Don’t miss the beauty of Holy Week liturgy—including the Liturgy of the Hours!
While Holy Thursday and Good Friday rightly get lots of attention, the earlier days of Holy Week shouldn’t be overlooked.
A few observations and tips to get you through this week of praying:
Morning Prayer includes readings from the prophets who foretold Christ’s suffering.
Evening Prayer’s readings focus on Christ’s sacrifice and its implications for us.
If you attend the Mass of the Lord’s Supper on Holy Thursday, you do not also pray Evening Prayer.
If you attend the liturgical celebration of the Passion on Good Friday, you do not also pray Evening Prayer.
Highly recommended: the Second Reading in the Office of Readings for Holy Saturday.
Holy Saturday pro tip: pray Evening Prayer before you head to the Easter Vigil.
Get ready for the Easter Octave with a FREE downloadable bookmark!
Download and print my Easter Antiphons bookmark and save yourself a whole lot of page-flipping during Morning Prayer for the Octave of Easter.
This week on Instagram, I’m highlighting one beautiful element from each day’s Liturgy of the Hours.
Ask for The Handy Little Guide to the Liturgy of the Hours at your local Catholic bookstore, or order online from Amazon.com or the publisher, Our Sunday Visitor.
Copyright 2023 Barb Szyszkiewicz
Images copyright 2023 Barb Szyszkiewicz (created in Canva), all rights reserved.
This post contains Amazon affiliate links. Your purchase through these links supports the work of this website at no additional cost to you. Thank you!
Have you ever tried praying the Liturgy of the Hours?
Have you ever given up praying the Liturgy of the Hours because it seems too complicated? Too many pages, too many ribbons, too many ways to go wrong?
What if I told you that you can pray one part of the Liturgy of the Hours without needing to flip around in the book—all you need to know is what day of the week it is?
For real.
This Lent, try praying Night Prayer.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a saint’s feast day or the season of Lent or anything like that: there’s only one week a year that Night Prayer is different, and the instructions for that are right there in the book.
In my new book The Handy Little Guide to the Liturgy of the Hours (available now on Kindle; the print version releases March 27), I emphasize that for Liturgy of the Hours beginners, Night Prayer is a simple introduction to the cadence of the prayers.
Is it worth the effort? Yes. Is it doable? Yes! Start small, both in building the habit of prayer and your skills in navigating the breviary. Night Prayer is a wonderful way to begin, because it’s shorter and less complex than Morning and Evening Prayer. Take all the time you need to build up your prayer muscles. (21-22)
If you’re using Christian Prayer, you’ll find Night Prayer beginning on p. 1034.
Copyright 2023 Barb Szyszkiewicz
Photos created in Stencil, all rights reserved.
This article contains Amazon links; your purchase through these links supports the work of this website at no cost to you. Thank you!
Welcome to this series celebrating the launch of my booklet from Our Sunday Visitor,The Handy Little Guide to Prayer! I’ve asked some friends and colleagues to share prayers and tips to supplement the information in this booklet.
The Liturgy of the Hours follows a daily rhythm of prayer throughout the liturgical year. If Scripture is inspiring to you and structure is helpful when you pray, this type of prayer is a perfect fit. I’ve prayed the Liturgy of the Hours since my college days, and it’s not a practice you pick up overnight. It takes time to get used to following the format of this prayer, and it’s easier when you learn it in a group rather than on your own.
What 3 tips would you share with someone who’s just beginning to pray the Liturgy of the Hours?
Start small. Choose one or at the most two liturgical hours and stick with that until you are comfortable. My choice for a beginner would be Night Prayer, a.k.a. compline. It’s the easiest to follow, since it’s a seven-day repeating cycle with no fancy variations for the liturgical seasons. No ribbon flipping required.
Use a breviary app before investing in a four-volume breviary. Everything is all laid out for you, no guessing or worrying that you are on the wrong page. Also, you can experiment with adding the other hours until you’ve figured out what works best for you.
Join a Facebook group of Liturgy of the Hours fans. There are several good ones with lots of members who were once rank beginners and are now eager to help other newcomers. (Or buy my book to learn the how-tos and the why-tos.)
How would you encourage someone who finds the Liturgy of the Hours too complicated?
If you try the fairly uncomplicated Night prayer for two weeks running and still don’t like it, then maybe this is not for you. That’s okay — there are many other ways to pray! But if those lovely night time psalms grab your heart like they did mine so many years ago, then find someone to help you get over the complicated parts. It’s like learning to ride a bike. Awkward at first, but once you’ve got it down you’ll never forget.
What do you love about praying the Liturgy of the Hours?
For me it’s the best way to do those two things that we all say we want to do and know we need to do: to pray often, and to immerse ourselves in the Word of God. I don’t have to separate my spiritual schedule into separate chunks of “now I’m going to pray” and “now I’m going to read Scripture.” Instead, I pray Scripture!
