Monday, September 10, 2012

ibreviary news!

iBreviary, one of my favorite apps for the Liturgy of the Hours, has exciting news about its new Kindle Fire app and other improvements, which you can read about here.

I've already been enjoying its new ability to download a week's worth of the Hours at a time, making my ipod a truly mobile breviary,  with or without a wi-fi connection when I'm out and about.

It also looks like Ibreviary is adding the ordos for religious orders. Ordo means the variations to the proper of saints to accomodate celebrations that are either not listed on the general roman calendar, or to elevate them from memorial to feast, or from feast to solemnity. For example, Franciscans keep the feast of St. Francis not as a memorial, but as a solemnity. Salesians would similarly elevate the celebration of their founder, St. John Bosco. Also, religious orders celebrate every saint and blessed their orders have ever produced with a special office and particular readings in the OOR. Currently, iBreviary includes quite a few of these. They appear after the end of the regular office for each day from the universal calendar. But the new plan will create a toggle-switch for each ordo, so that the offices specific to the order will be the "default" each day rather than the tail end of a lengthy scroll-down.
The Salesian switch is already in place. It looks like the Franciscans are next in line. This will eventually make iBreviary the go-to app for any of you who belong to a third order.
Here is the link for the Kindle fire download