The Church has a lovely but hard-to-realize vision of the Liturgy of the Hours becoming part of parish life. This cant happen unless those of us who have already discovered this hidden treasure make the attempt to share it with others and approach their pastors about initiating a daily or weekly time for one or more of the Hours. A reader just wrote to tell me about just such an attempt.
I wanted to share with you a lovely Evening Prayer for Advent initiative that we have tried with great success this year. As a parish lay group we have run 6 to 7pm Adoration on Mondays starting with the Angelus and finishing with Evening Prayer. We are a small rural parish but have attracted about 20 people every week. Not all the usual weekday Mass attending folk. Most people haven't experienced LOTH before. I wondered if they would come back the second week - but they did! It was this blog and your book which gave me the confidence to suggest it. As well as introducing LOTH to people it has been a really powerful prayerful experience. I would recommend the idea to anyone. One of the reasons for the success, I think, is that we are encouraging busy people to commit to a season of 4 weeks rather than a lifetime. That's something I learnt from The Everyday Catholic's Guide - don't be too ambitious as a beginner!
Our last evening is Monday, December 23rd. r. If you are reading this in USA we will be passing on the prayer to you as the world moves on.
If you are interested - our website www.catholicchurchmarch.co.uk is a good window into our parish community.
Thank you so much for this note, Anonymous! I'll be thinking of you at Evening Prayer on Monday. Hopefully you can offer this in your parish again during lent. If you aren't already doing this, you might want to offer a short information card to those who attend explaining briefly what the LOTH is and what to do if they'd like to do it at home. Feel free to copy paragraphs from my book if that makes it easier.
I wanted to share with you a lovely Evening Prayer for Advent initiative that we have tried with great success this year. As a parish lay group we have run 6 to 7pm Adoration on Mondays starting with the Angelus and finishing with Evening Prayer. We are a small rural parish but have attracted about 20 people every week. Not all the usual weekday Mass attending folk. Most people haven't experienced LOTH before. I wondered if they would come back the second week - but they did! It was this blog and your book which gave me the confidence to suggest it. As well as introducing LOTH to people it has been a really powerful prayerful experience. I would recommend the idea to anyone. One of the reasons for the success, I think, is that we are encouraging busy people to commit to a season of 4 weeks rather than a lifetime. That's something I learnt from The Everyday Catholic's Guide - don't be too ambitious as a beginner!
Our last evening is Monday, December 23rd. r. If you are reading this in USA we will be passing on the prayer to you as the world moves on.
If you are interested - our website www.catholicchurchmarch.co.uk is a good window into our parish community.
Thank you so much for this note, Anonymous! I'll be thinking of you at Evening Prayer on Monday. Hopefully you can offer this in your parish again during lent. If you aren't already doing this, you might want to offer a short information card to those who attend explaining briefly what the LOTH is and what to do if they'd like to do it at home. Feel free to copy paragraphs from my book if that makes it easier.
