Tag Archive for 'daily office'

SOAP Lectio Divina

Published on January 25, 2010 in liturgy, liturgy of the hours and spirituality. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , .

For all I know some readers of this post may wonder where I have been living all this time, or maybe that I move in far too small circles! Recently I was reading some comments of a woman who was taking for granted that all her readers knew what the “SOAP” Bible-reading method was. Well I had never heard of it. So I got in touch with her and she explained it stands for:

Scripture – pick your passage, follow a system, use a lectionary
Observation – what particularly touched you in the scripture passage?
Application – how can you apply your observation to your life?
Prayer

Recommendations are that all this be written in a journal – starting each section S, O, A, P
In my correspondence with her I mentioned how it has similarities to the great tradition of Lectio Divina, “Spiritual Reading”. She had never heard of that :-)

Lectio Divina has four movements
Lectio – read the passage
Meditatio – reflect on the passage
Oratio – respond in prayer
Contemplatio – rest in God

Previously I have written some more on Lectio Divina
There is also a good introduction to Lectio Divina here.

One comment I found suggested that the SOAP method started here.
A website for storing your SOAP is here.

A couple of final points: SOAP and Lectio Divina do not replace serious academic study of the scriptures – it prayerfully complements study. IMO the Christian spiritual life flourishes when there is a regular balance and variety of prayer styles: Eucharist, lectio divina, intercession, Daily Office, silent prayer,… There is a danger when only one or few from this list are present to nourish our spiritual life.

Comments below, as well as responding to this post, might include other ideas, websites, and resources.

Liturgy of the Hours on Twitter

Published on December 29, 2009 in liturgy, liturgy of the hours and spirituality. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , .

The “Virtual Abbey” has been around for a bit, but with a different name. Now with a clearer name, and a website, this group prays some of the Daily Offices on twitter daily. For the rest of the planet things are a bit out of sync – it is USA based, and remember they celebrate the liturgy last on the planet.

Those who make New Year resolutions: have you thought about praying at least one Office daily? As well as the Virtual Abbey, there are lots of resources in the Virtual Chapel of this site. If you pray the office you might encourage others by placing a badge on your site or blog.

If you know any other quality resources like these, or have positive suggestions for New Year’s resolutions, you are welcome to share them below.

New Daily Office online

Published on December 6, 2009 in liturgy and liturgy of the hours. 4 Comments Tags: , , , .

There is a wonderful new Daily Prayer resource, the St Bede’s Breviary online.

I will be adding this as a link to increase the usefulness of this site’s online chapel.

I do not know anything about who is putting this online – if anyone knows please add that in the comment – it would be great to contact them directly. I hope they will consider producing an iPhone/iPod Touch app.

Any other such useful resources not already in the online chapel, please add that in the comments below also.

Catholic spirituality

Published on November 19, 2009 in liturgy and spirituality. 8 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

Regular readers here will know I usually avoid classifying myself or others into different boxes and categories. Lately Anglican Catholics have been much in the media in response to the Vatican’s setting up of Anglican Personal Ordinariates.

Bishop Christopher Epting, the Episcopal Church’s deputy to the Presiding Bishop for ecumenical and interreligious relations, has just issued a valuable statement on this.

Last Sunday, Fr Peter Williams, a leading Kiwi Anglican Catholic issued this useful statement:

We Anglican Catholics have always believed that the Church of England essentially continued as part of the great Catholic Church of the west, despite the political events that severed the link with the authority in Rome. Even here, in this corner of the very dispersed Anglican Communion, we continue to believe that. The Catholic essentials continue to keep us close, even though we Anglicans have developed a marked style of our own. As an Anglican Catholic I value that distinctive style a great deal: its dispersal of authority; its unity in essentials and great diversity in inessentials; its ability to live appropriately in very different contexts; its unity through common prayer more than through common dogma; its liberality of style, and so much else.

The Vatican offer appears to invite Anglicans to retain Anglican style, while joining a Communion which is controlled and centralised as never before, which is strangling the life of many of its own communities by its rigid insistence on inessentials such as clerical celibacy and the ordination of men only, and which is inhibiting the ministry potential of so many by demanding slavish conformity. There is an inconsistency here which makes me very uneasy. It certainly has not raised my respect for Vatican judgement or leadership. I shall be very surprised if many Anglicans respond to this offer, and they are likely to be those who cannot cope with the generosity of Anglican style anyway.

