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.

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The Grail psalms, which are used in the English Liturgy of the Hours, are designed with a given number of stresses in each line. The number of syllables per line may vary from one verse to the next, but the stress pattern remains consistent throughout the psalm. As one might say:

When chánting each psálm,
the páttern of stréss is consístent.
If you lóok at the márks,
you will sée how the psálm should be chánted.

In general, among the printed Liturgy of the Hours books, the English books tend to include these marks (“pointing”) and the American ones tend not to. The latest versions of Universalis give you a choice between viewing the stress marks (if they are helpful) or hiding them (if they are distracting).

The question then arises – what to do with these marks once you have them?

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In the Liturgy of the Hours, the daytime Hours (Terce, Sext and None) are designed to cater for all preferences. Specifically, they are designed to cater for people who celebrate all three of them each day and also for people who celebrate only one.

The tricky thing about the daytime Hours is that what psalms you use depends on which kind of person you are. There are “psalms of the day” which should be used each day, once only; and there are “complementary psalms” which should be used at any daytime Hour when you don’t recite the psalms of the day. Moreover, now and then, there are rules about which Hour you can use the psalms of the day at, and which you can’t.

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Adding Sung Latin Compline to Universalis has been a great success, even though it is so far only available on the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch. (We do plan to produce an Android version later this year).

Now we have started to add speech as well as music.

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