The Liturgy of the Hours: A Beginner’s Guide

The Second Vatican Council gave the Divine Office a whole chapter of its constitution on the liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium (chapter IV, nn. 83–101). It describes the Office as a tradition reaching back to the early Christians, arranged so that the whole course of the day and night is made holy by the praise of God. ¹ The Catechism takes up the same idea: the mystery of Christ that the Church celebrates in the Eucharist, especially on Sunday, is carried through the hours of each ordinary day by this prayer. ²

The word that matters is "public." The Office is liturgy, the prayer of the Church as such, and not a private devotion that happens to be popular. Canon law describes it as the Church carrying out the priestly office of Christ: listening to God speak to his people, praising him without ceasing, and interceding for the salvation of the whole world. ³ That remains true when one person says it alone at a kitchen table. The Catechism, quoting the Council, calls it the prayer that Christ himself, together with his Body, addresses to the Father. ²

It does not compete with the Mass. The Catechism describes the Hours as a kind of extension of the Eucharistic celebration, and says they call forth other devotions, such as adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, rather than crowding them out. ² If you are learning how the Mass is put together, the Office will feel familiar: the same habit of Scripture, response and prayer, spread across the day.

The practice is old. Psalm 119 (118 in the older numbering) speaks of praising God seven times a day, and Saint Benedict, writing his Rule for monks in the sixth century, built his community’s day around exactly that verse, with a night office besides. ⁹ He asked his monks to pray the psalms so that "our mind may be in harmony with our voice," and he told them to let nothing be put before what he called the Work of God. ⁹ Much of what a lay person finds in a breviary today comes down through Saint Benedict and the monasteries that kept his Rule.

Clergy are obliged to it. Canon 276 requires priests, and deacons on the way to the priesthood, to pray the Liturgy of the Hours every day according to the approved liturgical books; permanent deacons pray it to the extent their bishops’ conference determines. ⁴ Members of religious institutes and societies of apostolic life are bound according to their own constitutions, which is why a Benedictine abbey and an active teaching order can keep quite different amounts of it. ³

Lay people are not obliged to pray any of it. They are invited, warmly and repeatedly. Canon 1174 says the rest of the faithful are earnestly invited to take part in the Liturgy of the Hours as an action of the Church, according to their circumstances. ³ The Council put it plainly: "The laity, too, are encouraged to recite the divine office, either with the priests, or among themselves, or even individually." ¹

The Council also asked pastors to see that the principal hours, especially Evening Prayer, are celebrated in common in church on Sundays and the more solemn feasts, a point the Catechism repeats. ² The General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours, the document that governs the Office, goes further and suggests that families, as a kind of domestic sanctuary of the Church, pray parts of it together when they can. ⁵

The Office in its present form has five parts, and the bishops of the United States list them in this order. ⁶

• The Office of Readings: psalms followed by two longer readings, one from Scripture and one from the Fathers of the Church or another spiritual writer. It may be prayed at any hour, even the night before. ⁵
• Morning Prayer (Lauds): prayed at the start of the day, and meant to recall the resurrection of Christ, the light that rises on the world. ⁵
• Daytime Prayer: the old hours of midmorning, midday and midafternoon (Terce, Sext and None). Outside a monastic choir it is enough to choose the one that suits the time of day. ⁵
• Evening Prayer (Vespers): prayed as the day ends, giving thanks for what has been received and done well. ⁵
• Night Prayer (Compline): the last prayer before sleep. ⁵

Two of these carry more weight than the others. The Council called Morning and Evening Prayer "the two hinges on which the daily office turns," and asked that they be treated as the chief hours. ¹ The General Instruction repeats the image and says these two are not to be omitted without a serious reason by those bound to the Office. ⁵ For a lay person starting out, that is useful guidance about where to put effort first.

The Council also reformed the older arrangement. The hour of Prime was suppressed, and Matins, the long night office, became the Office of Readings, with fewer psalms and longer readings so that it could be said at any time. ¹⁵ The other hours are meant to be prayed as close as possible to their natural time, so that Morning Prayer belongs to the morning and Evening Prayer to the evening. ⁵ The General Instruction is direct about the last one: "Night prayer is the last prayer of the day, said before retiring, even if that is after midnight." ⁵

Morning and Evening Prayer share one shape, and once you know it the book stops looking like a maze. The General Instruction sets it out in this order. ⁵

1. An opening verse asking God’s help, followed by the Glory Be.
2. A hymn suited to the hour, the season or the feast.
3. The psalmody. In the morning this is a psalm, a canticle from the Old Testament, and a second psalm; in the evening, two psalms and a canticle from the New Testament. Each is framed by an antiphon, a single line said before and after it.
4. A reading from Scripture, usually short.
5. A responsory, a brief exchange of verses that lets the reading sink in.
6. The Gospel canticle with its own antiphon: the Canticle of Zechariah, known as the Benedictus (Luke 1:68–79), in the morning, and the Canticle of Mary, the Magnificat (Luke 1:46–55), in the evening.
7. Intercessions. In the morning they offer the day and its work to God; in the evening they pray for the Church, for those in authority, for the poor and the sick, for the needs of the world, and for the dead.
8. The Our Father.
9. A concluding prayer, and a closing blessing or dismissal.

