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Experience Real Liturgy in Your Home

Even though we cannot attend Mass while we shelter in place, we can experience real liturgy in our homes by praying the Liturgy of the Hours— and it’s more accessible than you might think. Fr. Hugh Barbour explains how, even during the suspension of public Masses, you can still not just watch but participate in real liturgy.


Cy Kellett:
Hello and welcome again to Catholic Answers Focus. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Strange times we’re living in at the moment with the virus around the world and people confined at home, and families, many families, without too many outlets, not getting out to Mass, not getting out to do much of anything, really. So, we thought we’d ask about the family praying together in this time and get some ideas about the family praying together from our chaplain, Norbertine priest, Father Hugh Barbour. Hi, Father.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Hello, hello.

Cy Kellett:
Now, you’ve kept up your prayers during-

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
I have. Yeah, we’re lucky because people in monasteries, we’re doing all the prayers we did before because as we have our own church and whatnot. So, we’re praying for everybody who can’t.

Cy Kellett:
Oh, yeah. Well, I appreciate it. I guess monasteries around the world: praying all the time.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
That’s a perk.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
We have all those prayers from early morning till later at night, and we pray them constantly every day of the year.

Cy Kellett:
Right. So, you pray, and maybe there’s a distinction between these two things, you’ll have to tell me, what’s called the Liturgy of the Hours, or the Divine Office.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Same thing.

Cy Kellett:
They’re the same thing?

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Yeah.

Cy Kellett:
Okay. So today, we could talk a little bit about families possibly making use of the Divine Office.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Okay.

Cy Kellett:
All right?

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Good idea.

Cy Kellett:
Well, the first thing I guess I would ask you is we have this thing now, and I did it, my wife and I and some other people who live in our home on Sunday, we watched the Mass together, did the responses and everything together, and I found it wasn’t like going to Mass exactly, but it felt like a very good thing to do on a Sunday. So, what’s the comparison between, say, watching Mass on TV or if say we had taken the time to pray the Liturgy of the Hours or the Divine Office together, are these things comparable?

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Well, in one way they are, and in one way they’re not. I mean, I wouldn’t want to criticize at all watching a live, especially a live Mass on television, where you’re participating with a community at some distance, but it’s live.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But of course, if you do some of the Liturgy of the Hours together, it’s a liturgy that you yourselves are celebrating. It’s not virtual, it’s really your liturgy, and it’s really a liturgical act of the church because one thing was made very clear in the church’s renewal of the Office, Divine Office, or the Liturgy of the Hours, is that although there are persons who are especially deputed and obliged to pray in the form, which is found in the Liturgy of the Hours, the hours of the day like bishops, priests, deacons, monks, nuns, canons, candidiases, and other religious orders that have the obligation of singing together, or reciting together, the Divine Office still anyone else who does that is still performing liturgical act even though they’re not bound by their way of life to do it, but they are doing the church’s liturgy. So, it’s not simply a private prayer.

Cy Kellett:
Right. So, the Mass one, in a sense, you’re watching liturgy, but if you’re praying the Liturgy of the Hours together, say us about-

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
You’re doing it.

Cy Kellett:
… you’re doing liturgy.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Yeah, yeah.

Cy Kellett:
So, maybe you could define that for me. What is liturgy? What do we mean by the word, liturgy?

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Well, liturgy, it comes from an old Greek word, which meant public service, public obligation. So, it was in the church, the Greek word liturgy came to mean the public obligation of the church. Well, what does the church do as her public bound and duty and service?

Cy Kellett:
Right.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It is to offer worship to God according to the sacraments instituted by Christ and the church institute with those sacraments and the rights which surround those sacraments so that we can receive them properly and for a good effect on our Christian life. So, it’s actually the church’s principle work, so that’s what it’s called liturgy, because it’s a public service, but public service of divine worship.

Cy Kellett:
Okay.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
So, it’s always public even though it might seem private. Like, where it says, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”

Cy Kellett:
Right.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
So when two or three or four, or whatever in a family or in a group of friends, are praying together, the Divine Office, that is truly an act of the church’s public worship. It’s not just a private prayer.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah, right. So if I’m praying the Liturgy of the Hours, even say just with my family, then we’re doing liturgy, we’re doing the public work of the church and worshiping God.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right.