The Vatican’s problems which are great, and the Anglican Church’s problems which are also great, will not be helped at all by such an ill-considered move. The spectacular decline of organised Christianity in the west is no respecter of churches, and is best responded to with a generosity of ministry and spirit, rather than with a retreat to the fortresses.

Within all these discussions one might be forgiven for asking, “What constitutes a catholic? What is essential to catholicism? What is catholic spirituality?” Is putting a chasuble on? Or swinging a thurible with some incense? Is wearing a biretta? Or wearing lace, or calling it a cotter? Or being addressed “father”?

Drawing on the insights from the Rule of St Benedict, as highlighted by Martin Thornton, Derek Olsen recently asked these questions and added a three-legged stool to the commonly-used one of scripture, tradition, and reason: the fundamental principles of Eucharist, the Daily Office, and personal prayer. Fr. David Cobb, of Christ Church, New Haven, expanded this with another three legged stool:

If our spirituality is not grounded in the Prayer Book System of Office, Mass and personal prayer- in the same way that our theology is grounded in Scripture, Tradition, and Reason-(and one might add if our life is not focused on service, stewardship and witness, another useful three legged piece of furniture) -   then vestments, titles, billowing clouds of incenses and resonant organs are just trifles.  They are, in themselves more appealing than liturgy that is sloppy or chummy or self-consciously restrained – but they are not the point.

Might I add the point that, in my opinion, catholic spirituality is founded upon an insight, a belief, a sense that God’s creation is good. We live in a sacramental universe. With flaws, fine. But creation does not manifest God, is not a vehicle for God, in spite of anything – but because of its goodness. Our human nature is good enough to be joined to God in the incarnation. So bread and wine, and water, and relationships, and sex, and flowers, and music, and colours, and smells, and gongs, and stained-glass windows, and glorious architecture, and singing, and oil, and gestures, and laughter, and tears, and processions, and icons, and candles, and… all can and are the vehicles in and through and with which we encounter the deep mystery in whom we live and move and have our being – the mystery we call God.

Just for the record: I’m an orthodox charismatic evangelical catholic :-)

comments policy

Previous posts on Anglican Personal Ordinariates:
First post
Second post
Third post
Fourth post

Liturgy as language (part 3)

Published on July 25, 2009 in liturgy. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

This series “Liturgy as language” is going in a direction that will be relevant to other contexts (trust me – I know what I’m doing). But this particular post continues and completes the previous post in outlining briefly the New Zealand Anglican context that has brought us to this place. If you are not in New Zealand your context may have similarities – but if there are no similarities to the NZ context, and if you have no interest in this kiwi context go for a walk through a park, or telephone a friend, or contemplate for five minutes, and we’ll see you next time…

New Zealand Anglican Liturgy from 1984

The story so far to 1984 and beyond is of an increasing abandonment of the concept and experience of “common prayer.” Common prayer includes knowing what is coming, one can prepare in anticipation for the communal worship beforehand, during the service one can respond and participate at significant moments often “by heart”, worship has stability from week to week, from one congregation time-slot to another time, and there is a sense of sharing in a wider community – from community to community, locally, and even internationally and ecumenically. [Common prayer also spares us from everything being under the control of the pastor or particular worship leader.] All that changed around 1984 in New Zealand Anglicanism.

Since that post I have had people give example after example – including one of our larger communities where the response to even “The Lord be with you” varies from week to week, demanding one keeps one’s eyes on the pew sheet…

Some comments on the previous post highlighted that the loss of common prayer includes a disenfranchising of children who cannot read, of parents supervising children, and of older people. In other words the “target” of the worship is precisely towards the age-group regularly missing in NZ Anglicanism! A further reflection might be that this means that “targeting” this age-group in this particular manner is notably unsuccessful – and that is leaving to one side my opinion that the “target” of worship ought to be God…

A list of some further changes in the last 25 years

The trajectory of liturgical worship sketched in NZ Anglicanism after 1984 continued and accelerated. Some points include:

  • At the 1987/1988 General Synods, the requirement of at least those ordained to pray the Daily Office was removed from our formularies. This resulted in individualising prayer and daily devotion. Clergy of course (one would hope) continued a personal devotional life but more often did so because it enriched their own individual piety – not with a sense that they were “praying the prayer of the church.” Even those who continue praying the Daily Office now often (mostly?) do this as a way of individual piety rather than as the prayer of the church (which it now struggles to be so understood). Furthermore, a variety of different forms of daily devotions is now provided – so that there is no assurance that those committed to the Daily Office are in any sense “on the same page.”
  • Total Ministry/ Locally shared ministry/mutual ministry increasingly developed, both in rural and urban areas. This way of locally calling to ordination (and other ministries) may include having positive encouragement of the ministry of all the baptised, but in practice it also resulted in poor liturgical formation, training, and study by those being ordained. In some places the link between presiding, pastoring, and preaching was broken.
  • Having a lay person lead the “first part of the service” with the priest absolving and leading the Eucharistic Prayer often ended up re-cluttering the Gathering Rite (so that the lay leader would have something to do), increasing a magical understanding of priesthood, and breaking the sense that the Eucharist and any service is a single, unified rite with a dynamic sense of movement. [There are other issues with this: the quality of formation of such lay leadership and concomitantly its effect on the quality of worship, the clericalisation of lay ministry, the loss of the sense of the full participation of those in the pews, and the focusing of lay ministry into the sanctuary rather than into the world...]
  • The Education for Liturgy Kit (E.L. Kit), the only provincial liturgical formation resource (an undated 200 page ring-bound prepared by the Provincial Board of Christian Education) is now pretty well unknown and difficult to obtain. There appears nowhere one can obtain it. There are no references to it I can find online. New clergy, and those coming from overseas regularly have not even heard of it.
  • One of the best endowed seminaries in the Anglican Communion, the provincial St John’s College, handed over most of its academic training to Auckland University which has little energy for what it termed “parson’s papers” such as liturgy. The NZ Anglican Church keeps no statistics of the proportions of those training now at this national theological college, but I would be interested if any reader had any idea about this. I am guessing not more than a fifth of those training for ordination are training at St John’s, and even some of them are not there for a full course, but are there only for a year or so.
  • Curacy, traditionally four years formation under two different training vicars, often became not viable financially so that some of those recently ordained were immediately placed in charge of a parish with variable ongoing training and formation.
  • This province, small in worship numbers and stretched by vast distances, has increasingly put its energy into areas other than liturgy and not placed quality of worship as a primary strategy of its common life.
  • The 1996/1998 General Synods altered the Form for Ordering the Eucharist formulary so that it is now authorised for Sunday Eucharists also. Previously this highly flexible rite was explicitly for special occasions other than the Sunday Eucharist (as it is in TEC). From this time all that is required now, even for the Sunday Eucharist, is three paragraphs in a Eucharistic Prayer – all else may be sourced elsewhere or created locally. Prior to 1998 responses varied but there was a limit to the variation. That limiting ceased in 1998.
  • In 2002 General Synod passed the Worship Template which accepts any service that has the following structure: Gathering – Story – Going out; ie. a beginning, a middle, and an end.
  • 2006 General Synod authorised the Alternative Form for Ordering the Eucharist as a formulary of our church. Even the highly flexible Form for Ordering the Eucharist clearly was not seen to be sufficiently flexible. Now all that is required is that the Eucharistic Prayer be authorised somewhere in the Anglican Communion.
  • The latest meeting of General Synod (2008) authorised another raft of Eucharistic Prayers. These are mostly not new ones, but reworking of other current Eucharistic Prayers in NZPB so that those who have one of those “by heart” find themselves stumbling over these revisions and in the congregation blurting out responses that are no longer there.

A church prior to 1984 held together by the shared discipline of common worship is now held together by everyone knowing everyone (extended whanau/family style). Understandably some are clamouring now for other forms of holding our unity.

For the New Zealand Anglican church the sense that liturgy is the work of the (whole) church wherever we are, from rural church, to school chapel, to cathedral, to hospital bedside – we are all praying the same, participating in the one worship, has been mostly lost.

St Benedict

Published on July 11, 2009 in liturgy and spirituality. 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , .
St Benedict

St Benedict

Today is the feast of St Benedict (480 – 547) famous for his Rule for a Christian community of monks. The Rule is followed by “Benedictines”, Cistercians, and many others. It is followed by many in adaptation in ordinary daily life beyond cloister walls. I am an Associate of Kopua monastery, the Cistercian monastery in New Zealand.

