The Family-Centered Life

New book finds

Last weekend at the Catholic Family Expo something at the Emmanuel Books table really caught my eye.

Beautiful and colorful, on glossy paper with lovely illustrations, the Night Prayerbook - Compline -Liturgy of the Hours was one I hadn’t seen before but was keenly interested in. This book contains Compline (Night Prayer) for every night of the year. It is the prayer of the Church and one we the laity are encouraged to pray daily! This beautiful edition offers the whole of Night Prayer on two facing pages, making the official prayer of the Church simply accessible to all. It also includes a liturgical calendar and a quick tutorial (which I found particulary helpful!). It uses the same official translation as the Book of Christian Prayer.

Checking it out (online of course!) after I got home, I found another book, from the same publisher:
Evening Prayerbook: Sunday Vespers has all the specific readings for individual Sundays and Solemnities. It is equally beautiful though if you only wanted one, the Night Prayerbook would be a good choice.

Why pray the liturgy of the hours? Because as the Catechism tells us ” The mystery of Christ, his Incarnation and Passover, which we celebrate in the Eucharist especially at the Sunday assembly, permeates and transfigures the time of each day, through the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, “the divine office.” This celebration, faithful to the apostolic exhortations to “pray constantly,” is “so devised that the whole course of the day and night is made holy by the praise of God.” In this “public prayer of the Church,” the faithful (clergy, religious, and lay people) exercise the royal priesthood of the baptized. Celebrated in “the form approved” by the Church, the Liturgy of the Hours “is truly the voice of the Bride herself addressed to her Bridegroom. It is the very prayer which Christ himself together with his Body addresses to the Father.

The Liturgy of the Hours is intended to become the prayer of the whole People of God. In it Christ himself “continues his priestly work through his Church.” His members participate according to their own place in the Church and the circumstances of their lives. . .” CCC 1174 & 5.

This is only the night prayers but it’s a great place to begin. The Night and Evening Praybooks arrived today and we used them this evening in our family prayer time.

These are really lovely resources and I would highly recommend them. They are published by Sacros and can be ordered online at http://www.patmos.us

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