St. Peter Canisius Apostolate

Let’s say you have Shorter Christian Prayer and want to start praying the hours. How exactly should you go about it?

Before you can begin praying the Divine Office, you need to know which Week of the Psalter you should be praying. The Office cycles through four weeks of prayers. To determine which week you should be praying, you have to know which liturgical week the Church is in. In other words, you can’t just start on Week 1. Remember, the Divine Office is not a private prayer. Even if you say it by yourself, you are still praying along with the Church. And since the Church follows a liturgical calendar, your praying of the Office must also follow that calendar.

If We’re In Ordinary Time

1. To determine which liturgical week the Church is in, go to the daily Mass Readings provided by the USCCB and click on the current date.

2. Under the calendar date itself, it will tell you the Church’s date. This will be either the name of a feast (Memorial of Saint Martin of Tours, bishop) or the numerical liturgical week of the Church (Friday of the Thirty-second Week in Ordinary Time).

3. If you see the numerical liturgical week of the Church, you’re set. If you see the name of a feast day, you’ll have keep clicking on the different days of the week until you get the numerical liturgical week.

4. Open your copy of Shorter Christian Prayer to page 503, the beginning of Ordinary Time, and find the corresponding Sunday of that liturgical week. For example, if it’s the 15th week of Ordinary Time, you’ll find the 15th Sunday of Ordinary Time on page 518.

5. Underneath the bold heading, in red letters, it will tell you which week from the psalter to read. For example, if it’s the 15th Week of Ordinary time, you will pray Week 3.

6. Turn to the corresponding week in the psalter, and then find the current day of the week (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc.).

7. Begin praying!

If We’re Outside of Ordinary Time

1. To determine which liturgical week the Church is in, go to the daily Mass Readings provided by the USCCB and click on the current date.

2. Under the calendar date itself, it will tell you the Church’s date. This will be either the name of a feast (Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary) or the numerical liturgical week of the Church (Tuesday of the Second Week of Advent).

3. If you see the numerical liturgical week of the Church, you’re set. If you see the name of a feast day, you’ll have keep clicking on the different days of the week until you get the numerical liturgical week.

4. Open to Sunday of Week One of the psalter, on page 37. In the middle of the page, in red print it will read:

Advent:

Lent, 1st Sunday:

Lent, 5th Sunday:

Easter, 5th Sunday:

(Note: the four weeks of the psalter correspond to the four week of Advent)

If you see the numerical liturgical week listed there, you’re set. If you don’t see the numerical liturgical week listed here, turn to Sunday of Week Two of the psalter, on page. 111. If you don’t see numerical liturgical week listed on page 111, then turn to Sunday of Week Three, and, if necessary, Sunday of Week Four.

5. Now find the current day of the week (Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, etc.).

6. Begin praying!

I’m Ready to Begin Praying, Anything Else?

I have one final recommendation: Pray through the four-week psalter one time before trying to incorporate the feast days of the Church into your prayer. In other words, during your first month of praying the Office, you should have two goals: first, to get comfortable with praying the Office, and second, to get in the habit of praying Morning and Evening Prayers at a more-or-less fixed time. Once you have this down, then you can begin to worry about modifying the Office to fit the different feast days.

The Divine Office is a complicated prayer, and the last thing you want to do is to set it aside because you’ve become too frustrated. Once you master the basic structure of Morning and Evening Prayers as well as get in the habit of praying at fixed times, the initial shock of the the Office evaporates. You’ll then feel more confident to bring the Church’s feast days into your reading of the Office.

Related Posts

• The Liturgy of the Hours (annotated lists of all posts)
• What is the Liturgy of the Hours?
• The Three Versions of the Liturgy of the Hours
• Liturgy of the Hours — Sunday Prayer
• Start with Shorter Christian Prayer
• Liturgy of the Hours — Cheat Sheet
• Example of Sunday Morning Prayer
• Example of Sunday Evening Prayer II
• Example of Night Prayer
• The Divine Office as a Form of Sacrifice

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