Cy Kellett:
Say I’m praying the rosary with a hundred people, even though it’s more people, it’s not the same. It’s not liturgical.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right, it’s not part of the church’s liturgy. Right? But it’s certainly much to be recommend,. But right now a hundred people can’t get together to do that.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Right.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But there you have, for the rosary, the great benefit. The rosary is model to a certain extent on the liturgical prayer, and next to liturgical prayer it’s the most important. Practically speaking, it’s more at hand. That is, it’s easy for people to pray the rosary then to pick up the Breviary and figure out how to do the different parts of the Divine Office.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah, okay.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But that doesn’t mean we can’t try. You consider how people, they have their computers and they can do, the kids especially, they can do all kinds of things that are mysteries to me.

Cy Kellett:
Right.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Then, they update things continually and they’re constantly able to manage these technicalities. When something goes wrong, they figure out how to fix it and everything. Everybody knows what to do with their technology. While the breviary is not that complicated, I mean it takes a while for you to get used to it and then it’s very, very simple, so you can practically do it in your sleep.

But for a family to pray together, I think the best point, the best way to go about it, is for the head of the family, whoever’s going to take the lead in this, preferably dad, if dad and mom are together, then having Dad to it, or Granddad, and to get the Liturgy of the Hours to buy a copy of the prayers themselves or to get an offline. You could have the kids help with that. There are all kinds of-

Cy Kellett:
Yeah, you find an app.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
There are apps for phones and everything. There are all kinds of things. All you would have to do is just look in the app section on your phone to Liturgy of the Hours in English or in Spanish, [foreign language 00:06:40], or in Italian or Latin, they’re all there and some of them are free, completely free, and you can get the Liturgy of the Hours for that day, right there without even worrying about finding your page in the book or knowing about how the different selections are made.

Cy Kellett:
Right. Yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Although, I really recommend getting the book because it’s like using a candle instead of an electric light. It’s more-

Cy Kellett:
Liturgical.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
… liturgical in its tone.

Cy Kellett:
Right.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
So, to get something whereby you’re going to be familiar with the prayers of the Divine Office and then adapt it to your circumstances. Maybe if a family is beginning and they’re people of various ages, you could keep it very simple. Every hour of the Divine Office or the Liturgy of the Hours has some recitation of the Psalms.

Cy Kellett:
Yes, okay.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Morning prayer, evening prayer, and night prayer also have an additional canticle, that is a Canticle of Zachariah, the Canticle of Mary in the evening, and the Canticle of Simeon at night prayer. So, you have the Psalms and the canticle if you wanted to, you could keep it as simple as praying, making sure you pray those three canticles morning and evening and right before you go to bed.

Cy Kellett:
Oh, and then you’re participating.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
So, you’re in the spirit of the Liturgy of the Hours, and praying those canticles, Mary’s Canticle, “My soul magnifies the Lord,” and you can start with that. Then, you might be able then to move on to, well, you can start praying the Psalms. Well, the Psalms are arranged in a four week cycle, and there’s Psalms for each of the hours of the day. There’s the Psalm for morning prayer, for daytime prayer, and for evening prayer, and also for night prayer.

You could just pray the song for that hour, or those Psalms, and then you could just get used to what you do in the Liturgy of the Hours, and then little by little it’d become easy to see how it all fits together. First, the canticles from the New Testament, which that’s like the high point of those hours, just like the Gospel kind of is the high point of the liturgy of the Word, and then you could move to the Psalms and canticles from the Old Testament mostly, or other parts of the New Testament that are found right there in the breviary. Or, I call it breviary but that’s the book that has the whole of the Liturgy of the Hours in it, and just do parts of it very simply to begin with.

In that way, you recite those Psalms with your children or your family. One side of the room does one part and then the other side does the other part, and you can divide up the recitation. So, the right hand side starts and then when there’s a break, the left hand side picks it up, and then you go back to the right side and the left side. You do it back and forth, and that kind of keeps a certain level of participation up, you know?

