The Divine Office for Dodos: A Step-By-Step Guide To Praying The Liturgy Of The Hours by Madeline Pecora Nugent
(New Jersey: Catholic Book Publishing Corp., 2008), 272
The style of the book follows the title, and it is a helpful reference if you can get over the pedantic tone. The book proposes a complete and rigorous method of praying the Divine Office, including extra ribbons and bookmarks. If you are very patient and are looking for a complete guide to tell you exactly what to do, you may find this method useful. Otherwise, rules for praying the Divine Office are bolded so you can use this as a reference or to double check your current method and skip the fluff. My notes below are not comprehensive, but are some general items I learned or found interesting.
I find her method to be a bit too rigorous for now, but she does include the prudent note that "God is not a legalist. Just pray the office as carefully and prayerfully as you can" (217). This is the approach we are taking in 2024 as we start to pray more of the offices as a family.
- Divine Office for Dodos Bookmark and Ribbon Set (11)
- I got this but can't recommend it unless you want to pray the full Divine Office and precisely adhere to her system which I find to be a bit more complex and regimented than needed. Simple prayer cards or photos (less stiff) suffice for commonly used bookmarks, and the bookmarks in this set are way too big.
- The Liturgy of the Hours is a liturgy: a formal rite for public worship that is prayed at certain hours of the day (16)
- The Liturgy of the Hours is any formal prays said at specific times, while the Divine Office is the official prayer composed by the Church to pray around the clock. (18)
- The Divine office is printed in a book called a Breviary (19)
- Scriptural basis for 7 hours of prayer (17)
- Only the first half of the Glory Be is said in the responsory because originally that was the whole prayer. The second half was added to combat Arianism, but the responsory in the Divine Office was not updated (37)
- Night Prayer for each night of the Christmas Octave is taken either from After Evening Prayer I for Sundays and Solemnities or After Evening Prayer II for Sundays and Solemnities (105)
- When praying the Office in choir, the Office is prayed straight through without anyone announcing Hymns, pages, or titles for parts of the Office. The only exception is that the Reader may announce the Reading with the words, "A Reading from __," filling in the Scripture book as done at Mass. The Reader may end the Reading by saying "The word of the Lord" to which everyone else would respond, "Thanks be to God." (204)
- Antiphons: the Church allows the option of praying antiphons only before the Psalm and not repeating it after (perhaps this is why Christian Prayer and Shorter Christian Prayer can get away without printing the antiphons twice, 209)
- The Office of the Dead may be prayed on any day that is not a Solemnity, Feast, or Obligatory Memorial. (210)
- The Presider is the person of rank who opens the Office with the Introductory Verse. He or she leads the Intercessions, begins the Lord's Prayer, and prays the Concluding Prayer (211)
- General to improve:
- Sing the hymn at the beginning of the office (29)
- Pray the Invitatory before the first office of the day (58, 67)
Topic: Liturgy of the Hours
Source
- Hebdomadarian: cantor (205)
- Antiphonarian: second cantor
Created: 2023-12-11-Mon
Updated: 2024-01-30-Tue