Benedict describes a “middle way”, via media, bringing together positive ends – not either/or, but both/and. Community and solitude. Prayer and work. And so forth. He has a stress on the daily office, and on reading the scriptures in such a way as to hear what the Spirit is saying to us through them (lectio divina).

Anglicanism/Episcopalianism is a denomination that can be seen as strongly “Benedictine” – probably because England had such a strong Benedictine presence. It regularly is seen as a via media – not a half-way-between, but a both/and denomination (a platypus which some struggle to understand – just as many did not believe the platypus when discovered was a real animal). Every Book of Common Prayer and its many contemporary revisions give significance to the daily office – a tradition not just understood as being the preserve of clergy, monks, and nuns, but of the whole people of God. Anglican church buildings regularly are laid out in Benedictine fashion, with choir stalls as in a monastery. [Compare that, for example, to Roman Catholics whose buildings and spirituality are regularly Ignatian - Jesuits being (one of) the first order(s) to abandon praying the office in community - so Jesuit/contemporary Roman Catholic church buildings do not have choir stalls].

Pray today for all Benedictines, Cistercians, oblates, associates, and all who try to follow the Rule of St Benedict.

Almighty and everlasting God,
whose precepts are the wisdom of a loving Father:
Give us grace, following the teaching and example of your servant Benedict,
to walk with loving and willing hearts in the school of the Lord’s service;
let your ears be open to our prayers;
and prosper with your blessing the work of our hands;
through Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

Liturgy as language (part 2)

Published on July 8, 2009 in liturgy. 5 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , .

1984 25 years on

Liturgy of the Eucharist 1984

Liturgy of the Eucharist 1984

This is the second post in a series looking at how we can use fixed liturgical worship to form thriving, vibrant, growing communities. The series began from the contention of a well-informed New Zealand Anglican priest and his assertion that he cannot think of a single congregation that follows our official liturgy that is either growing, or thriving with a good mixture of ages (especially including younger people). Furthermore, this, he sees as originating in decisions made in the 1980s.

This particular post will be part focusing on New Zealand’s Anglican liturgical history essentially over the last two and a half decades as I believe that this period’s history clarifies the situation we now find ourselves in. This will continue in a later post. And then the series will continue by exploring what, in my opinion, is the underlying dynamic that has been lost during these decades. This current post may be of particular interest more to Kiwis. So, if you have no interest in Kiwi Anglican liturgical history go and have a coffee with a friend, or go and watch a sunset, or pray the daily office…

It will become clear that in the last two and a half decades in NZ Anglicanism there has been a movement away from the concept of liturgy as common prayer. The 1984 Liturgy revision began the loss of knowing responses by heart. From this point NZ Anglicans inevitably become more book-bound (pew-sheet bound, or later projector-screen bound).

Kiwis – don’t look it up: what is the response to “The peace of God be always with you.”?

1964 to 1984

New Zealand Anglicans once had had a relatively conservative liturgical life, following the Book of Common Prayer and minor variants of that. In 1964 there began a revision process that resulted in a 1966 eucharistic rite and a further revision of this in 1970. So by 1984 there had been two decades of either the BCP or a well-received, single contemporary revision. In 1984 all that changed. Now, alongside the contemporary revision were new Eucharist rites that, though structurally relatively similar, had significantly innovative texts.

In these innovative eucharistic texts the traditional, ecumenical, internationally agreed English-language texts used throughout the Anglican Communion were replaced. The following are two examples replacing the sanctus/benedictus (”Holy, holy, holy Lord, God of power and might…”) in 1984:

Holy God, holy and merciful, holy and just,
glory and goodness come from you.
Glory to you most high and gracious God.

and

Holy, holy, holy:
God of mercy, giver of life;
earth and sea and sky
and all that lives,
declare your presence and your glory.

One of the new rites intentionally had far more for the congregation to recite, again increasing the tendency to have more time with heads in books.

Every Sunday in the 1984 revision now no longer had a single collect usually drawn out of the great collect heritage shared throughout Anglicanism. Now each Sunday there was a choice of three collects – many of them not following a collect structure or style.

Kiwis – don’t look it up: what is the response to “The peace of God be with you all.”?

