THE CATHOLIC BREVIARY PRAYER

The Breviary
(Liturgy of the Hours, Divine Office)

 

This is a guide to help individuals start praying the Liturgy of the Hours with minimal confusion. Please don't regard these instructions as authoritative (like if you're under obligation to pray the Liturgy of the Hours or something). I don't have that much experience with the Liturgy of the Hours, but as a computer scientist I'm supposed to be good at writing instructions with mechanical precision! So I've tried to reformulate the official instructions as clearly as possible, with as few distracting options as possible. I hope it's helpful to someone.

What day and hour is it?

The rules for figuring out the liturgical day are complicated—it might be easiest to refer to a precomputed liturgy calendar .
On a saint's day, you may see a rank indicated: solemnities are the most important, then feasts, and then memorials. If no rank is indicated, it's an optional memorial: you may use it or ignore it. (UK edition: if no rank is indicated, it's a feast.) Remember this rank; you will need it later. Memorials during Lent and Dec 17–31 (sometimes called commemorations) are done in a special way, if they are done at all. The simplest rule is: during Lent and Dec 17–31, ignore all memorials.
There are seven hours each day:

• Invitatory: not an hour but always stuck to the front of the first hour (Office of Readings or Morning Prayer)
• Office of Readings: can be any time of day, but traditionally first; can be stuck to the front of the hour following
• Morning Prayer
• Daytime Prayers: these are designed so that if you only pray one of the three, you won't miss much
• Midmorning
• Midday
• Midafternoon
• Evening Prayer
• Night Prayer

If you only have time to pray two, make them Morning and Evening Prayer. Sundays and solemnities have two Evening Prayers: Evening Prayer I on the day before and Evening Prayer II on the day itself. Similarly, there are two Night Prayers. Usually this means that the day before loses its Evening Prayer and Night Prayer:

Day before	Sunday/Solemnity
Invitatory	Invitatory
Office of Readings	Office of Readings
Morning Prayer	Morning Prayer
Daytime Prayers	Daytime Prayers
Evening Prayer I	Evening Prayer II
Night Prayer after Evening Prayer I	Night Prayer after Evening Prayer II

Occasionally the diagram above is not correct, because a day will only give up its Evening Prayer (and Night Prayer) to a more important day. If you really want to figure it out, you will have to consult the hairy Table of Liturgical Days.

What does each hour look like?

Invitatory	Office of Readings	Morning/Evening Prayer	Daytime Prayers	Night Prayer
*Lord, open my lips. And my mouth will proclaim your praise.	+God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me. Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit. As it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen. (Alleluia.)
Psalm 95
[The invitatory is always joined to the first hour.]	Hymn	Hymn	Hymn	Examination of conscience
				Hymn
	Psalm	Psalm	Psalm	Psalm
	Psalm	OT Canticle/Psalm	Psalm	(Psalm)
	Psalm	Psalm/NT Canticle	Psalm
	Verse	Reading	Reading	Reading
	First reading
	Second reading
	(Te Deum)	+Gospel canticle		+Gospel canticle
		Intercessions and Our Father
	Concluding prayer	Concluding prayer	Concluding prayer	Concluding prayer
	Let us praise the Lord. And give him thanks.	May the Lord bless us, protect us from all evil and bring us to everlasting life. Amen.	Let us praise the Lord. And give him thanks.	May the all-powerful Lord grant us a restful night and a peaceful death. Amen.
				Marian antiphon

* Make the sign of the cross on the mouth.
+ Make the large sign of the cross. To join two columns together (the invitatory with the Office of Readings or Morning Prayer, or the Office of Readings with any other hour): remove the red portion from the first column and blue portion from the second, and join. Also, you need only sing one hymn in a sitting; move the hymn from the second hour to the first.

Where do you find each part?

There are five main sections in the breviary:

• The Proper of Seasons goes through the liturgical seasons, plus special days tied to the seasons. Most of the time you will go in order through this section, but there are a few during Ordinary time that you should watch out for: Trinity Sunday, Corpus Christi, Sacred Heart, and Christ the King. In some editions these are in a separate section for Solemnities. The Sundays after Christmas can also be tricky.
• The Ordinary is the master plan.
• The Psalter contains:
  • A four-week cycle for all the hours but Night Prayer. The Proper of Seasons will tell you what week to use (you might have to look back to Sunday of that week). The general rule is that whatever the current week of the current season is, divide that by four and take the remainder: remainder 1 = week 1, etc., but remainder 0 = week IV. Count Ash Wednesday and the three days following as "week 0" of Lent, so use Psalter week IV. Similarly, if Christmas falls on Sunday, then the following Sunday you would use Psalter week II; but otherwise, the weekdays after Christmas are like "week 0" and the following Sunday would use Psalter week I.
    
