Lord, Open My Lips: The Liturgy of the Hours As Daily Prayer

by Seth Murray

North Bay Books, 2004

108 pages, $12

To order: (503) 434-5264

or prayer.rosaryshop.com

Catholics sometimes express admiration for the Muslim practice of praying a certain number of times per day. They don’t realize that the Catholic Church has always done this as well. It’s called the Liturgy of the Hours or the Divine Office. Obligatory to clergy and religious, this ancient, scriptural prayer has been warmly recommended to the laity — repeatedly so by Pope John Paul II. And various lay initiatives to promote the Liturgy of the Hours are gaining momentum.

Author Seth Murray has for some time offered on-line instruction on how to pray the office. Now his tutorial is available as this book.

Could there be a better time to launch into the Liturgy of the Hours than Lent?

Murray describes two problems with prayer that can be helped by the Liturgy of the Hours. First, despite our need for frequent prayer, it is something we tend to put off until “later.” The second problem helps to explain the first: It is so easy for prayer to become monotonous, whether we use standard formulas or spontaneous prayers:

“[S]omewhere along the way,” he writes, “questions must occur to us: ‘Why do I keep saying the same things over and over? What am I really doing?’ Some try to make their prayers more eloquent and interesting, or implement methods to generate particular emotional states. But what really is the point of such activity? Is God somehow impressed by our mastery of language? … Underlying such questions are more subtle ones: What is prayer? What is its purpose? Why pray at all? Thankfully, for the last 2,000 years the Catholic Church has practiced and promoted a form of Christ-centered prayer that is enriching and virtually inexhaustible … it answers most of these questions.”

For the Liturgy of the Hours, with its Psalms and scriptural readings arranged according to the liturgical seasons, gives both variety and order to our prayer lives. It shows us how to pray not simply on our own but to pray with Christ — and to join our voices to that of the Church universal as it praises, intercedes, gives thanks and repents. By so praying with God’s word, we don’t just tell him things; we also hear what he wants to tell us.

But first comes the awkward process of learning to use the breviary, a chunky volume that requires flipping back and forth from Ordinary to Psalter to Proper to Commons. Its printed instructions are incomplete, seeming to assume that everyone has access to monastic teachers. Lord, Open My Lips cuts through the confusion with thorough yet simple explanations of how to pray each of the liturgical hours. Murray delineates the essential parts from the optional, enabling one to adapt private recitation to personal time constraints.

Most helpful of all is the author’s advice to not obsess about perfection. “For the laity, it’s all optional,” he writes. “Focus on those parts that are interesting to you and grow from there. … Start modestly, making it your goal not to pray as much as you possibly can but as much as you should and as is appropriate to your place in life.”

Additional advice on organizing group recitation of the hours, along with a primer on chanting, will also make Lord, Open My Lips of interest to those already skilled with the breviary. Murray’s work will do much to make the treasure of liturgical prayer accessible to the laity. Anyone considering making the hours part of his or her prayer life will be well served by purchasing this book along with his or her first breviary.

Daria Sockey writes

from Cincinnati.