A completely new Order for Celebrating the Eucharist was produced and included in the 1984 Liturgy. In this order basically everything for a Eucharist (even responses) could be resourced from anywhere or created locally (excepting the Last Supper story and one paragraph were fixed in any constructed Eucharistic Prayer).

People were not all following the same readings either. As well as the BCP lectionary, New Zealand’s own creation (a two year thematic lectionary), the Australian Anglican revision of the Roman Catholic three-year lectionary was also authorised.

As well as music and singing being central to liturgy in my opinion, singing inevitably aids memorisation. With three completely different texts (for example) for the sanctus/benedictus (not interchangeable between rites) many communities no longer accessed good quality national ecumenical music or international Anglican and/or ecumenical musical settings.

In summary

From 1984 some wonderfully poetic, imaginative, creative, inclusive, and inculturated texts were being presented to regular worshipping Anglicans. It must be remembered, all this is within the context of a very small province of church-going Anglicans. The numbers in church (say about 35,000 in church on Sunday) are probably that of a reasonable size Church of England diocese. Moving from worshipping community to community there was no longer the expectation that the same readings would be followed, that the same collect would be used, that the same responses and texts would be used, that the same musical settings would be found. Even within a single parish, moving from one service time to another one might encounter completely unfamiliar material. Week by week turning up at the same time on Sunday one could be confronted with a different set of responses in rotation.

Creativity and flexibility became values now embodied in the official rites. Saying and singing things “by heart” (in the deepest sense of that phrase) was being lost. Common prayer – in the sense of celebrating Eucharist as the great shared worship action of Christ and his body, the church – was being lost in individualism and congregationalism. The measure of a “successful” service was shifting. The understanding of liturgy was shifting from community actions and celebration accompanied by words with a significant amount sung and by heart - to reciting beautiful poetic words at each other read from books and ever-changing pew sheets.

Answers:
The Peace of God be always with you.
Praise to Christ who is our peace.
and
The peace of God be with you all.
In God’s justice is our peace.

Next time you hear either of those particular responses check – is the person addressing you/the congregation or addressing the book (pamphlet) s/he is reading from? And are most in the congregation addressing the presider in return – or do they have their eyes fixed on the book/screen/pamphlet? If in your community you are actually addressing each other and there are no books/screens/pamphlets involved at this point give yourself a gold star liturgical WOF. If you got both the above responses correct from memory your application to lecture on liturgy at St John’s College has been accepted. For the rest of us… this series will be continued…

The next post in this series is found here

iBreviary

Published on January 8, 2009 in liturgy. Closed Tags: , , , .

Fr. Paolo Padrini, mentioned in the following announcement, sent me the following notice. My only addition would be that the breviary is not merely “the book of daily prayers used by priests” – it is the prayer of the whole church. The Liturgy of the Hours was celebrated by all in the early church, and that insight is being renewed currently. This site is committed to encouraging the Daily Office amongst all, ecumenically.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican is endorsing new technology that brings the book of daily prayers used by priests straight onto iPhones.
The Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications is embracing the iBreviary, an iTunes application created by a technologically savvy Italian priest, the Rev. Paolo Padrini, and an Italian Web designer.
The application includes the Breviary prayer book — in Italian, English, Spanish, French and Latin and, in the near future, Portuguese and German. Another section includes the prayers of the daily Mass, and a third contains various other prayers.
After a free trial period in which the iBreviary was downloaded approximately 10,000 times in Italy, an official version was released earlier this month, Padrini said.
The application costs euro0.79 ($1.10), while upgrades will be free. Padrini’s proceeds are going to charity.
Monsignor Paul Tighe, secretary of the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Social Communications, praised the new application Monday, saying the Church “is learning to use the new technologies primarily as a tool or as a mean of evangelizing, as a way of being able to share its own message with the world.”
Pope Benedict XVI, a classical music lover who was reportedly given an iPod in 2006, has sought to reach out to young people through new media. During last summer’s World Youth Day in Sydney, Australia, he sent out mobile phone text messages citing scripture to thousands of registered pilgrims — signed with the tagline “BXVI.”

Another year in liturgyland

Published on January 1, 2009 in liturgy. Closed Tags: , , , , , , , , , .