Cy Kellett:
Yes.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It’s very helpful. Also, you would change your posture a little bit. You could start standing and then sit down and do the Psalms, and then stand up again to do the New Testament Canticle because that’s from the Gospel. So, you stand for it.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Then, maybe you conclude with the, “Our Father,” and you have a little kind of mini Vespers. It’s the kind of thing you see in a booklet, like Magnificat or there’s other devotionals.

Cy Kellett:
Right.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Now, it’s a very short step from that to just doing the whole thing because what’s left is there’s a little short reading and there’s a hymn at the beginning and there’s some intercessions. It’s not hard once you get a look at it to see the pattern and to do the whole thing just as it’s written. But if you already have family prayers that you want to do, you could, say, start in the morning with Psalm 95, “Oh, com let us sing to the Lord,” that that’s the opening Psalm of the church’s worship every day called the Venite, the come, the word that said-

Cy Kellett:
Oh, Yeah, yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
… to come let us, and start with that. Then, have whatever morning prayers that you normally would say that your children are used to or whatever. Then, conclude that with the Zachary’s Canticle to unite yourself with the morning prayer in the church. Then, the same in the evening, some evening prayers. Maybe you were going to pray the rosary, but then conclude that with Mary’s Magnificat, and that’s one way to do it.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Then before bed, whatever bedtime story we have, but conclude with with the Canticle of Simeon. Now, that’s a minimum, but you’re consciously uniting yourself to the church’s liturgy.

Cy Kellett:
You’re using the most basic building block on which the thing is built and you start there, and then you master that.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right, right. You have the Canticles, the Psalms, and then the other things that go along with it there versus the begin the Office, “Oh God, come to my assistance, so Lord make haste to help me,” “Let us bless the Lord, thanks be to God.” That’s how you end the Office.

But if you examine this, it doesn’t take much, you’ll be able to see just how it’s done, and you easily could come to being able to do the whole thing yourself. Those apps you can get, they often read it out to you and so you could follow that a little bit to yourself so you see how it works.

Cy Kellett:
Right.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
That way, you’d be in a position to lead it.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But to do it responsively back and forth, that gives it that feeling that the church’s prayers. It’s not just sitting down on a cell phone and reciting something altogether, which can be kind of can get more tedious.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Move back and forth.

Cy Kellett:
But, learn to do the back and forth of the prayer.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right.

Cy Kellett:
You only need two people to do it.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
You know where people have learned to do that already is with the rosary. The first half of the, “Our father,” the second half, “Dear Father,” first half of the Hail Mary.

Cy Kellett:
Right.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Second half, “And the glory and glory,” that came from the restitution of the Divine Office.

Cy Kellett:
Right.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But, it’s easy to get into it but you just have to take the dive and begin to adapt to it, or you may want to save the full morning pray and Vespers to Sundays as sort of a special thing you want to do.

Cy Kellett:
Okay, yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It can be a little more solemn on Sunday than on the weekdays, but you’re free to do whatever you want to accommodate it to what you already have practiced, because the point is not to deprive people of their devotional things that they ordinarily do, but to bring them in to the church’s prayer, as is prayed in monasteries and cathedral churches, and hermitages and all over the world.

Cy Kellett:
It strikes me that the two effects of praying, the Liturgy of the Hours are just that. First of all, you begin to participate with a world that’s praying. I mean, all around the world the priests, sisters, monks, but many lay people as well, deacons, are praying this, and it’s been-

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
People of movements, yeah.

Cy Kellett:
… and it’s been going on for a thousand years or longer than that.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Longer than that, since the New Testament. So maybe because this comes from the Jewish tradition, they would go to the temple to pray at the ninth, at the third and the sixth and the ninth hours, and that’s roughly equivalent to our mid-morning, midday, mid-afternoon prayer, which are called daytime prayer.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
That was already there. Then, there’s also reference to praying at midnight. I mean, where did the Muslims get this five times a day? They got it by imitating the Jews and Christians of their own time. We had s-

Cy Kellett:
Muhammad was familiar with the monks and the monasteries.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
We had seven, the Jews had three, and so they came up with five different.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah. Let’s split the difference.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But, they imitated that, and they’re still faithful to it. Then very clearly, Liturgy of the Hours indicates that it’s for the sanctification of time to bring the eternal truths and the words of sacred scripture inspired and powerful into the passage of our days.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right? Then, also with that, marking the different feast days of the church here that come up and are celebrated within the Liturgy of the Hours.

