My Divine Office routine usually includes five daily liturgical hours. Given my lifestyle--older children, part time work from home, good health--this is has not been that hard to do. Morning prayer,preceded by the Office of Readings, is a cinch to do once the remaining minor offspring gets on the school bus. It's hard to forget Night Prayer since a separate volume of just Compline sits on my nightstand, and its association with bedtime makes it impossible to forget except on the occasional day that I just fall into bed in utter exhaustion--the kind of night when I also might neglect to brush my teeth or wash my face.
But funny things can happen with Daytime and Evening Prayer. My theoretical goal with daytime prayer is to hit it around the middle of my day, roughly between 11:30am and 1pm. But I'm a procrastinator, so what tended to happen was that at 4pm I'd realize that it was almost time for evening prayer, therefore I'd better drop what I was doing and do the midafternoon version. Similarly, I'd tend to put off Evening Prayer until well into the night.
But now things are much better. Thanks to Catholic techie Sarah Reinhard of CatholicMom.com, I learned about the free Easy Reminders App for ipod/iphone/ipad. I assume that similar things exist for android phones, tablets, and maybe even Kindle fire. Anyway, I entered an ongoing reminder to do Daytime Prayer at 12 noon and Evening Prayer at 5pm. As each of these two times roll around I get a lovely little Westminster chimes sound effect. I've found that although I can't necessarily drop everything and pray at these precise times, just having heard that single reminder chime usually keeps the thought of praying in the back of my mind such that I do get around to it sometime within the next hour. In the three weeks that I've had Easy Reminders I"ve improved about 90% at getting these two hours done at the times of day I intend to do them, rather than procrastinating til its almost time for the next hour.
REMINDER! Will the winners of the blogiversary book giveaway kindly let me know where you live? Other than the prompt Mrs. Pinkerton I have not heard from any of you. Email me at thesockeys"at"gmail"dot"com. Thanks.
Don't forget to add an intercession for Pope Benedict these next few days when you do the intercessions for morning or evening prayer. Thank God for his papacy and ask God to bless him in his new ministry of prayer.
Okay. Q&A time. Comments, Queries, and Quibbles welcome.
REMINDER! Will the winners of the blogiversary book giveaway kindly let me know where you live? Other than the prompt Mrs. Pinkerton I have not heard from any of you. Email me at thesockeys"at"gmail"dot"com. Thanks.
Don't forget to add an intercession for Pope Benedict these next few days when you do the intercessions for morning or evening prayer. Thank God for his papacy and ask God to bless him in his new ministry of prayer.
Okay. Q&A time. Comments, Queries, and Quibbles welcome.
