About the Office

The Divine Office is the Church’s prayer through the day: psalms, hymns, and prayers said at set hours, morning to night. This is the Benedictine Office as used in the Antiochian Western Rite Vicariate. Each hour is assembled for the day, with the feast, the season and the psalms in place, so you need only begin.

“Seven times a day do I praise thee.”

Psalm 118 (119):164

An ancient prayer

The Church has prayed at set hours since the Apostles, who kept the hours of prayer they had known in Israel. The Holy Spirit came at Pentecost at the third hour; St Peter went up to pray at the sixth; St Peter and St John went into the Temple at the ninth, “the hour of prayer.” By the third century Tertullian and St Cyprian of Carthage wrote of prayer at the third, sixth and ninth hours, and at morning and evening. In the deserts of Egypt and Palestine the monks made the psalms their unceasing prayer, and St John Cassian carried their way of prayer to the West.

In the sixth century St Benedict of Nursia established his Rule for monks, taking the Psalmist’s “seven times a day” as his measure and giving out the whole Psalter in each week. His life was written by St Gregory the Great, whom the East honors as St Gregory the Dialogist. The Benedictine Office spread through the monasteries of the West in the centuries before the Great Schism. Since 1958 the Antiochian Archdiocese has kept a Western Rite, and within it the Benedictine hours are prayed again in the Orthodox Church.

The seven hours

The night office, Matins, is not yet included.

Where to begin

No one is expected to keep every hour at once. Many begin with one, Prime in the morning or Compline at night, and add others as they can. Your parish priest can help you determine an appropriate prayer rule. The button on the home page always opens the hour for the time of day.

Reading the page

• Red words are rubrics, directions for the one praying, and are not read aloud.
• ℣. ℟. mark a versicle and its response. Praying alone, you say both.
• ✠ marks where to make the sign of the cross.
• Grey type is said silently. A secret prayer’s opening words stand out and are said aloud, the rest in silence; some Our Fathers and Creeds also end aloud, with a closing line in full type.
• Prayer form, at the head of each hour, sets the page for praying alone or with others led by a deacon or a priest.

The Ordo

Each day keeps a feast or the office of its season, as the archdiocese’s printed ordo appoints. The app’s Ordo sets out the year a month at a time: each day’s feast, rank and color, its fasts, and the antiphons and commemorations of Lauds and Vespers. You can search it for a feast or saint. Each has a page with its collect, antiphons and versicles, and when it is kept in the years ahead.

This app

The psalm translation is from the Coverdale Psalter, and each text is checked against the printed books they come from. The mobile apps work without a connection. Reminders can call you to the hours you keep. In Settings (in the Menu on a phone) you can change the theme and text size, have Prime include the Martyrology (the saints of the coming day), and show the office with chant notation where it is available. Your settings are kept on your device. There are no accounts and no advertising. See Privacy. If you find a mistake, please tell us through the issue tracker.