Cy Kellett:
Well, that was the second thing. So, the first being you are in this almost like river of prayer.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right.

Cy Kellett:
You’re now in this river of prayer that the church has been doing for thousands of years.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Forever, right, right.

Cy Kellett:
But not only are you in this river of prayer, but now your time of your day is marked differently. In the time of this virus, I noticed that there’s a lot of secular kind of psychologists and what giving advice. One of the regular pieces of advice is, “Look, get up and take your shower the same time you do every day. Keep your schedule. You’re much less likely to experience depression and anxiety.”

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right, right, exactly.

Cy Kellett:
But, this is something that’s like that, but it’s on the supernatural level. there’s something very common sense about just marking hours, keeping a schedule day after day that orients you in a way to the world. It, I guess, anchors you in a way to the world and at the time.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Absolutely. The liturgy very much sanctifies time, not just the day, but also the seasons of the year and the whole passage of the year. It’s very important. That’s a key way to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. Some other simple ways to do it, to simplify it, for example, you could take the volume of the Liturgy of the Hours for Lent and Easter and you could take the Offices, which are given for Holy Thursday and Good Friday and Holy Saturday, and just pray those as a devotion all the days of this Passiontide into Easter. You could pray the Passion Office, like the Good Friday Office, you could pray that every day. That’s a devotion or-

Cy Kellett:
Yeah. It’s funny when you say it, you seem flexible about it. I mean, there’s a certain way in which I guess we can be kind of rigid, “What am I supposed to be doing today? What’s on the schedule?” Yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. What I mean, that you might say is an ideal liturgically, but there’s also the practice, and the church at it, little Offices.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah, yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
So, there is the Little Office of Our Lady, there’s an Office for Our Lady that people sometimes pray in place of the big Liturgy of the Hours, but it’s structured exactly the same way with the same hours.

Cy Kellett:
Oh, okay.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
There’s also an Office for the Dead for the Souls of the Departed that’s also structured in that way. So, you could always, as a default, just pray the Office of Our Lady or some parts of that or of the Dead, and that’s in the back of the Liturgy of the Hours, the Common of the Blessed Virgin or the Office for the Dead.

But I think at this time, too, if you’re new to the breviary, say in the time that we’re talking, you order one, if Amazon is still delivering those things, you order one or you get it online, because you can get it online easily, and you see, “All right, here’s the Office of Holy Thursday, Vespers of Holy Thursday, the Office of Good Friday with Vespers of Good Friday. That’s very interesting. There’s issue with the opportunity because Vespers of Good Friday and Holy Thursday are normally never prayed because you have the evening service, as prayed only by those who can’t get to the evening service. So now, that means to practically everyone.

Cy Kellett:
Everybody, yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
So, the church does actually have for you something you can do in place of the Holy Thursday Mass and the Good Friday service, and that is there’s a special Vespers on the Thursday Holy of week and the Friday of Holy week, Holy Thursday and Good Friday, that are meant to be prayed by people who can’t be there, that’s for example.

So, you can be meditating on the Passion and reading the whole thing all the way through and doing that, if you’re not in the mood to acquaint yourself with all the details just yet, you could keep it simple because it’s all in one page, you don’t have to turn too much, it’d be helpful.

Cy Kellett:
Yes.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Because the main thing is you don’t want people to get disheartened when they start praying the Liturgy of the Hours because it seems more complicated than what they’re used to, and it’s really not.

Cy Kellett:
Complex. right.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But, we can start easily and use what parts we can, and conform ourselves to what the church is praying at the moment. The great spiritual writer Gary [inaudible 00:18:46] says that the inspiration to pray in union with the spirit of the liturgy of the particular season you’re in is always an inspiration of the Holy Spirit.”

Cy Kellett:
Ah, yeah, right.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
That’s always a good thing because those graces of those mysteries as really being bestowed at that time. So, that’s something one can do. Little Office for Our Lady, Office of the Dead, you can get the Little Office of Our Lady separately, you can order that, so-called Little Office of Our Lady, or the Office of the Dead is in the back of the breviary, Pray for the Departed. They’re beautiful psalms that make you really think about the last things, but in a way which is consoling and strengthening for our souls.