  • A one-week cycle for Night Prayer. Solemnities are treated like Sunday.
  • Another one-day cycle for Daytime Prayers, called the Complementary Psalmody. There are three series for the three Daytime hours.
• The Proper of Saints has the rest of the special days. Again, most of the time you will go in order through this section, because these are all on fixed dates, except for one: Immaculate Heart of Mary, which is listed between May 31 and June 1.
• The Commons contain material that is shared by various saints' offices.

These sections can be thought of like layers of a cake:

		Proper of Saints
	Proper of Seasons
Psalter
Ordinary

The Ordinary provides the foundation, but with some empty slots. The Psalter fills all the slots in, but may be overridden by the layer above it (which may be overridden by the next layer above). So find the most specific page for the day (in one of the Propers, or else the Psalter). Then, for each part listed in the Ordinary, look for it starting with the page for the day. But what if you don't see a particular part?

• Sometimes you will be told where to go (or be given a couple of choices). For example, the Proper of Saints usually refers you to one of the Commons.
• Sometimes the breviary doesn't tell you where to go (or it will say something vague like "from the weekday"). In that case, drop to the next layer down in the cake.
• However, sometimes you will be referred to the Common but in fact you shouldn't use all of it. The reason for this (as far as I can tell) is that a memorial or a feast might get upgraded to a higher rank (for example, for the patron of your diocese), and the breviary has to provide texts just in case, though normally you don't use them. Thus:
  • On memorials, you will be told to use the Common. But there are parts of the Common you shouldn't use, and the rest is optional. So the simplest rule is: on memorials, don't use the Common at all. This applies very frequently.
  • A rarer case is Daytime Prayers on feasts. Sometimes you will see unhelpful instructions like, "from the weekday and the common of X." In this case the rule is (I think): on feasts, don't use the Daytime Prayer antiphons from the Common. Look instead in the next layer down in the cake.
• There are three Daytime hours but only one set of psalms (or none) is given. If you pray more than one of the Daytime hours, then use the given set of psalms (if any) for one of them, and use the Complementary Psalmody (in the Psalter) for the rest.

How do you say each part?

Psalms and canticles

These occur in many places, and always have the same form:

• The antiphon,
• The psalm (skip the first line if it's identical to the antiphon),
• Glory Be,
• The antiphon again.

Often a psalm has a title and a quote in front of it. Look at them, but don't read them out loud. The psalm-prayers are supplemental; you don't need to say them, and I don't know where to insert them.
Often during Daytime Prayer there is only one antiphon given for all three psalms. Then it would seem the most consistent thing to do is:

• The antiphon,
• First psalm,
• Glory Be,
• The antiphon,
• Second psalm,
• Glory Be,
• The antiphon,
• Third psalm,
• Glory Be,
• The antiphon.

Readings and responsories

The responsories have a few different forms. The most common one (at Morning/Evening/Night Prayer) looks like this:

A, B
—A, B
C
—B
Glory to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit:
—A, B

(UK edition: there is a single response, not split into A and B). In individual recitation, you don't have to repeat so much. For example, you could leave out the responses A, B after the first time.

Intercessions

The intercessions always have the following form:

V: R
A1—B1; R
A2—B2; R
etc.

(UK edition: the versicles are not split into A and B.) You don't have to repeat the R each time.

Concluding prayer

Sometimes the ending of the prayer is not written out, but says something like, "We ask this...." At Morning/Evening Prayer and the Office of Readings, the rest is:

...through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.

At Daytime/Night Prayer, the rest is just:

...through Christ our Lord.

Marian antiphon

There are several options for this closing hymn, but the traditional scheme is as follows:

Season	Latin name	English name
Advent to Presentation	Alma Redemptoris Mater	Loving mother of the Redeemer
After Presentation to Holy Saturday	Ave Regina Caelorum	Hail, O Queen of heaven
Easter to Pentecost	Regina Caeli	Queen of heaven, rejoice
After Pentecost to before Advent	Salve Regina	Hail, holy Queen

Some editions don't have Ave Regina Caelorum. Here it is:

Hail, O Queen of Heav'n enthroned,
Hail, by angels Mistress owned,
Root of Jesse, Gate of morn,
Whence the world's true light was born.
Glorious Virgin, joy to thee,
Loveliest whom in Heaven they see,
Fairest thou where all are fair!
Plead with Christ our sins to spare.