Keep regular office hours.

In my bedside bookshelf is an old book. Its cover is taped, and the red edges of the pages have been worn to yellowish-white in places. It is titled Lauds, Vespers, Compline in English. The book is a shortened form of The Roman Breviary that is, in turn, a shortened form of the Divine Office, the book of Psalms and prayers read daily by many priests and religious.

The Divine Office, also known as the Liturgy of the Hours, is called the official prayer of the church. It is a way to sanctify the entire day through prayer. The Office began to develop in the church in the fourth century when specific parts of the day were set aside for prayer. Monastic communities were the first to develop a complete office for the whole day. Cathedral and parish churches developed a shortened form. Between the fifth and ninth centuries, the liturgies received their permanent structure of eight Hours: Matins, Lauds; the minor Hours of Prime, Terce, Sext, and None; and the major Hours of Vespers and Compline. Offices for the dead, the Blessed Virgin, and special feasts were also developed. The Office was revised in the 16th century and again at the start of the 20th. Further reforms and simplifications came in 1955 and 1960. The Second Vatican Council encouraged the laity to pray the Office, and the many shortened forms, of which my book is one, were meant as an aid to that end.

My book contains only three of the eight Hours of prayer into which the Office is divided. Except in monasteries, Lauds is generally the first prayer of the morning, while Vespers and Compline are the last two Hours of the evening and night. According to the rubric, or rule for praying the Hours, Lauds should be prayed in the morning; Vespers can be prayed anytime after noon. Compline is to be the last prayer of the day.

For me, praying the Hours is a point of continuity with the universal church. I have prayed from this book of Hours since the early 1970s. My best friend and I began it together. At first it was a further bond of our friendship, knowing that -- however far we might be separated -- Jim would be praying the same prayers I was. When I got married and my wife and I began our family, I continued to make time to pray the Hours. It was often only Lauds and Vespers, or Lauds and Compline. Sometimes it was only Lauds. But the regularity and the familiarity were reassuring.

I found that taking the time to pray the Hours was a way of giving my day -- and a part of my life -- an order and coherence that were otherwise lacking. Once the children were old enough to be off to school, and my wife to work, I would often pray Lauds before going off to work myself. Better than a second or third cup of coffee, the Psalms -- and the hymns and short readings that follow the Psalms -- were a reassurance of God's love and my effort to make that whole day a prayer of gratitude. Praying the Hours was also a way to be more aware of the liturgical season because the rubrics vary, depending upon whether it is Advent, the Christmas season, Lent, or the Easter season.

In time I began to memorize some of the Psalms, and in time I began to pray the Hours even without the book in hand. I would recite the Monday morning Psalm ("Harken to my words, O Lord") in the car on my way to work. During Lent and Advent I would recite the beautiful penitential Psalm 51 ("Have mercy on me, O Lord"). In time I also memorized the regular closing prayer of Lauds and the regular closing prayers of Vespers and Compline. The closing prayer of Lauds is "The Canticle of Zechariah," taken from the first chapter of Luke's Gospel: "Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel." Vespers ends with the Magnificat, also taken from the start of Luke's Gospel. Compline ends with the short "Canticle of Simeon."

Poet and Benedictine Oblate Kathleen Norris complains that "the wild and often contradictory poetry of the Psalms is still mostly censored out of Christian worship." I have never experienced that because I have been praying that wild and contradictory poetry for years. One might say that praying the Hours was educating and informing my emotional responses. Although I may not have achieved Saint Benedict's goal when he included the Psalms in his Rule -- to bring "our minds ... in harmony with our voices" -- praying the Hours continues to contribute a degree of harmony to my prayer life that it would not have without them.