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Liturgy of the Hours

This article is about the public prayer of the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. For other liturgical rites of the Catholic Church and other communions, see Canonical hours.

Cistercian monks praying the Liturgy of the Hours in Heiligenkreuz Abbey

The Liturgy of the Hours (Latin: Liturgia Horarum), Divine Office (Latin: Officium Divinum), or Opus Dei ("Work of God") are a set of Catholic prayers comprising the canonical hours,[a] often also referred to as the breviary,[b] of the Latin Church. The Liturgy of the Hours forms the official set of prayers "marking the hours of each day and sanctifying the day with prayer."[4] The term "Liturgy of the Hours" has been retroactively applied to the practices of saying the canonical hours in both the Christian East and West–particularly within the Latin liturgical rites–prior to the Second Vatican Council,[5] and is the official term for the canonical hours promulgated for usage by the Latin Church in 1971.[6] Before 1971, the official form for the Latin Church was the Breviarium Romanum, first published in 1568 with major editions through 1962.

The Liturgy of the Hours, like many other forms of the canonical hours, consists primarily of psalms supplemented by hymns, readings, and other prayers and antiphons prayed at fixed prayer times.[7] Together with the Mass, it constitutes the public prayer of the church. Christians of both Western and Eastern traditions (including the Latin Catholic, Eastern Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian, Lutheran, Anglican, and some other Protestant churches) celebrate the canonical hours in various forms and under various names. The chant or recitation of the Divine Office therefore forms the basis of prayer within the consecrated life, with some of the monastic or mendicant orders producing their own permutations of the Liturgy of the Hours and older Roman Breviary.[2]

Prayer of the Divine Office is an obligation undertaken by priests and deacons intending to become priests, while deacons intending to remain deacons are obliged to recite only a part.[8][9] The constitutions of religious institutes generally oblige their members to celebrate at least parts and in some cases to do so jointly ("in choir").[10] Consecrated virgins take the duty to celebrate the liturgy of hours with the rite of consecration.[11] Within the Latin Church, the lay faithful "are encouraged to recite the divine office, either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually", though there is no obligation for them to do so. The laity may oblige themselves to pray the Liturgy of the Hours or part of it by a personal vow.[12]

The present official form of the entire Liturgy of the Hours of the Roman Rite is that contained in the four-volume Latin-language publication Liturgia Horarum, the first edition of which appeared in 1971. English and other vernacular translations were soon produced and were made official for their territories by the competent episcopal conferences. For Catholics in primarily Commonwealth nations, the three-volume Divine Office, which uses a range of different English Bibles for the readings from Scripture, was published in 1974. The four-volume Liturgy of the Hours, with Scripture readings from the New American Bible, appeared in 1975 with approval from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.[13] The 1989 English translation of the Ceremonial of Bishops includes in Part III instructions on the Liturgy of the Hours which the bishop presides, for example the vesper on major solemnities.[14]

  1. ^ "canonical hours". American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fifth ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. 2011.
  2. ^ a b "Divine Office". Catholic Encyclopedia.
  3. ^ "breviary". American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Fifth ed.). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. 2011.
  4. ^ United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. "Liturgy of the Hours". Retrieved 19 January 2015.
  5. ^ Br. Sam Joutras, O.S.A. (13 November 2018). "Why We Pray the Liturgy of the Hours". Augustinian Vocations. Retrieved 17 July 2021.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference GILH was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Kurian, George Thomas; Lamport, Mark A. (2015). Encyclopedia of Christian Education. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 754. ISBN 978-0-8108-8493-9. The Liturgy of the Hours, also called the Divine Hours or the Divine Office, is the historical Christian practice of fixed times throughout the day for prayer. … By the middle of the third century, Christian leaders such as Clement, Origin, Tertullian, and Cyprian made references to the importance of intervals of prayer throughout the day. They based this practice on biblical passages such as Daniel 6, the Markkan references to the hours of the events that took place on the day of Christ's crucifixion, and the Pauline exhortations to pray without ceasing. In the Apostolic Tradition (c. 215), attributed to Hippolytus, believers were exhorted to pray as soon as they rose from their beds and, if possible, to participate in this with the local church. This prayer time became known as matins or lauds. Believers were to further pray at the third, sixth, and ninth hours of the day (the "little hours"); in the evening (vespers); when they went to bed; at midnight; and once again as the cock crowed. These time frames roughly represent what was to become the long-standing Christian tradition of the liturgical horarium.
  8. ^ McNamara, Edward. "What Should Be Prayed in the Liturgy of the Hours". Eternal Word Television Network. Retrieved 18 April 2020.
  9. ^ "Code of Canon Law, canon 276 §2 3º". The Holy See. Retrieved 20 May 2019.
  10. ^ Pope Paul VI (4 December 1963). "Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy". The Holy See – Documents of Vatican II. The Holy See. Retrieved 30 March 2018.
  11. ^ "'Instruction Ecclesiae Sponsae Imago' on the 'Ordo virginum', 34". Press.vatican.va. Retrieved 12 March 2022.
  12. ^ "Celebrating the church's liturgy". Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Holy See. Archived from the original on 27 February 2015. Retrieved 19 January 2015.
  13. ^ "Liturgy of the Hours / Divine Office / Breviary". Ewtn.com. Retrieved 27 November 2013.
  14. ^ Catholic Church; International Committee on English in the Liturgy (1989). Ceremonial of Bishops : revised by decree of the Second Vatican Council and published by the authority of Pope John Paul II. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical Press. ISBN 0-8146-1818-9. OCLC 20486520. Nos. 67-75.


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