Liturgy of the Hours
The Divine Office — the Church’s unceasing prayer sanctifying every hour of the day, from the Desert Fathers to Vatican II, from monasteries to smartphones.
The Church’s Official Daily Prayer
The Liturgy of the Hours (Liturgia Horarum, also called the Divine Office or Officium Divinum) is the official prayer of the Church sanctifying the hours of the day. It is not private prayer but the public, communal prayer of the Church herself — second only to the Eucharist in liturgical dignity.
Catechism of the Catholic Church — CCC 1174
“The mystery of Christ, his Incarnation and Passover, which we celebrate in the Eucharist especially at the Sunday assembly, permeates and transfigures the time of each day, through the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, ‘the divine office.’”
Catechism of the Catholic Church — CCC 1175
“The Liturgy of the Hours is intended to become the prayer of the whole People of God. In it Christ himself ‘continues his priestly work through his Church.’”
The primary purpose of the LOTH is the sanctification of time itself — to consecrate time to God. By praying at fixed hours throughout the day, the Church transforms ordinary human time into sacred time, making the whole day a continuous act of worship. This is not a new idea: it is the ancient instinct of every culture that has known God, expressed now in the fullness of Christian revelation.
Even when prayed alone (as most laypeople do), the LOTH is always the prayer of the universal Church. The priest praying Morning Prayer in his rectory, the religious in her chapel, and the layperson on the subway are all praying the same words at the same hours, united with the whole Church worldwide. It is this universality that distinguishes the Liturgy of the Hours from personal devotional prayer.
The Opus Dei — the Work of God
St. Benedict of Nursia (480–547) called the Divine Office the Opus Dei— the “Work of God.” In his Rule, nothing was to be preferred to it. For Benedictine monks, the Office is the center around which all other activity revolves. Manual labor, study, and hospitality exist in service of the Opus Dei, not the other way around. This Benedictine insight shaped the entire medieval Western Church and remains the proper ordering of any Christian life.
The LOTH and the Eucharist are the two pillars of the Church’s official prayer. Sacrosanctum Concilium (Vatican II, 1963) §§83–101 treats them together. The Mass is the summit; the LOTH extends the Eucharistic grace throughout the day. Many monasteries celebrate the full Office culminating in a daily Mass — the two forming a single integrated prayer life, morning to night.
St. Pius X on the Prayer of Christ
“The Liturgy of the Hours is the prayer of Christ continued in time by the Church.”
When we pray the Hours, we join the 24-hour unceasing prayer that rises from the Church across all time zones, offering perpetual praise to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. The sun never sets on the Church at prayer.
Sources & Further Reading
- CCC 1174–1178 — The Liturgy of the Hours in the Catechism
- CCC 2768–2772 — The Lord’s Prayer and the Hours
- Sacrosanctum Concilium §§83–101 (Vatican II, 1963) — The Divine Office
- GILH — General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours (Paul VI, 1971)
- Laudis Canticum (Paul VI, 1971) — Apostolic Constitution promulgating the reformed Office
- Robert Taft SJ, The Liturgy of the Hours in East and West
- Aelred Squire OP, Asking the Fathers
- William Storey, The Complete Liturgy of the Hours
- Canon 276 §2, 1983 Code of Canon Law — Obligation of clergy
- Universalis.com — Full LOTH online and app
- DivineOffice.org — Free audio recordings of the Hours