Comments on: AREWP: Frequently Asked Questions

By: liturgy

liturgy — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 20:25:00 +0000

Wonderful, down to earth post on the Liturgy of the Hours.
This year I’m going to work to make
http://www.liturgy.co.nz/ofthehours/resources.html
a hub of resources for this way of praying.
Possibly you might link to it as “Liturgy of the Hours”
Let me know so I acknowledge this and link back.

Blessings.
Let us pray for each other

By: Melanie B

Melanie B — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 02:14:00 +0000

About what the kids do when you pray, it will be interesting to see how that develops over time.

Bella has changed in her reactions when I say my morning prayers. At first she tended to be really demanding and I bought her some holy cards to play with while I prayed. I found that she’s much easier with it now that I say my prayers as part of my morning routine: get dressed, make the bed, say prayers sitting on the bed. Now she usually drifts in and out of my bedroom and only sometimes demands my attention. Sometimes she even indicates that she expects me to pray after I’ve finished dressing. She also always asks that I bless her at the end of the prayers.

By: La gallina

La gallina — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 21:13:00 +0000

Thanks Jen. I was planning to ask you all these questions but hadn’t had a chance. I am amazed and inspired by your dedication.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 18:47:00 +0000

About not concentrating: I have found that sometimes praying without really focusing on the words or consciously thinking the ideas is MORE effective. It’s as if I get past the wordy, thinking, self-absorbed part of my brain into something else.

I’m not Catholic, but I went to a Catholic elementary school for one year, and that’s where I first experienced this: A classmate’s grandmother was very sick, so my teacher took the class to church to pray for her. We recited “Hail Mary” together over and over again. This was a prayer I’d memorized at the beginning of the year and knew so well I participated in playground contests to see who could say it fastest! I thought those words didn’t mean much to me. But around the fourth time, I began to feel something within me and around us: a special peace and hope, the healing soothing that would help Maria’s grandmother in her slow and painful transition out of this life. It wasn’t about the words, yet without saying those memorized words we would not have accomplished that.

By: will

will — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 01:15:00 +0000

The prayers in Magnificat are structured like the Morning, Evening, and Night prayers in the Liturgy of the Hours, but are somewhat simpler and shorter, and are different in content, as I discovered when I compared them last weekend. That is to say, the psalms, canticles, readings, intercessions, antiphons, and so forth for a given day in Magnificat are not the psalms, canticles, etc., given for the same day in the LOTH. They have the same flavor, though, and might be easier to start with.

I also used the Discovering Prayer PDF file you mentioned, when I was getting started with the LOTH this past weekend, and found it very helpful.