Welcome to this series celebrating the launch of my booklet from Our Sunday Visitor,The Handy Little Guide to Prayer! I’ve asked some friends and colleagues to share prayers and tips to supplement the information in this booklet.
When it comes to intercessory prayer, I like to think that God’s motto is “No job too small.” We teach our children to go to God with big things and little things, but as we grow up, we sometimes pray as if only the big things are worthy of God’s attention.
I began paying extra attention to the way people talk about prayer when I started writing The Handy Little Guide to Prayer for Our Sunday Visitor. As I wrote this booklet during the pandemic, when I wasn’t seeing too many people who didn’t live with me, I turned my focus to the ways prayer was mentioned on social media. I’d already been following Catholic TV producer Bonnie Rodgers on Twitter, and her daily custom of a #morningcommuteprayer was a fascinating call to prayer for big and small intentions alike.
Intercessory prayer is a type of prayer in which we ask God to bless others in specific ways. In my booklet, I mention using moments or transitions in your day as prayer cues. Bonnie’s Morning Commute Prayers are the perfect example of this practice.
I interviewed Bonnie, the producer of CatholicTV’s signature talk show, This Is the Day (Bonnie also works in Business Development and Expansion for the station) about this prayer practice and why she shares it on social media.
When did you start posting your Morning Commute Prayer intentions on Twitter?
My Catholic experiences included making the sign of the cross at cemeteries, ambulances and all emergency vehicles, accident scenes, passing a church (obvi!) so being aware of everyday situations that required Divine Intervention was almost rote for me. But almost two years ago now when I was driving into work with the car windows open on an amazingly beautiful New England spring day I saw an early-teen boy being taunted at a bus stop. He was carrying something and kids seemed to be teasing him about it. I am a super busybody and really wanted to jump out of the car to intervene but realized that it could potentially cause more problems for the teen (can you imagine the kids’ reactions?) but I felt compelled to do something without exacerbating the situation and then it came to me that I could pray for him and even for the kiddos taunting him.
Why do you share these on social media?
I made the decision to put my commute prayer on Twitter because teasing and taunting take place everywhere and quite frankly amplifying my prayer for that teen seemed necessary. I kept thinking of how it was such a beautiful day and his day was off to a horrendous start.
Do you choose these intentions ahead of time or do you pray as you go?
Normally I pray as I go, but there have been times when someone has DM’d asking for a prayer intention or when an anniversary of some kind comes up. During COVID I did a lot of neighborhood walking and was seeing Marian statues, so for the month of May I started #ISpyMary. I really love how these public displays of devotion break into our lives when we least expect it.
Is there a particular intention that has ever gone viral or attracted a great deal of attention?
This winter, a very pragmatic prayer for cleared accessible walkways (frozen snow piles and melted slush in the Northeast are a hazard) for those in wheelchairs, garnered the attention of an accessibility rights organization and some replies included personal experiences with slush.
How does the Morning Commute Prayer connect you to others who pray?
Oddly enough, I am a fairly private person but sharing my observations and requests for prayer has bolstered my awareness that our intercessory prayers – whether during the workday or the Liturgy – are our way of expanding our community. The “who is your neighbor?” question is played out daily in the digital landscape in so many wonderful ways.
Welcome to this series celebrating the launch of my booklet from Our Sunday Visitor,The Handy Little Guide to Prayer!I’ve asked some friends and colleagues to share prayers and tips to supplement the information in this booklet.
Would you like to try lectio divina prayer? Try this!
Welcome to this series celebrating the launch of my booklet from Our Sunday Visitor,The Handy Little Guide to Prayer!I’ve asked some friends and colleagues to share prayers and tips to supplement the information in this booklet.
Are you unable to attend Mass or Adoration in person due to the pandemic or other circumstances? Try this!
Pat adds: My two favorite online chapels are found at Savior.org in Philadelphia, and the Shrine of Divine Mercy in Lithuania that houses the original Divine Mercy portrait.
Welcome to this series celebrating the launch of my booklet from Our Sunday Visitor,The Handy Little Guide to Prayer!I’ve asked some friends and colleagues to share prayers and tips to supplement the information in this booklet.
Are you looking for a simple way to pray with your spouse? Try this!
Welcome to this series celebrating the launch of my booklet from Our Sunday Visitor,The Handy Little Guide to Prayer!I’ve asked some friends and colleagues to share prayers and tips to supplement the information in this booklet.
Are you struggling to say “yes” to God in difficult circumstances? Try this!
Welcome to this series celebrating the launch of my booklet from Our Sunday Visitor,The Handy Little Guide to Prayer!I’ve asked some friends and colleagues to share prayers and tips to supplement the information in this booklet.
Are you looking for ways to involve your children in family prayer? Try this!
Welcome to this series celebrating the launch of my booklet from Our Sunday Visitor,The Handy Little Guide to Prayer!I’ve asked some friends and colleagues to share prayers and tips to supplement the information in this booklet.
Are you struggling with prayer right now? Try this!
