Liturgy of the Hours?

[Roberto_Peralta]

Hi I’m new to this forum. Anyone care to explain what the Liturgy of the Hours exactly is?

 

[Tedster]

From the Universalis website:

What is the Liturgy of the Hours?

The Liturgy of the Hours (also known as the Divine Office) is the richest single prayer resource of the Christian Church. It provides prayers, psalms and meditation for every hour of every day. It has existed from the earliest times, to fulfil the Lord’s command to pray without ceasing. Never monotonous, always new, it provides the means for the whole world, united, to pray together and sanctify every hour of every day of every year. All over the world, hundreds of thousands of priests and religious have vowed to pray the Liturgy daily, and all over the world they do, in public and in private, in tin shacks and cathedrals, in palaces and in prison camps.

But the Liturgy’s very richness is also its weakness. The liturgical calendar, the four-week cycle of psalms, the celebrations of saints - all these interact in an intricate dance of prayer that requires some 6,000 pages of small print in 3 or 4 volumes. The complete books (the Breviary) are expensive to buy, heavy to carry, and, except for the really dedicated, complex to use. Thus many people with a busy life in the world are unable to undertake the project of praying the liturgy, and so it remains shamefully unused.

 

[Roberto_Peralta]

Thanks a lot.

 

[catechumen08]

Wow, this sounds really interesting! Where is this done? At the Vatican?

 

[jstreets]

Wow, this sounds really interesting! Where is this done? At the Vatican?

It is required to be said by clergy everyday, at least in the Archdiocese of Detroit.

Kind of like the Muslims praying several times a day, however the Church came up with the idea first .