This is the second full calendar year that this site has been running.
During this year there have been 264,797 unique visitors. Compare that to 130,540 for 2007. Currently, this increasing trend means there are often 10,000 visitors a week to this site.

Thank you, to the regular visitors to this site, for your encouragement.
Thank you to all you bloggers and webmasters who link to this site. If you let me know I acknowledge your link and link back.

The top ten pages this year, in order were:

  • The home page from where you can explore resources and reflections
  • Liturgy of the Hours – introduction and starting point for daily office resources
  • Worship resources - including lots of eucharistic prayers
  • The online virtual chapel – with all sorts of devotional online material, including a place to light a virtual candle and share a prayer
  • Liturgy of the Hours online - a list of links to excellent daily office resources beyond this site
  • Celebrating Eucharist - the online version of the book I wrote more than a decade ago to help individuals and communities in their celebration of the eucharist
  • Reflection on prayers – each week at least one reflection is highlighted starting from a collect
  • Church Year resources – everything from outlines for a service (usually eucharistic) for a particular festival or time of year to a specific prayer resource or reflection in the Church Year
  • Lectionary reading – a weekly introduction and context of the Revised Common Lectionary, three year series of readings shared internationally and ecumenically
  • Lectio Divina – an introduction to the ancient and ever-new tradition of reading the scriptures as God’s Word to us individually and as a community.

People from 194 countries visited this site during the last year.
The top ten, in order were:

  • USA
  • UK
  • New Zealand
  • Canada
  • Australia
  • Philippines
  • South Africa
  • India
  • Ireland
  • Italy

Once again, God bless you all, thank you, let us pray for each other and all who visit here and link here and use the internet for good. Have a great 2009.

Liturgy of the Hours badge

Published on September 15, 2008 in liturgy of the hours. Closed Tags: , .

The four English options for a Liturgy of the Hours badge was supplemented by request for an equivalent in Spanish. I have had feedback by someone who likes the idea but he is looking for something less “I” focused. He is concerned that it may be interpreted perhaps by some as “Look how holy I am”. I guess as I bumble my way through life I had not thought of that and respect his point. One of the great things about the Liturgy of the Hours is that this is the prayer of Christ into which we insert ourselves. Others in the body of Christ are praying the Liturgy of the Hours all around the world. When we pray them we enter into this ongoing praying – but even when we miss praying them, we are conscious that this prayer life of the body of Christ of which we are part, continues.

Suggestions were: “Praying the Hours brings God’s powers” or “Praying the Hours blesses your day”. A badge needs few words to be bold – maybe just “Praying the Liturgy of the Hours” is another alternative. I am working on a different concept badge but if you have another suggestion for a less “I” focused Liturgy of the Hours badge – please contact me with the suggestion.

Encourage the Liturgy of the Hours

Published on August 28, 2008 in liturgy and liturgy of the hours. Closed Tags: , , , , , .

Liturgy of the HoursRecently I produced some badges to encourage the praying of the Liturgy of the Hours (the Daily Office). One of the four current ones is shown here. I am delighted to drop in to a blog and find the badge there.

The HTML for adding this badge to your blog or website is:


There are currently three alternative options for a community site, “Daily Office”, etc.. I have not yet spotted the badge on the website of a monastery or religious order that prays the Office. I hope that too will develop.

Daily OfficeThere is a growing movement that the Liturgy of the Hours, the Daily Office, is the prayer of the whole church. It has been more commonly prayed by monastics, clergy, and those in religious vows. Anglicanism, with its strongly Benedictine thread, has always encouraged the praying of the Office by all. Ecumenically there is a growing interest in this praying of the Bible. Vatican II was a great impetus to the movement. And there is also a growing development of monastic oblates and associates who are leading in the encouragement of praying the Liturgy of the Hours.

If you run a blog or website I encourage you to add the badge. Some have expressed concern to me that, although they would love to, they feel they cannot with integrity add the badge as they do not pray every office, or are irregular at it. Welcome :-) One of the values of the Liturgy of the Hours is our consciousness that it is happening all around the world all the time. When we pray it we are joining in with that prayer of Christ. That prayer continues even when we cannot add or are not currently adding our part in it.

If there is any problem with the badge, suggestion, or issue with its size or anything – please contact me. The enthusiasm about this badge may lead to the development of one or two others connected to worship.