Posted by universalis on 25 March 2019
The Pray Tell blog describes itself as:
A blog that gives practical wisdom about prayer, sacraments, and the community of the faithful – in short, worship. Created especially for pastors, liturgists, musicians, and scholars, Pray Tell is informal, conversational, even humorous, but also – we hope – always well-informed and intellectually grounded.
It has just published a two-part interview by Father Neil Xavier O’Donoghue, which you may find interesting:
Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
Posted by universalis on 22 March 2019
Someone emailed us complaining that we were sending him notifications of events a year in the future, and asking us to stop. Since we do not send email notifications of that kind, this sounded strange, and worrying in that we cannot stop doing something that we weren’t doing in the first place!
The result of the investigation may be useful to someone else, which is why we are posting it here.
Posted in Calendars | Tagged: Google Calendar | 1 Comment »
Posted by universalis on 13 March 2019
The rules say that when a Solemnity (such as that of St Patrick in Ireland) falls on an important Sunday, such as one of the Sundays in Lent, it is celebrated on the Monday instead.
The Irish bishops have asked the Vatican if they can not apply the rule this year, and the Vatican has agreed. Accordingly the Solemnity of St Patrick will be celebrated in Ireland on Sunday the 17th of March, in place of the 2nd Sunday in Lent.
Universalis has just been updated to include this change. If you are in Ireland and haven’t received an update by Friday, you may want to update yourself “by hand”. Here are the instructions.
Posted in Calendars, Downloadable Universalis | Comments Off on St Patrick in Ireland 2019
Posted by universalis on 6 March 2019
When the liturgy was extensively revised in 1970, one of the themes was the inclusion of a far wider range of biblical readings. At Mass, this meant a three-year cycle of Sunday readings and a two-year cycle of weekday readings. In the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours this meant a two-year cycle, both of Scripture readings and of the patristic Second Readings which accompany them.
The two-year cycle covers the whole of salvation history and uses practically every book of the Bible – not avoiding tricky passages which need thorough reading and meditation and aren’t suitable for the “listen fast or it’s gone” nature of the readings at Mass. It is also carefully designed to be out of step with the Mass readings, so that if you hear a passage read at Mass then it won’t appear in the Office of Readings for a year (or at worst, for a few months).
This masterpiece is lovingly described in §§147 to 152 of the General Instruction on the Liturgy of the Hours. But if you look in the actual printed books – it isn’t there. In its place is a one-year cycle of readings, covering half the material.
Posted in Downloadable Universalis, Liturgy | 1 Comment »
Posted by universalis on 6 March 2019
Universalis uses the Jerusalem Bible for all the readings in the Liturgy of the Hours. In the English-speaking world which uses the Jerusalem Bible at Mass, this is a consistent and familiar translation. It is less so in the USA, where the New American Bible is used at Mass, and in some other parts of the world which use one or other variant of the RSV at Mass.
We have now reached agreement with the copyright owners and are able to offer the Revised Standard Version (Catholic Edition) readings as an add-on to the Liturgy of the Hours in Universalis. This affects the Liturgy of the Hours only: the Mass readings continue to be from the Jerusalem Bible (or, in the USA, the New American Bible).
Posted in Downloadable Universalis | 12 Comments »
Electric Prayer 