Cy Kellett:
Right.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Then of course, the Triduum, the last few days of Holy Week, that’s all in there too and you could just set yourself to praying some of those. It could help you an awful lot.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah. So, it seemed like that first idea that you had about just starting with the canticles, the three canticles, even if you had very small children, if you’re a family with little kids, you can read the canticle to start the day. So, what are the hours for those?

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
In morning, that’s the Canticle of Zachariah, “Blessed be the God of Israel.” They’re all from Luke, right, from the first part of Luke’s gospel.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
“So blessed to be the Lord, the God of Israel has visited and redeemed his people,” that’s Zachariah. Then, the Canticle of Mary, that’s Mary with the Angel Gabriel, “My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,” and then there is Simeon, “Lord, now you let your servant depart in peace according to your word.”

Cy Kellett:
That’s night.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
That’s night. Those are the three canticles for the New Testament that are always prayed in the Liturgy of the Hours.

Cy Kellett:
Now when you, in the monastery, pray the hours, how many of those hours of the day are you all together praying?

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
There’s seven of them.

Cy Kellett:
There’s seven of those?

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
In addition to Mass, yeah.

Cy Kellett:
Okay. So, could somebody who, say, you’ve got your work day, you’re living a secular life maybe modify that to two? Like, just do morning and night?

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right. Morning and evening prayer are the most important, those two [crosstalk 00:20:56] prayer.

Cy Kellett:
But evening is what time?

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Well, the night prayer’s for right before you’re going into bed.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
So normally, vespers, or evening prayer, is around between 5:00 and 7:00. Then, you say the night prayer right before you’re going to bed. That can even be after midnight if it needs to be.

Cy Kellett:
Okay.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
But yeah, you can choose to pray as as much or as little of the Divine Offices as is convenient for you. I haven’t talked about the liturgy the Office of Readings, which that could be your share in the Divine Office too. Just doing that one Office of Readings, which has longer readings according to the Season and the Feast Day.

Cy Kellett:
What is it? What is the Office of Readings?

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
That’s what used to be called Matins, and it was usually done in the morning, but now it can be done anytime of the day.

Cy Kellett:
Okay.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
It consists of the usual opening hymn and three Psalms, and then a reading from the Old or New Testaments, and with a responsory after it, little chant after it, and then a reading from the Fathers of the church, and then a concluding prayer. That’s one that a lot of people find simpler just to do that because it gives them material for meditation business, a nice reading from one of the Fathers of the church, and that helps them. But, that’s more an on the level of a private meditation, or for older people.

Cy Kellett:
I see.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
I don’t know if the little children are going to want to sit still for listening to Saint Ambrose. maybe they will.

Cy Kellett:
That’s an awfully good little kid if he does.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Yeah, right. But, the important thing here is that in the Christian liturgy, we are praying in union with Christ our head, our Lord Jesus prayed the Psalms while He was on earth, prayed these very prayers, Our Lady prayed these very prayers, the Psalms were practically the prayer book of the Jews, and so consequently it draws us very close to Him. Our understanding of the Psalms, we understand the Psalms as a prayer of Christ our head, the head of the mystical body, and also of us, His members.

So, there’s some things in the Psalms where the voice is the voice of Christ speaking, and then there are other things where it’s the voice of His body speaking.

Cy Kellett:
Yeah.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
We can consider that, that we’re always involving ourselves with the whole Christ head and members when we pray the Psalter and the Divine Office. Yeah. So, it’s very powerful in that regard.

Cy Kellett:
Do you have, just of your own for your own preferences, a version in English that you particularly like or do you think just get one and…

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
They’re only the official ones. So if you want to do just Vespers and Lauds, that is morning prayer and evening prayer, a good thing to get as the so-called Mundelein Psalter, and that’s what we use here at Catholic Answers and the chapel. The Mundelein Psalter, that has just morning prayer and evening prayer and it has a little music too if you’re musically inclined, but that’s very handy, and it has the hymns and everything.