The antiphon is the part that most puzzles newcomers. It is a short line, often taken from the psalm itself or from the feast, that tells you how to hear the psalm on this particular day. The same psalm can sound penitential in Lent and triumphant at Easter, and the antiphon is what turns it. The Instruction gives the Gospel canticles a solemnity like that of the Gospel at Mass, and it is customary to stand for them. ⁵

Night Prayer is simpler. It may begin with a short examination of conscience, which the Instruction calls a laudable practice, and then has a hymn, psalms of trust in God, a brief reading and responsory, the Canticle of Simeon, known as the Nunc Dimittis (Luke 2:29–32), a concluding prayer, and finally an antiphon in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the Easter season that antiphon is always the Regina Caeli. ⁵

Silence belongs to the structure too. The Instruction allows pauses after a psalm or the reading, so that the words have room to land, and a group praying together does well to use them. ⁵

The psalms are spread over a four-week cycle, arranged so that very few are left out and the ones the tradition has always prized come round more often. ⁵ Sunday psalms are chosen with the resurrection in mind. A handful of psalms and verses of cursing are left out of the cycle. ⁵ Week I, Week II and so on are printed at the top of the pages, and the cycle simply repeats through the year.

Night Prayer runs on its own shorter arrangement. On Saturday night it uses Psalms 4 and 134, on Sunday night Psalm 91, and on other nights psalms of confidence in the Lord. The Instruction allows the Sunday psalms to be used on any night instead, specifically for people who want to pray Night Prayer from memory. ⁵

Over the psalter sits the Church year. The hymns, antiphons and readings change with the season and the feast, so that the same frame carries Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter and Ordinary Time in turn, and the saints’ days within them. ² This is why a breviary has several sections that you move between in a single hour: the fixed parts that rarely change, the psalter for the week, the proper texts for the season, and the texts for the saint of the day. The liturgical calendar shows which season and which feast you are in.

The Office is governed by the General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours, issued by the Sacred Congregation for Divine Worship on February 2, 1971. ⁵ Most of what this guide says about the order of each hour, the cycle of psalms and the times of day comes from it. It is printed in the opening pages of the full breviary and is also available online. It is worth reading the sections on the hour you pray; they are short, and they explain choices in the book that otherwise look arbitrary, such as why a psalm is cut or why an antiphon repeats.

In the United States the approved English text has for decades been published by Catholic Book Publishing in three main forms. ⁷

• The Liturgy of the Hours, in four volumes divided across the seasons of the year. This is the complete Office, including the Office of Readings, and it is what priests use.
• Christian Prayer, a one-volume edition with the complete Morning and Evening Prayer for the whole year.
• Shorter Christian Prayer, a smaller book with Morning and Evening Prayer from the four-week psalter and selected texts for the seasons and major feasts.

The same publisher sells an annual Saint Joseph Guide for the Liturgy of the Hours, a small booklet listing the page numbers for each day of the year. ⁷ For a beginner it is the single most useful purchase after the book itself, because it answers the daily question of which pages to mark.

A new translation is coming. The bishops of the United States approved a second edition of the Liturgy of the Hours, using the Abbey Psalms and Canticles translated by the monks of Conception Abbey in Missouri, and the Holy See confirmed it by a decree of October 18, 2025. ⁸ According to the Archdiocese of Cincinnati, it may be used from Ash Wednesday, February 10, 2027, and becomes mandatory on the First Sunday of Advent, December 3, 2028; Ascension Press and Word on Fire are publishing it. ⁸ Someone buying a breviary now can use the current edition until then, but a person about to buy the four-volume set may reasonably wait to see the new one.

Many people now pray the Office on a phone, and an app removes the hardest part for a beginner: it puts the right texts in the right order for the day. The bishops’ conference explains the Liturgy of the Hours on its website, but it does not publish the daily texts there. ⁶ The English texts belong to the bodies that translated them, and anyone who publishes them needs a license.

So choose an app or site that says plainly that it uses the approved texts with permission. Some free sites post the texts without a license, and others substitute a different Bible translation for the psalms; neither is what the Church prays. An app is a good way to learn the order of an hour. Many people find that once they know it, a printed book is easier to pray from without the distractions of a phone.

Start with one hour, and keep it for a month before adding another. The two best candidates are Night Prayer and Morning Prayer.

Night Prayer is the gentlest beginning. It is short, it changes little from week to week, and since the Sunday psalms may be used on any night, it can be learned nearly by heart. ⁵ It also gives the day a natural end: a look back over what happened, a psalm of trust, and Simeon’s canticle before sleep.

Morning Prayer is the better choice for someone who wants the Office to shape the day rather than close it. Once it is steady, add Evening Prayer, and you are keeping the two hinges the Council asked the Church to treat as the chief hours. ¹

A few practical things help. Set the ribbons the night before, with the annual guide or an app open beside you, so that you are not hunting for pages half awake. Say the words aloud, or at least move your lips; the psalms were written to be sung, and Benedict’s advice about matching mind and voice is easier to follow when there is a voice. ⁹ Go slowly and leave the pauses. If you miss an hour, do not try to make it up; pick up at the next one. Lay people are under no obligation here, and the Office is meant to sanctify the hours you are actually living.

Pray with others when you can. Some parishes keep Evening Prayer on Sundays or in Advent and Lent, and many monasteries welcome guests to the Office; ask at your parish or call the nearest abbey. Praying in two choirs, with each side of the room taking alternate stanzas, teaches the rhythm faster than any book. And if you want help building a rule of prayer that fits your life, talk to your parish priest, or to a spiritual director if you have one.

The Office also feeds personal prayer. The Catechism notes that its readings from Scripture and from the Fathers prepare for silent prayer, and that the practice of lectio divina is rooted in it. ² Many people find the Office of Readings, in particular, becomes the text they take into their own quiet time.