer.

-ACEGC
 
Thanks for your responses.

Wow - where do they find the time? A priest friend of mine suggested that priests who start to neglect the hours tend to start having problems. I wonder if maybe priests who start having problems start to neglect the hours?

As a father of six kids, I find it a good habit to get into. Especially when life becomes overwhelming. There are so many distractions in our modern society that pull our hearts and our minds away from God. It becomes so easy to almost completely neglect prayer if we are not disciplined.

I wonder how priests make the time? Perhaps there is something I can learn from them?

God bless,
Ut
 
utunumsint said:
Wow - where do they find the time?
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Well I’m not a priest nor deacon and I pray the entirety of the Liturgy of the Hours, and even did it before retiring when I still worked. I rarely missed an hour of the 5 basic ones (Readings, Lauds, one daytime Hour, Vespers and Compline).

It really doesn’t take that much time if you’re reading the Hour. The Office of Readings is maybe the longer one. Figure on 15 minutes if read at a normal pace, add maybe 5 minutes if you like to take a longer pause between readings; maybe 10-15 for Lauds and Vespers, and 5-10 for the other hours. I can chant Lauds and Vespers as per the Roman Liturgy of the Hours in about 20 minutes, and according to the Monastic schema I often use now that I’m retired (and I have been using it this week), in 25 minutes.

So a read Office, worst case, would be 65 minutes, spread throughout the day. Not that bad really and believe me if in a hurry I have been known to “speed-read” an Office! It’s a good discipline to have. The hardest time is on vacation, when my routine is disrupted. Easiest is when I’m in a monastery, when I just go with the monastic flow 🙂
 
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