Electric Prayer

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Happy Feast of the Rosary!

One of the unexpected benefits of doing the podcast is that in the course of finding something to say about the feasts of the Church, I discover far more than I ever knew about them, and come to value them as they should be valued. Listen to this week’s podcast and you’ll see what I mean. Here is the audio directly and here is the whole Podcasts page. Or just go to the home page at universalis.com and you’ll find a Podcasts button at the top right.

Thousands of people are listening. If you don’t, do. If you do, tell your friends.

The new English lectionary

If you do not live in Great Britain, don’t read this section. Apologies for boring you, but we are getting anxious emails about the changes, and this newsletter will help spread reassurance.

From Advent Sunday, 1 December 2024, England, Wales and Scotland are changing Bible translations from the Jerusalem Bible, which everyone has grown up with, to the English Standard Version (ESV, a variant of the Revised Standard Version). Nowhere else is changing. Churches all over the country are wondering how they can afford the new Lectionaries, which are hugely expensive because they are huge. Publishers are racing to produce new missals for us all to use.

If you have the Universalis app, you don’t need to do anything. Pick it up now – look at 1 December – and you will see that the ESV is already there.

All you need to do is make sure that your app is set to use the right calendar. The apps do their best to guess which calendar you want, but they can’t know your geographical location so they can’t always guess right. Here is how to check and set your calendar. You can even focus on an individual diocese, because most of them have specific extra feasts of their own.

About the apps

A thousand of you are new to this mailing list, and many of the rest of you may just be using the Universalis website, so here’s a quick note of what the Universalis apps are all about.

Universalis apps and programs exist for iPhone/iPad, Android, Mac and Windows. They are better than the website in all sorts of ways – starting with the fact that you don’t need to have Internet access to use them. They don’t cost much. You can get ‘all you can eat’ by buying a code for £19.99: that gives you iPhone/iPad and Android and Mac and Windows. If you use iPhone/iPad only or Android only then you can buy an app from the relevant store for half that price: £9.99. (If you use dollars or euros, the prices look pretty similar).

This page tells you all about the benefits of the apps and how to try them out.

The Rosary again

One more thing about the apps: they have audio. You can listen to the Rosary. The Rosary page comes with pictures and if you want to deepen your experience, there is a Scripture verse for every Hail Mary. (Audio is on the mobile apps only, iPhone/iPad and Android, and not on computers.)

Some bugs

System manufacturers keep life amusing by putting bugs into their systems. We do our best to make life boring for you by working round those bugs. (If your Android device is showing red text as if it were printed on wet blotting paper, or your Xiaomi device is showing white text on a white background, let us know and we’ll tell you how to make things work again.)

Apple Watch: the latest updates of Watch OS made it impossible to switch between different readings at Mass. The latest updates of Universalis make it possible again. If you haven’t been updated automatically, this page tells you how to do it by hand.

CarPlay: the latest updates of iOS 18 make it impossible to see the ‘Now Playing’ screen when you are listening to the Hours and the Mass readings. Apple say they are ‘tracking the issue’ which may or may not mean that they are planning to do something about it. We are working on an update which will avoid the problem, and with any luck it will be ready soon. But meanwhile you are still able to listen.

Thank you all for using Universalis. If you have trouble or questions, or suggestions, do write to us at universalis@universalis.com or use the Contact Us button in one of the apps.

Let us all keep one another in our prayers, as always.