Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Which Hour is Hardest to Do?


      

Last week's Q&A received more comments than usual. Maybe that's because I started out by listing the types of questions one might ask.  Perhaps this is what prompted to many of you to ask your own questions. Or maybe it was just a coincidence.

Questions answered last week included:
How do the psalms in Magnificat fit in with the Liturgy of the Hours?
Why the shift from calling the hours Lauds and Vespers to calling them Morning and Evening Prayer
How do we handle people who murmur when the length of the readings in their breviaries doesn't match that of the readings in other people's breviaries?
A question about the application of the word "breviary".
A question about praying two or more hours back to back.

So if any of these questions interest you, check it out.

One tangent that a few of us got off on was mentioning which hours were hard to do at the proper time of day, or to remember to do at all. Christopher, Melanie, and I agreed that Evening Prayer was particularly tough. That 4 to 7pm period is busy for any layman, I think. We're either planning/fixing/eating/cleaning up after dinner, and/or trying to get home from work. If one is home with children, those pre-dinner hours tend to see lots of juvenile crankiness, too. All in all, a tough time to pray. Christopher also mentioned difficulty with Night Prayer. It can be tempting to skip it when one is tired. A good reason for doing Night Prayer an hour before bed time instead of the last possible minute before collapsing into bed.

What about the rest of you? Is there an hour that you want to do, but tend to forget/put off/have difficulty praying with attention?

And of course, this is, once again,  weekly Q&A time. Like your teacher used to say, there are no dumb questions. Ask them in the comment box.


Welcome new blog followers Cathy and Shane. I hope Coffee&Canticle encourages you in joining into the great worldwide  symphony of praise known as the Divine Office.