New Project Announcement

My long-time readers will know from previous entries that I try, whenever possible, to pray the office from the Latin editio typica altera of 2000. There are two primary reasons for this: first, the Latin forms of the proper prayers are richer than the translations given in our English edition; and second, there is a complete set of antiphons provided for the Sundays of the year coinciding with the three-year lectionary cycle, whereas the English translation is from the older edition which only has a single antiphon for each of the Gospel canticles.

Occasionally, when pinched for time, I make use of the Latin ediiton in a supplemental way, simple taking the Gospel antiphon and the prayer text from there, while praying everything else in English (and I have found nothing in the rubrics to suggest this to be improper, but am open to correction). I have found find this practice to be very fruitful and to provide a richness to my celebration of the liturgy on Sundays which is lacking when I simply use the English edition.

This evening, as I prayed Vespers, reflecting upon the Holy Father's letter given motu proprio this morning, I decided that I wanted to share this richness and that this site provides me with a medium for doing so. So, as a service to my readers who pray the breviary, or for any one who might be interested, I am going to try to provide each weekend the antiphons for First and Second Vespers and for Morning Prayer, as well as the closing prayer. Perhaps people who find the Latin breviary too pricy or superfluous to their real needs will find this small helping to hit the spot.

I am preparing these a few weeks in advance so all I have to do is post them as each date rolls around. I will try to have them on the site each week by Saturday morning so that people can print them out and clip them inside their breviaries if they wish.

As always, questions and comments are welcome. The posts in this project will all be filed under "breviary" for easy access.