How to pray the Liturgy of the Hours
You do not need a four-volume breviary, you do not need permission, and you should not start with all seven hours.
Begin here.
The Liturgy of the Hours is the Church's daily prayer — psalms, Scripture, and intercession spread across fixed points of the day, prayed continuously somewhere in the world at every hour. It is older than the Mass in its present form, older than most of the countries it is prayed in, and it is not reserved to clergy and religious.
The Second Vatican Council was explicit on this point: the laity are encouraged to pray the Office, whether with a priest, together, or alone.
The obstacle is almost never permission. It is that the standard four-volume breviary is a genuinely difficult object to operate — six ribbons, a calendar, propers in one section and the psalter in another, and a set of rules for combining them that nobody explains to you. People give up on the ribbons and conclude they have given up on the Office.
The most important instruction on this page.
Start with one hour
Not seven. Not three. One.
Praying a single hour every day, at roughly the same time, is not a reduced version of the practice — it is the practice, at the only scale most people with jobs and children can actually sustain. Monastic communities pray the full Office because their entire day is built around it. Yours is not, and pretending otherwise is why the attempt usually lasts about three weeks.
Two good places to begin:
- Compline — night prayer, the shortest hour, the same short cycle every week, and it ends the day. If you want the easiest possible entry, this is it.
- Lauds — morning prayer, one of the two "hinges" of the Office. Harder to keep, and it shapes the day rather than closing it.
Add a second hour when the first has become something you do without deciding to. For most people that is a matter of months, not weeks.
The hours, and when they fall.
The shape of the day
Each hour is anchored to a moment. That anchoring is most of the point — the Office sanctifies time by marking it, so an hour prayed at its own hour does something that the same words at midnight do not.
| Hour | When | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Vigils Office of Readings |
Midnight – 5am | The night office. Longer readings, patristic texts. Traditionally the monastic hour of watching. |
| Lauds | 5am – 11am | Morning prayer. One of the two hinge hours. Benedictus as the Gospel canticle. |
| Terce, Sext, None | 9am · Noon · 3pm | The little hours. Very short. Most laypeople pray one of the three rather than all. |
| Vespers | 5pm – 8pm | Evening prayer. The second hinge hour. Magnificat as the Gospel canticle. |
| Compline | 8pm – midnight | Night prayer. The shortest. Ends with an antiphon to Our Lady and, traditionally, silence until morning. |
If you can only ever manage two, the tradition's own answer is Lauds and Vespers. They are called the hinges for a reason.
What actually happens in an hour.
The structure
Every hour follows the same skeleton. Once you have seen it once, you can pray any hour in any book.
- Opening versicle. "O God, come to my assistance. Lord, make haste to help me." Every hour begins here. Cassian records the desert monks using this line as a constant prayer in the fourth century.
- Hymn. Sung or read.
- Psalmody. Usually two psalms and a canticle, each with an antiphon before and after. This is the bulk of the hour and the heart of it.
- Short reading. A few verses of Scripture.
- Responsory. A brief call and response.
- Gospel canticle. Benedictus at Lauds, Magnificat at Vespers, Nunc Dimittis at Compline.
- Intercessions. Petitions for the Church and the world.
- The Our Father.
- Concluding prayer and blessing.
Compline at ten minutes and Lauds at fifteen are realistic timings once you are familiar with it. The first few attempts will take longer, because you will be finding your place.
On the psalms you would rather not say.
Praying words that are not yours
Sooner or later the psalter will hand you a text of triumph on a day you are grieving, or a lament on a day you are perfectly content. Many people take this as evidence that they are praying dishonestly.
The tradition's answer is that you are not only praying for yourself. The Office is the prayer of the whole Church, and at the hour you say the lament, somebody is living it. You are lending your voice.
This is also the mechanism by which the Office does its slow work. Left to ourselves we pray about what is currently on our minds. The psalter drags you, on a fixed schedule, through the entire range of what it is to be a human being before God — including the parts you would never have volunteered for.
When you miss it.
Missed hours
Skip it. Pray the next one at its own time.
Laypeople are under no obligation here, and the instinct to make up a missed Vespers at 11pm turns the Office into a debt. It is not a debt. It is an hour of the day, and that hour has passed. There will be another one tomorrow.
The same applies to a missed week, or a missed Lent. Begin again at the next hour, without commentary.
If you want the books.
Breviaries and one-volume options
If you eventually want a physical book, the usual path is a one-volume edition — Christian Prayer or Shorter Christian Prayer in the United States, or Daily Prayer in the UK and Ireland. These contain Lauds, Vespers, and Compline, which is more than enough for years of practice, and they have one or two ribbons rather than six.
The full four-volume set is worth owning eventually if the Office of Readings becomes part of your practice. It is not worth owning first.