But, there’s another shortened version of the Liturgy of the Hours called Christian prayer that has liturgy of the morning prayer and evening prayer for every day as well and it has also the night prayer in it, that’s one of the benefits of that particular book. Or, you can get the whole four volume breviary, but they’re all the same version approved for use in the United States and several other countries.

Now, the British and the Canadians, they have a breviary also, which you’re perfectly free to use and you can buy that too from the Catholic Truth Society in London, but it’s not usually used in public celebrations in this country, but you’re perfectly free to use. I know priests who use it instead of the American one, because they like some of the translations better, but it just depends.

Cy Kellett:
Okay.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Of course, you can always print in Latin, you can print in Spanish, you can print it in Italian, any language you have the use of.

Cy Kellett:
Myself, I have Laudate on my phone, but I know there are other ones. You can just go to your App Store and see what they’ve got for [crosstalk 00:24:53]-

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Right, they got all those things. We’re not even talking about the traditional Office, the pre-councillor Office, which is available online very easily, and the books are all out. It’s also, in some ways, easier to pray than the new Office, in some ways more complicated, but it’s also one where you could easily have that part of your family’s devotion.

Cy Kellett:
Is it Latin, or it’s in English?

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Well, there’s an English edition too. You can get an English edition.

Cy Kellett:
Okay.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
There’s a bilingual English edition, I think it’s Baronius Press I think, but there may be others. But often, people that are using the traditional liturgy, they’ll pray Prime, that’s a morning prayer that’s kind of fixed, and Compline, that’s an evening prayer, a night prayer that’s kind of fixed, and they just do those two parts of the Office and don’t do the rest of it.

But that’s what they did in seminaries, too, sometimes before they had the obligation of the whole Office, but there are various ways to take access to that, but the main thing is to get into the idea of praying together and out loud the Psalms of the sacred scripture is psalms prayed by our Lord and the church from the rising of the sun to the setting all over the world, and to love those prayers, through which our Lord Himself love and inspired in the heart of King David and the other authors of the Psalter, and inspired in the heart of Zachary and Simeon, but most especially His blessed mother.

Cy Kellett:
So, I feel like you’ve made it accessible because it is something to jump into it right at the beginning.,But especially with the ribbons and the turning pages and all of it. It’s a lot.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Yeah.

Cy Kellett:
It’s a lot. I mean, there’s a learning curve to it, but you’re saying build. Take the blocks and build.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Yeah, if you can just figure out what week of the Psalter you’re in: week one, two, week three, week four. Because once you know that, you go to the day of the week, and then you have the morning prayer psalms and the evening prayer psalms. If you combine that with the canticle that goes with that time of day, the Canticle Zachariah in the morning, Canticle of Mary, Our Lady in the evening, and then before bed, the Canticle of Simeon, then you’ve got kind of an outline of what you’re supposed to be doing, and then the rescue can kind of just tidy it up.

Cy Kellett:
All right. You’re doing liturgy when you do this in the home.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
You are doing it, yes.

Cy Kellett:
You’re doing the work of the church.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Yes.

Cy Kellett:
Father Hugh Barbour, thank you.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
You’re very welcome. God bless you.

Cy Kellett:
Thank you very much. Yeah, and you as well. Thank you, and all your brother priests out there. I hope you’re all, I guess we’re all hoping everybody just stay well.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Stay well, absolutely.

Cy Kellett:
A few more weeks, we’ll get through this.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Let’s hope so.

Cy Kellett:
I hope so.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
I mean, really and truly, I think we should have great confidence.

Cy Kellett:
Thank you to all of our listeners who join us here each week on Catholic Answers Focus. I’m Cy Kellett, your host. Please don’t forget, or maybe it’s not a matter of forgetting. Maybe you haven’t thought about doing it yet, maybe you would be willing to give us a five star review where you get your podcasts, and also write a little something to encourage other people to listen to Focus.

Because, I’ll be quite honest with you, we’re trying to grow the podcast. We’d like more people to know about it and more people to make use of it. We’re glad we get to do it and spend some time with people like Father Hugh Barbour. We’ll see you next time right here, God willing, on Catholic Answers Focus.

Fr. Hugh Barbour:
Good bless.

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