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So I& #39;m up super late (by a combination of obligation happenstance) and that gave me an excuse to break out the Little Office again and say Matins and Lauds.
(The names should really be run together: Matinsandlauds.)
I like the Little Office because it& #39;s so simple.
The Liturgy of the Hours—even in the attenuated form found in Shorter Christian Prayer—sometimes feels like you need a calendar, three different colored ribbons, polyhedral dice, Chance AND Community Chest cards, and a limited-edition liturgical See & #39;n Say to get it right.
Shorter Christian Prayer (I& #39;m dunking on it in particular because it& #39;s also one I own) is doubly annoying because it doesn& #39;t print the doxology and antiphon at the end of each psalm, and it uses ellipses in the responsory.
Which sounds trivial until you& #39;re praying with someone who& #39;s unfamiliar with the LotH and has cognitive impairments and therefore gets confused when you start "reading" things that aren& #39;t on the page.
The Little Office (the Baronius Press edition —the only one I& #39;m really acquainted with) has a LOT less of that. A few things do trail off, but they& #39;re indicated by "&c." rather than ellipses, which on our experience is clearer.
I wish it came in a large-print version.
I wish it came in a large-print version.
So many considerations go into which prayer book to use:
Do I own it? Can I afford to buy it?
Is it printed in a way that& #39;s easy to follow? Is there a large-print version, or at any rate is the type very clear?
Does it make you flip back and forth a lot? Does it come with enough ribbons?
Is it printed in a way that& #39;s easy to follow? Is there a large-print version, or at any rate is the type very clear?
Does it make you flip back and forth a lot? Does it come with enough ribbons?
Notably absent from this is any opinion I might have about the text itself.
Why? Because it& #39;s the Dodo bird& #39;s race. All of them are the same basic stuff—prayers and psalmody—and all of them are fine.
Why? Because it& #39;s the Dodo bird& #39;s race. All of them are the same basic stuff—prayers and psalmody—and all of them are fine.
For the record, here are the four daily-office type books I own, in the order I encountered them:
Shorter Christian Prayer. My go-to, despite all the carping. My copy was a gift from the parish when I was received; I was scared of it and didn& #39;t touch it for 15 years (until after I& #39;d visited a community where they used the 4-volume LotH).
We also have the large-type edition.
We also have the large-type edition.
Benedictine Daily Prayer. We bought two copies at a good price, but never got much use out of them. It has all the hours in one volume and a full calendar, but the trade-off is a lot of page-flipping, elisions, and small type. I& #39;m also not a fan of the inclusive-language psalms.
