Electric Prayer

The Liturgy of the Hours, the Mass, and other things.

How to send a Contact Us message

Posted by universalis on 16 October 2019

All the Universalis apps and programs now have a command called “Contact Us”. This is a good way of getting in touch with us, because it creates an email which automatically contains a lot of useful information – such as which version you are using, what calendar and language settings you have, and what page you are looking at.

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How to record the screen on the iPhone or iPad

Posted by universalis on 14 October 2019

Sometimes it is easiest to explain things by sending a video of what you are seeing on your screen.

Apple have instructions, but they are a bit elliptical, so here is a longer version.

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October 2019 newsletter

Posted by universalis on 11 October 2019

This month there is one major new feature in Universalis: the Spiritual Reading page.

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September 2019 newsletter

Posted by universalis on 18 September 2019

The summer is over (in the Northern Hemisphere at least) and it is time to send out newsletters again. Although this period is still called “Ordinary Time”, it is full of extraordinary people. Follow the About Today page each day, and you will see. Read the rest of this entry »

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Easter 2019 newsletter

Posted by universalis on 23 April 2019

Happy Easter!

He is truly risen! May the grace and blessings of Easter be with you all and remain in you.

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St George in England

Posted by universalis on 23 April 2019

Today is St George’s Day, and some people in England are wondering why it does not appear in Universalis today. The reason is that this year there is a collision with Easter Tuesday.

The Church’s calendar has to deal with collisions. Suppose, for instance, that the Annunciation, on the 25th of March, falls on Good Friday (as it did in 2016). Should we omit Good Friday that year, or omit the Annunciation? Or try to celebrate both at once?

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Interview at Pray Tell

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:

  1. An unlikely liturgist.
  2. An interview with Martin Kochanski, Founder of Universalis Publishing.

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How Google Calendar works

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.

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St Patrick in Ireland 2019

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.

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Lent 2019 newsletter

Posted by universalis on 7 March 2019

Happy Lent!

To many of us this greeting may sound odd, because isn’t Lent meant to be associated not with happiness but with gloom? That is a risky way of thinking because it risks valuing gloom for the sake of gloom. Yes, Lent is stern, but its sternness is because it is sorting us out and setting us more firmly on the path to glory. St Paul is fond of athletic similes, so perhaps one could think of Lent as a kind of getting back into training. Nobody likes getting up at six in the morning and going for a row in the pouring rain, but unpleasant though it is, it has value both in getting rid of the belly and pointing one in the right direction for the future.

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